Jangro.com - Latest Comments in Buh-bye Askimet

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Scott — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:19:20 -0000

Jaan,

I'm not sure, though my guess is that there is some conflict with the field name "answer", maybe some other plugin is clobbering the value in that field or the resulting variable in wordpress.

To be clear, I didn't develop this plugin, I just changed some of the behavior --cosmetic stuff. Unfortunately, I don't have an intimate knowledge of it's workings.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Andy — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:11:00 -0000

I decided to go broader than
affiliate marketing in the name, though thatâ€™s all there is on the site right now. Personally, I belong to a few other communities and I can see the same sort of thing developing, but they wouldnâ€™t mix with ...

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Pete Firelead — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 13:16:45 -0000

I took your advice and I tried installing "Did you pass math?" on my blog: http://www.firelead.com and it gave me an error and briefly took down my site for a while. I followed the instructions exactly in the instructions.txt. I quickly consulted the documentation, and when I got to the line that said:

"3a. I get a php error
It's most likely your theme, it may not be compatible (I'm sorry, you are on our own here, there are just SO many of them)."

I was a little disappointed. I have a new version of Wordpress, and a new theme that I've heavily modified. I'll try to dig into it a little bit and make it work, but until then Askimet will have to do. What I'd really like the authors of this plugin to do is make it work with ALL themes.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Michael Coley — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:00:53 -0000

Yep, that's the tough thing. It's hard to achieve an acceptable spam detection rate while totally avoiding false positives.

My favorite email spam product (Cloudmark Desktop, formerly called SpamNet) has problems with false positives. It detects over 95% of spam, but falsely flags about 1% of newsletters. As a result, I still have to slime my way through my Spam folder to rescue some legitimate emails, but it's not too bad as long as I stay on top of it. I can find and unblock the handful of legitimate emails from 1000 spam emails in less than 10 minutes.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Scott — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 03:52:00 -0000

I should also add that I did have a love affair with SK2 for a long time until it started acting funny. The final betrayal came when it started marking a few good comments as bad and I switched over to Askiment to see how that would do.

It is very possible that I could go back to SK2 and be perfectly happy but I'm reluctant now having been bitten by both that and Askimet.

The bottom line is that in using something automated and algorithmic, you put total faith in them. Otherwise, to find any good posts that may have been marked as spam, I have to look at all the spam, which I was avoiding in the first place.

I have the same problem with email.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Scott — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:17:59 -0000

For sure, trackbacks are good. I get annoyed when I link to a blog and the trackback doesn't show. For example, Revenews has trackbacks on moderate and most of the bloggers there are quite bad about approving them.

I installed a plugin that puts all trackbacks into moderation.
I moderate them and approve all legit ones.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Dane Morgan — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:07:14 -0000

But what about trackbacks. Trackbacks are in my oppinion just as important as comments, and unfortuantely, just as susceptable to spammers.

I also dumped Akismet, but in favor of Spam Karma. If a comment fails the filters, the poster can prove they are human by completing a captcha, and if they pass the filters, or are logged in they don't have to worry even about that, whereas trackbacks can be occassionally monitored for any false positives as they aren't as time critical as comments (though they are just as valuable).

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Scott — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 20:23:10 -0000

Yeah, when the bots catch up, I'll just move to differential equations, Michael. ;)
I do like the two trains leaving Chicago word problems as well, Kevin.

I think what this solution has going for it is that it's not widely used. If it becomes *the* method, it's dead. Otherwise, it's simply off the path of least resistence.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Michael Coley — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 19:53:16 -0000

What is the integral of e to the x? And here I thought I would never need to use calculus.

It seems like this would be very, very easy for a bot to identify and answer. I wouldn't expect this to be effective for long.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

AndyBeard — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 03:00:04 -0000

You could probably carry all the form data over to the failed page so there wouldn't be any need to hit the back button

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Chris Kramer — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 22:19:20 -0000

I'll take adding 8+6 over a CAPTCHA any day of the week, despite my mathematical deficiencies.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Scott — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 19:00:55 -0000

I think you misunderstood me Jim.

It's one legit comment that gets flagged as spam that is unacceptible.

I can't go through thousands of spam comments to find the good ones.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Jim Kukral — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:03:17 -0000

It's confirmed Scott, you have too much time on your hands :)

All that time spent to stop the one spam that gets through, you must really hate spam! :)

Oh, and I can't add, make sure the numbers stay below twenty or I'll have to pull my calc out.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Pranav Chavda — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:52:17 -0000

Just checking my math skills! I hope it's not the same question it is asking to everyone . I answered (which is hopefully also the correct answer) to the same math problem Vlad was asked.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Scott — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:26:38 -0000

I've updated the post above with a link to my modified plugin file.

Re: Buh-bye Askimet

Sam Harrelson — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:09:02 -0000

Thanks for raising the bar!

Hadn't even considered making modifications to improve the user experience, but that's a darn good point that I should have thought of!

Attempting to make the CPN process user friendly now...