When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A few days ago, my husband tried three times to post a comment to my blog. Each time, his comment was rejected because it looked like spam. The poor man was completely perplexed. What had he done to appear as if he were spamming my site? He had no idea, but like the little train that could, he just kept typing away and eventually wrote a comment that was not rejected by my spam filter.
The first three times, he had apparently used a dirty word. But not any old dirty word, a BHW dirty word.
My spam filter, MT-Blacklist, works by screening comments for text strings, URLs, and regexes [fancy geek-speak, I think, for a method of matching sequences of characters or words] that are on a blacklist. I can set each blacklist entry to either block the comment or force it into a queue where I have to approve or reject it. MT-Blacklist also forces moderation for comments posted to old entries and for suspicious-looking comments, such as those containing a bunch of URLs.
Make no mistake, MT-Blacklist is a censorship tool. In addition to banning URLs, I have had to ban specific words from the comments to keep my site from being overtaken by spammers. I hate banning any words at all. But if I don't use MT-Blacklist, I might as well shut the whole site down because it would become nothing more than a huge gambling-prescription-drug-mortgage-refinancing-dick-stiffening advertisement.
Oddly and pleasantly enough, however, George Carlin's seven dirty words are still legal. So go ahead and comment to your heart's content about shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Say 'em loud and say 'em proud, motherfuckers.
But don't you dare write about casino, credit, equity, online, poker, or Texas. Those are the new dirty words, the vilest of the vile. Put just one of them in a comment on my blog, and feel the wrath of the BHW anti-spamhole rejection message, beeotch.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
Ah-ha. I've been trying to post on a friend's blog often and getting the same problem. Now I've had these hints I'll have to try again.
And even if it doesn't work, thanks for a most enjoyable post.
2 - Dave Nalle
I find that scanning for Holdem works exactly the same as scanning for Texas, but folks from Texas can still mention their state in responses.
Dave
3 - bhw
Hmmmm... hadn't thought of that. Although Texans can just abbreviate to TX, I suppose.
4 - Bennett
Thanks for this bhw. I need to set up the list on my blog. Right now it's on moderate all comments and that seems to stop 'em.
Almost no one except spammers ever visits my blog (so it seems, I could be wrong, and that may change someday).
You must have quite the traffic!
5 - Chris Beaumont
I don't even get spammers...... I don't get much of anyone at my site...
6 - Bennett
Yeah Chris, but in a way I cool with it. I use my blog as a repository and construction site for my BC posts.
Not enough time to do the "daily blog" thing anyway.
7 - Phillip Winn
I'd post the blacklist for comments here, but, um, I don't want to give any ideas. Suffice to say that I have several varieties of poker games listed: holdem, hold-em, hold em, and so on.
So far, only in URLs and Names, but I'm finding that I'm going to have to start doing more parsing of comment text soon. Clever buggers.
8 - Aaman
wouldn't the blacklist get blacklisted?
9 - DrPat
Funny, I don'get spam at all, and Blogger doesn't really have any blacklisting capabiliy. Maybe it's because their native comment handler doesn't allow href links.
Or maybe it's just that books aren't a big draw for gamblers...
10 - bhw
Maybe it's because their native comment handler doesn't allow href links.
That'll do it. The links are there more for Google juice than they are for readers to find and then click.
11 - Phillip Winn
The amazing this is that we wrap URLs in redirectors and nofollow tags here, so nobody gets any googlejuice from comments, and yet I guess most people don't check to even see that.
12 - bhw
I think most spammers just look for sites with lots of old posts and open comments on them. They don't do a whole lot of checking ... I can see that some spammers who have been banned on my site for a couple of months still try to post to the site. I think they use scripts to automate the process.
13 - El Bicho
Ahhh, that would explain my difficulties in posting my DVD review for Scorsese's "Casino" in your comment section. Maybe I should call it "Goodfellas 2: The Wrath of Nicky".
14 - Donnie Marler
"Say 'em loud and say 'em proud, motherfuckers."
My monitor thanks you for the coffee bath. Very entertaining, thank you.