Stopping spam comments gracefully
by Jean du Plessis on 2007/07/30
As you know we did away with CAPTCHAs on GottaQuirk a long time and have tried various methods to prevent spam ever since.
While we have had a relatively good success rate with our methods they were sometimes a little bit too eager to stop those comments from coming in.
So we’ve decided to approach it a bit more gracefully. The spam checking routine will still do its bit, but instead of just blocking the comment it will now give you a second chance by asking you to complete a CAPTCHA. This way we can hopefully eliminate the chance of losing real comments while still stopping the spam.
We will monitor the effectiveness of this method as well as some new spam checking mechanisms we have put in place and give you a report back in the next few weeks.
PS: If you want to see it in action type the word "free" more than 3 times in your comment message e.g. free free free free.
