In which a group of graying eternal amateurs discuss their passions, interests and obsessions, among them: movies, art, politics, evolutionary biology, taxes, writing, computers, these kids these days, and lousy educations.

E-Mail Donald
Demographer, recovering sociologist, and arts buff

E-Mail Fenster
College administrator and arts buff

E-Mail Francis
Architectural historian and arts buff

E-Mail Friedrich
Entrepreneur and arts buff
E-Mail Michael
Media flunky and arts buff


We assume it's OK to quote emailers by name.







Try Advanced Search


  1. Time Passes
  2. Elsewhere
  3. Alberto Cavalcanti
  4. Murder in NYC
  5. Apologies
  6. Speedy Writing
  7. Mistaken Identity
  8. End of Evolution: Passenger Cars
  9. Early Rock at YouTube
  10. Bagatelles


CultureBlogs
• Sasha Castel
• AC Douglas
• Out of Lascaux
• The Ambler
• PhilosoBlog
• Modern Art Notes
• Cranky Professor
• Mike Snider on Poetry
• Silliman on Poetry
• Felix Salmon
• Gregdotorg
• BookSlut
• Polly Frost
• Polly and Ray's Forum
• Cronaca
• Plep
• Stumbling Tongue
• Brian's Culture Blog
• Banana Oil
• Scourge of Modernism
• Visible Darkness
• Seablogger
• Thomas Hobbs
• Blog Lodge
• Leibman Theory
• Goliard Dream
• Third Level Digression
• Here Inside
• My Stupid Dog
• W.J. Duquette

Politics, Education, and Economics Blogs
• Andrew Sullivan
• The Corner at National Review
• Steve Sailer
• Samizdata
• Junius
• Joanne Jacobs
• CalPundit
• Natalie Solent
• A Libertarian Parent in the Countryside
• Rational Parenting
• Public Interest.co.uk
• Colby Cosh
• View from the Right
• Pejman Pundit
• Spleenville
• God of the Machine
• One Good Turn
• CinderellaBloggerfella
• Liberty Log
• Daily Pundit
• InstaPundit
• MindFloss
• Catallaxy Files
• Greatest Jeneration
• Glenn Frazier
• Jane Galt
• Jim Miller
• Limbic Nutrition
• Innocents Abroad
• Chicago Boyz
• James Lileks
• Cybrarian at Large
• Hello Bloggy!
• Setting the World to Rights
• Travelling Shoes

Miscellaneous
• Redwood Dragon
• IMAO
• The Invisible Hand
• ScrappleFace
• Daze Reader
• Lynn Sislo
• The Fat Guy
• Jon Walz

Links


Our Last 50 Referrers







« Speedy Writing | Main | Murder in NYC »

May 17, 2006

 Apologies

[I'll remove this post in a day or so.]

2 Blowhards is being hit by a blizzard of on-line gambling spam in Comments sections of items posted during the last month or so.

Just before writing this, I found that spam comments were arriving faster than I could delete them.

I haven't checked with Michael, but I for one welcome any suggestions. It would be a shame and would harm this blog greatly if commenting had to be curtailed or made difficult for legitimate readers.

Later,

Donald

posted by Donald at May 17, 2006




Comments

I've spent an hour this morning deleting commentspam myself. Not nearly as fun as speedwriting, I gotta say. I'm checking with our webguy about what he might do for us, but I'd certainly be grateful for tips from anyone knowledgeable ...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 17, 2006 11:00 AM

One possibly quick and easy solution is to add a randomly produced image that the commenter must read and enter with the submission of their comment. You can find an example of this at the ChicoBoyz.net weblog. It is also a common feature of email hosts like Yahoo. That is, to get an account you must enter in the text that you see in their random image.

I am assuming that this feature is offered by your web-hosting company.

Posted by: Ian Lewis on May 17, 2006 12:25 PM

ChicoBoyz.net should be ChicagoBoyz.net. My mistake.

Posted by: Ian Lewis on May 17, 2006 12:25 PM

!ChicoBoyz! Yes, amigos, we are now multi-culti ;)

Seriously, I highly recommend using an image-recognition system. We get essentially no automated spam anymore. Our system is the popular plugin that was written by James Seng and works with old versions of MT (we are using 2.6x). Very easy to install and configure. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about it.

Posted by: Jonathan on May 17, 2006 01:24 PM

If you're using moveable type, you could try Akismet. We've had it on ScienceBlogs for about a month now and have have very few troubles with comment spam.

Posted by: Dave Munger on May 17, 2006 02:12 PM

Regarding the image recognition thing, you guys are the only blog I frequent which still doesn't use one! I'm surprised you don't get more spam than you do.

The other option is making commenters join a sign-in service like like Blogger or Typekey or what have you. I've found this to be a real pain for commenters, and it discourages comments from new visitors who just surfed in. The result is that comment threads on such sign-in blogs tend to get cliquey.

Image recognition is the way to go, IMO. Blocks spambots without discouraging newbies.

Posted by: Brian on May 17, 2006 03:57 PM

By the way, speaking of comment nightmares - the Bidinotto Blog crashed for a few days recently, and when it came back up all the old comments were gone. The folks are hunting them down from Google's cache and reentering them under each post.

As if you don't have enough to worry about...

Posted by: Brian on May 17, 2006 04:09 PM

Thanks for tips, which I'm passing along to our wonderful webguy.

Wow, losing all the comments ... That would be awful. I just checked, and 22,337 comments help make up this blog. I hope people are copying and keeping records of their own comments. If this blog goes down and its comments get lost, it's hard to imagine going off in search of 22,337 of them ....

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 17, 2006 04:31 PM

Back everything up. It helps if your hosting company runs its own backups too.

Posted by: Jonathan on May 17, 2006 04:56 PM

2s07wa1h00is 6c4916qzig [URL=http://www.902732.com/824433.html] cqx2mcvupp6r [/URL] ftv77egi2bjbvxw48

Posted by: xvow0gom71 on May 17, 2006 07:57 PM

2s07wa1h00is [URL=http://www.902732.com/824433.html] cqx2mcvupp6r [/URL] ftv77egi2bjbvxw48

Posted by: xvow0gom71 on May 17, 2006 07:57 PM

2s07wa1h00is http://www.426458.com/591911.html ftv77egi2bjbvxw48

Posted by: xvow0gom71 on May 17, 2006 07:58 PM

2s07wa1h00is 8d3dam8sf4rw9n ftv77egi2bjbvxw48

Posted by: xvow0gom71 on May 17, 2006 07:58 PM

xfizx8aan92qc3x 2ojh478o26vqr [URL=http://www.1079338.com/959389.html] u2qhupcic5mxi7oz [/URL] khinvdnviozvp996

Posted by: vxqpu35nkb on May 17, 2006 07:59 PM

xfizx8aan92qc3x [URL=http://www.1079338.com/959389.html] u2qhupcic5mxi7oz [/URL] khinvdnviozvp996

Posted by: vxqpu35nkb on May 17, 2006 07:59 PM

xfizx8aan92qc3x http://www.957505.com/1005372.html khinvdnviozvp996

Posted by: vxqpu35nkb on May 17, 2006 08:00 PM

xfizx8aan92qc3x 91o2mpk6vx khinvdnviozvp996

Posted by: vxqpu35nkb on May 17, 2006 08:00 PM


Post a comment
Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember your info?