MozillaZine should look into installing MT-Blacklist

I'm wondering what would be the effect of changing the post comments url on mozillazine like renaming mt-comments.cgi to mt-coment.cgi, would they modify their bots ?

Hi, want to buy some ciali... :) Just kidding. These days I close comments on my old posts, and blog spam has dropped to almost zero.

In France, we have very restrictive antispam laws:

- Opt-In
- Obligation of removal
- Forbidding spammin a personnal mail (but still authorized for enterprises)

I know that some blog engines permits to sending new comments by mail to the maintener.

e don't have "action class", but multiples juridical attacks could be fun.

I already had to close comments on my blog, cause I couldn't handle all the spam. It's sad to see, that a few idiots -for whom profit is everything- can ruin such a great medium.

For organizations such as Mozilla.org (or any such with a large number of bloggers) blog spam can easily be removed with a single point of spam checking since the database of spam will grow quickly. I have often wondered why such a step has not been taken already.

I run a service for blogspam which handles about 2000 comments a day and the system just continues to build upon itself. I do agree that a few slip through (about 2-3 a week) but those get added manually and the thing just chugs along.

PS: I have a database of over 30,000 spam comments, commenters and zombie IPs in case you ever do want to sue them! :)

Anne van Kesteren has a pretty effective anti-spam measure on his blog... :)

http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/11/quality-comments

Seriously though, for a regular blog I think it's easiest to give visitors the ability to issue 'spam alerts', and if they click on that button and confirm that they really think it is spam. That post then disappears from the comments and is put in a queue where you can quickly go over them and pick out the legitimate posts.

Additionally / alternatively, I think some clever filtering could do a lot. Count number of links, and count word repetition (if it says pee and teen about 10 times you can be pretty sure it's spam :)). Stuff like that, I'm sure there are more clever rules one can come up with after dealing with what still gets through.

~Grauw

Whew, here comes a reply that's not going to go over well:

You have absolutely no grounds for seeking damages from or punishment for these people. I mean yes, technically the law might provide for it, but it's complete nonsense.

So you set up servers and provide bandwidth to allow for comments to be posted in these journals. Note that nobody forced you to make any bandwidth available or set up these servers; it was done completely voluntarily. And then you get mad when someone has actually used the bandwidth to post comments, just as you have allowed, and you decide to sue them.

What nonsense!

These spammers do nothing outside of that which you have voluntarily allowed them to do, and somehow you think you are entitled to some payback? You give them access to your resources for free and then demand that they pay for your loss?

(From Alex: I said I wasn't serious.)

The 3 step plan for blogspam that Jacques Distler suggests would be a good start for anyone.