Comments on: Tom Raftery is on Bad Behaviour!

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:33:56 +0000

I don’t know what other’s views on this are but personally I am against CAPTCHAs because they are the lazy way out.

They disrespect your readers throwing the burden back on them by adding an extra step to the process rather than putting the burden on the spammer.

I have written several articles on spam prevention. I find that a combination of a good .htaccess file, a good word list in Options -> Discussion in WordPress and Aksimet keeps almost all spammers at bay.

By: Roger

Roger — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:27:08 +0000

Good point.

What about Captcha’s with logic puzzles?
e.g. what’s 2 plus 4?

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:49:02 +0000

Roger,

no, no, no, no, no.

CAPTCHA’s are evil. Seriously they are bad.

The American Foundation for the blind has written many times about how difficult Captchas make browsing for blind or partially sighted people.

And the W3C (not an organisation given to hyperbole) in a report on Captchaâ€™s said:

A common method of limiting access to services made available over the Web is visual verification of a bitmapped image. This presents a major problem to users who are blind, have low vision, or have a learning disability such as dyslexia.

By: RogerG

RogerG — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:39:01 +0000

The captcha gets 99.9% of spam for us (you’ll never get the human manually entered spam). I’m just curious why people don’t go down that route. Is it seen as an intrusion?

By: Advanced Technology Products Interactive » Blog Archive » Installed some spam catchers

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:29:57 +0000

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By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 09:52:39 +0000

I think you just have to remove the call to Referrer Karma from whichever template file(s) you added it to

Yup, I think that’s all that needs to be done as well but trying to remember which files I added the Referrer Karma call to is another thing!

By: James

James — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:06:50 +0000

Whatâ€™s your thinking on running three James â€˜cos Iâ€™m running Akismet as well!?

When it comes to anti-spam filters, more is always better, unless they interfere with each other, cause any noticeable performance impact, or show absolutely no benefit. In your case, Referrer Karma will be executed first, followed by Bad Behavior, and then Akismet if any “POST” requests pass Bad Behavior, so you shouldn’t have to worry about the three filters interfering with each other.

I used to run Referrer Karma before I installed Bad Behavior, and I haven’t needed it since, so I’m willing to bet that you won’t either.

If memory serves me correctly, I think you just have to remove the call to Referrer Karma from whichever template file(s) you added it to and then drop the Referrer Karma MySQL table or database.

By: Michele

Michele — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:56:40 +0000

I’ve been using Bad Behavior for ages combined with Askimet. I rarely have to look at spam..

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:26:52 +0000

What’s your thinking on running three James ‘cos I’m running Akismet as well!?

By: James

James — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:08:22 +0000

Running at least two anti-spam filters is the best way to keep your blog spam-free. Bad Behavior takes care of 95% of MacManX.com’s incoming spam, and Akismet takes care of the other 5%.

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:37:29 +0000

Michael,

thanks for stopping by and commenting.

Of course you are absolutely right. I think I just may do that (esp since Referrer Karma isn’t straightforward to uninstall!).

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:25:19 +0000

It’s not a one-or-the-other question. You can run both.