Babe Watch

Blocking IP addresses does not foil comment spammers. Blocking IP addresses foils jerks who are harrassing you with rude comments. Comment spammers fake their IP addresses so that if you block them, you're not blocking the spammers' address, you're blocking the address of some random person out there on the internet.

What you want — and you rightly surmise that this would be a tool to block specific words — is MT-Blacklist, a plug-in that allows one to build a list of prohibited words. Sure, this will prevent your users from discussing the finer points of certain games of chance, or from discussing gross anatomy (where by gross I mean large), or from offering to sell certain drugs, but that's a small price to pay for reduced spam.

And note that I say reduced spam. There's no real way to eliminate it so long as there are fuckers out there who think it's cool to take advantage of the system. (The system in this case being google.)

Get Mackenzie to install MT-Blacklist for you. He has the power! :)

MT-Blacklist is now running on "Babewatch." I'll show you how to use it when I get home. Love you.

It's now 4:20 a.m.

Why am I up? Because I kept hearing "you have new mail", "you have new mail", "you have new mail", the surest sign that I'm on the receiving end of a spam attack.

Sure enough, even with all of my safe-guards, foldedspace.org has been bombarded by one piece of spam per minute for the past hour-and-a-half. Worse, Dishpan Dribble has been swamped with I don't know how much spam. So, here I am, early in the morning, cleaning up the mess.

All this is to say: there is no panacea. All of these measures help a little, but there's no way to prevent comment spam completely short of turning off comments.

This is yet one more reason I believe spammers should be executed on the spot.