I'd like to figure out an effective system for allowing comments on articles without having to pre-approve them

I'm thinking of a numeric spamcheck + something like this: http://akismet.com/

anybody try http://akismet.com/ or have any other suggestions?

Yeah, Mate, Akismet is the way to go!

Dunno about allowing comments without approving them, but I can tell you that Akismet sure slowed up the spam flood for me.

You'd need to do some tests, of course, to see how it works out. But you know that!

Just to make it clear for all readers, we're talking WordPress (WP) blogs, here.

Now, I'm about to tell you something impossible, so I'll need to tell the full story for it to make sense:

I have two domains. My news service is on one domain and on my wilderness photography domain I have about 15 subdomains and folders.

Untill I recently installed Akismet on the news service domain I was getting around 40 to 60 spam comments a day. Not many compared to some, I understand, but enough to really get up my nose.

Most of the spam, maybe three quarters, was on the news service.

I was handling it by putting repeat IP addresses on the WP banned list and by turning off the comments on repeatedly targeted posts.

These measures had some effect. I guess different spam contractors each have their own method of operation. I suppose they either buy blog lists or search them out themselves. And I guess comment spamming can be done in house or outsourced. I don't think the spamming industry has a code of ethics or even an association which might suggest ethical practices.

TBPR seems to be a determinant for spam targeting. My news service and several of the subdomains on the wilderness photography domain have the same modest TBPR. These are the URLs targeted, irrespective of traffic volume.

So here's the impossible bit:

I put Akismet on my news service and immediately the spam stopped, not only for the news site but for the other sites that don't have Akismet. Unbelievable, huh? Well, it's true.

Now note this, because it's also difficult to believe:

Akismet isn't catching any spam in the spam filter. The spam posts are simply not being made, as far as I can see.

So how do I explain this? Well, my best guess is that the spammers find their targets on MBL, Technorati, Blogcatalog, etc.. My targets are all there together on those sites. I don't know how the spam list compilers found out that I'd installed Akismet but I guess they'd use some clever little search script. But I'm guessing that finding Akismet on one of my blogs on the social sites was the trigger to avoid me, altogether. It's like they put a black mark or a red cross against my identity on the social sites, or wherever they collectively got my URLs.

And it suggests to me that although there are clearly different sources for the comment spam, maybe the lists are compiled by the same person or system.

Anyway, unbelievable as it sounds, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I reckon it's great that the spam list providers have such stringent quality control in place in order to protect their good standing as a reliable supplier!

Oh, and did I tell ya? Spam really gets up my nose!

Akismet is fabulous...I use it on almost all my sites.

You can alter the settings to automatically delete the spam posts after a certain amount of time so they don't sit on your server and you don't have to do it manually.

They get it right 99.9% of the time.

ER

I use akismet, but found it was not enough, so use WP-spamfree as well - and have been very happy with the results

I reckon Daves article is the answer to your impossible luck Laurie, http://forums.site-reference.com/topic/ … and-Dorks/

Using the dorks any dork can find out out which sites are using what, i reckon they gather a list of targets and break it down by running all those urls through a series of tests - if your site tests positive for said spam filter your domain is removed from their list as its a waste of their time.

Well, I reckon you'd be right about the dorks article, Ryan.

That explains my luck with the news site where I have Akismet.

The other sites, on a different domain, are still getting a small amount of comment spam. Maybe two per week instead of half a dozen per day. Seems to relate to installing Akismet on the news site. The obvious link between the two domains is the social/bookmarking sites.

So I reckon that's where they pick up the URLs to search with their dorks.

Can't you just imagine the price list for URL lists or contract spamming:

PR1 - $1
PR2 - $2
PR3 - $3.50
PR4 - $6.50
PR5 - $11

As with any business, it's important to maintain tough quality control. It wouldn't do to be selling link lists or spamming services made worthless by Akismet.

The small amount of comment spam that is still coming on my photography and adventure sites, mostly has no links. Just a stupid comment like "Great blog. Keep up the good work."

Of course, I delete these straight off. I don't need these clowns to tell me it's a great blog. I know already.

What are they up to? On WP there is the option to allow comments from people who already have a comment published. If I enable this option and publish this one off garbage, they then have unchecked access to my old posts, that I won't notice.

So, it should be possible to put up a dummy blog with Akismet enabled and add it to each of my social/bookmarking sites. That would flag all my blogs as belonging to the enemy of spam. Anyone got any thoughts on this?

Oh! I did find Dave's article very interesting. Had a bit of fun with it. Got into the Wikipedia banned list, among other things. But couldn't find my own stats. My host must have them secured.