I’ve decided to try something different for commenting on this site. As I have mentioned in a previous post (not too long ago), I have disabled “first post” moderation on this site, to encourage those who would otherwise not comment to do so (and please do). I decided to rely on the Bad Behavior Plugin and Akismet (I know, I know - I said things about relying on an outside server…). I’ve done that for a couple of days and its worked so far. The thing is that Bad Behavior seems to be blocking certain IP ranges since the ISPs host these spammers in droves. The problem is that its blocks legitimate commenters like hari and Sindhu. This is not acceptable in my book, so I’ve taken a different approach. So, after seeing this article at Weblogtools Collection, I decided to disable BB2 and enable TanTanNoodles Simple Spam Filter. I still have “first post” moderation disabled. I hope that this works. This would be great if SSF and Akismet blocked all the baddies and everyone could comment right away. I have my fingers crossed.
This doesn’t mean that I’m done. I still think that this would work and sometimes I will just have to ridicule the bad ones.
Have you tried Spam Karma 2? That works like a charm and doesn’t rely on outside servers either.
Akismet is doing a great job for me, so that’s all I use.
It works so well now because everybody that uses contributes to the whole and it gets stored on their database instead of filling mine.
It doesn’t slow anything down so it’s good as far as I’m concerned.
I have used SK and I preferred BB2. I’ll do this way.n That way the obvious spam will be eliminated before Akismet gets it and the stuff left will be caught by it.
I’ve been using the SSF along with the http:BL from Project Honey Pot. Only one spam has made it through in two days and it was a clueless splogger. I reported as spam through Akismet twice. I hope I never see it again.
In other words, no spam in the Akismet section other than the one I force there has shown up in two days. My bandwidth and my time are spared from the useless comment spam.
Interesting so far. The SSF has reported turning away 10 and none for Akismet. Does that mean that 700-3000 visits a week were from legit visitors? If so, I’ve got to apologise to a lot of people. Or do the BB Stats report every HTTP request, regardless of how many actual visits?