Update: I’ve changed the title to reflect the direction the discussion has taken.
“Alas” is currently being spam-flooded by some roulette site. So, for the time being, I’ve set the software to automatically delete any comment with the word “roulette-” in it.
When capitalized, "Sie" is the formal way to address adults of either gender in polite German. I majored in the…
If one assumes that a person is making their money, including enough money to have no incentive to "work", by…
Ob sie wirklich Deutsch spricht. Normalweise, kommt die US Soldaten nicht ins Stadt und spricht nicht so oft mit denn…
As for being a Nazi, ich spreche fliessend deutsch und wohnte in Deutschland fuer drei Jahre mit der americanishe Luftwaffe…
And of course this "incentive" only applies to poor people: Rich people who already have enough to live off of…
You fixed something! The background colour is back to normal, and the red goes all the way across the top.
Yay!
what’s up with the numbers at the bottom? Why do I have to add them? Is it an anti-spam measure? If so, I’m quite impressed that a spambot has beaten it.
Probably not a bot. Someone’s opening a hundred tabs and loading a different post in each one, pasting their ad text, and then doing the math by hand. I could probably put a hundred spam comments here in ten minutes. Or someone has written an automated program that can detect this particular plugin and do the math; the numbers are plain text, not an image, so it’d be relatively trivial to automate.
I liked it a lot when it first appeared; I’d open an interesting-looking post in a new tab, and then open any interesting-looking posts in THAT tab’s 5-random-window, and so on.
After about a week of that, however, I’ve pretty much reviewed the Best of Alas, and it’s not much use anymore.
Although it would reflect a total re-engineering of the site (a prospect that no doubt has Amp stabbing Xacto knives into his eyes with joy), this is one of the first blogs I’ve seen that would maybe be better served with a forum organization rather than a post+comments organization.
Yes, the “Add ’em up” thing is a spamblocking device. It was effective for a while, but I’m not sure if it’s still effective or not. (I’m getting some spam, but would I be getting even more if I got rid of the math problem?)
My guess is that the spambot I’ve been having trouble with in the last week isn’t even using this form; it’s probably going directly to the underlying software. When I have time, I’m planning to change every php filename that has “comments” in it to something else, so that the relevant files won’t be so easy for spambots to locate.
Actually, there’s a ton of things I’d like to do to improve the blogs look and functionality, but I have so little time for blogging, and if I spend too much fooling around on the backend that means there’s no time for writing new posts!
Bean, thanks for reminding me; I’ve moved the “random posts” thing to the bottom of the blogroll. (Sarah likes it).
Hey, that reminds me: What would people think of having “open threads” on “Alas”?
Open threads wouldn’t add a lot (to my mind), since I appreciate the focus of the site. One advantage would be that you would be able to keep comments more on task, since off topic posts could be redirected to open threads.
Since you occassionally do posts full of links, the comments to those are often more disjointed– just tack a “these comments are open” to the end and you’re set. Just musing… if I come up with something better, I’ll let you know.
Since this is a general “Alas” meta-issues thread…
You have a category on your blogroll labeled “to amp’s right”, which consists mostly of mainstream liberal/Democratic supporting blogs, and for the most part they are to your right. But the second blog on that list is crooked timber, which I visit frequently. Most of the contributors are European and Autralian philosophers who describe themselves as ranging from social democrats to democratic socialists. Analytic Marxism is discussed often in a positive light. I am just really curious as to how you see yourself as being to the left of crooked timber.
Have you renamed your wp-comments.php file? That really helped for me: the add ’em up feature is cute, but the spam bots could bypass it; they’d actually got ten into my database. (Bastards! I noticed this when I started getting spam on nonexistent posts.) Ever since I did the renaming, I haven’t gotten any spam (touch wood), and it’s a fix that takes five minutes.
Oops, here’s a better description of how to rename the files – scroll down to ‘preempt comment spam’.
Given that add-’em-up maths problems all seem to have integer answers between 1 and 20, I imagine it’d be really easy just to post by giving the possible answers from an increasing loop, without having to detect and calculate all the details of the problem. Sure, it would make the bot 20 times slower, but not slow compared to doing it by hand. And it wouldn’t help Amp to have a picture of the numbers instead of the numbers themselves.
Is it possible to do ‘type this word’, and have a picture of the word instead? Or preschool-style pictures:
Q: “What’s this?”
A: “a duck”
Those spammers are very innovative. I had a poker site spam me 150 times in less than 10 minutes a couple of weeks ago. Annoying.
It’s safe to use the word “roulette” again.
Regarding a picture of a duck, I’d hate to do that, because there are so many possible correct answers, such as “duck,” “a duck,” or “bird.” Also, there are blind-accessibility issues when you use purely visual blocking software (although I don’t know if that’s an issue for any “Alas” readers).
The next step will definitely be Moebius Stripper’s suggestion.
That one was actually more of a joke suggestion, brought to my mind by the idea of typing what’s in the picture. But I hadn’t thought of the issue of not being able to see the picture.
Roulette! Roulette roulette roulette roulette roulette roulette roulette !!!
Whew, sorry. I had to get that off my chest.
You see, I suffer from Roulette’s Syndrome.
I notice you’re using wordpress. I found that if I added a few IP and URLs to the blacklist, as well as the usual trigger words, I get almost no spam at all. Prior to that I tried Kitten’s spaminator, the spamassassin plugin and a few other bits and bobs. None were especially effective once I removed moderation.
The blacklist is working :)
cheers!
Y’know, Rob—in at least one important respect, you haven’t changed at all.
You’re jealous of my greatness, admit it.
For a second I thought you said, “You’re jealous of my greatness, I admit it.”
Which would have been funnier.
I say that if people just want to talk, without having blogs of their own, then the better course of action is to either set up an Alas-based bulletin board/forum or to pick an existing feminist bulletin board/forum to invade. Periodic open-threads are an awkward means of having discussions not directed by the posters.
Is there any way to make it so that your information isn’t saved on the computer when you post comments? Most pages seem to have a “remember me” box to check. I’m posting this anonymously because I’m posting from a public computer, and it’s now defaulting to my name and email address.
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