Has the Comment Spam Dragon Been Slain?
Administrative entry here, as much as we try to keep them few-and-far-between. Over the past month-and-a-half or so I’ve really been plagued by comment spam. You can read some background here about what this has all been about – what it is these nasty people are trying to gain by this behavior – together with my past warning here that I would have to turn comments to this weblog off every so often to ward away this plague. Like when I went to bed: things really got old the first couple times I failed to do that and so woke up and logged-on to find unbelievable amounts of comments to delete in the early-morning hours.
The problem here was the possibility, or even the likelihood, that readers would want to leave legitimate comments but would find that not possible, with the comments feature temporarily turned off. Those comments would quite likely then be lost, rather than saved for a later time when comments might be turned on. (I know that I, for one, wouldn’t bother to try again later to contribute if I was stymied the first time.) Well, I’ve upgraded the software now, and it seems that it once again is possible to leave comments on while still avoiding comment spam (knock wood).
Just wanted you to know. We now resume our regularly-scheduled (hah!) blog . . .