We had another comment spam attack last night, it took the server down for most of the night and corrupted a number of our database tables. I've repaired all of the tables and blocked comments for the moment.
I'm going to do two things in the next few days. I'm going to go through everyone's movable type templates and add in a tag surrounding the comment sections which is missing in everyone's templates because most people started their blogs when we used to have an older version of movabletype that didn't support this tag. This tag will cause changes in comment configuration to be represented on your sites. The reason I want to do this is because of the second change I want to make which is to enable "registration required" for comments on all blogs. This means that people will have to use their typepad account instead of just typing in their name in the comments. The hassle of this is minimal since when you log in with typepad it keeps you logged in for 2 weeks, so you only have to re-login every couple weeks, and you never have to type your name, email and url again.
Sorry for the totalitarian imposition of will here but we get thousands of comments a day of which maybe 10 are from real humans. The comment spam is crashing the server and affecting all of the other websites hosted here other than cementhorizon. This may reduce the number random human commenter who show up and leave a comment, but otherwise it shouldn't have any negative effect.
Feel free to comment with questions or concerns.
5 Comments
I fully support any measure that will keep these goddamn Ukranian robots from pushing their pornography and prescription drugs on my blog. I thank you, sir.
there goes my vi@gra supply.
I get a fairly decent number of legitimate-but-random commenters, who will definitely disappear when this change is implemented. I’m sure something needs to be done about the huge volume of worthless commenters, but I wonder if there is some alternative (word verification, etc.) to Typepad.
I technically get random but legitimate commenters also, but the vast majority of them are people who read my ear stretching entry and then post “omg ur full of shit i stretched mine from 12 to 0 with a jack in the box straw and they only bled for 2 weeks and they look great.” So I won’t be that sorry if they don’t post anymore.
Let me qualify that: On the 5% of my entries that get huge traffic, there are a lot of legit random commenters. The other randoms usually stick to calling me “fag” for perceived insults to Adam Morrison, Warren G, or middling television actors.