Roundtables, easy access
Hey all,
I added a link under “Features” (look left) to the Roundtables, so if you’re new here or just want to go back and find out what we said about, say, Miguel Olivo, you can access all the roundtables in one place.
Trackbacks shut down
There’s a cool feature of our comment system where links from other blogs showed up as comments. I nuked it tonight.
After our last batch of counter-measures, the spammers began attacking through that method. Essentially, they’d use one of the update services blogs depend on for this stuff to send out fake notifications that an article had been linked, and lo, their spam would appear with a short bit of text from the supposed post (randomly generated) and a link to the post which led to their site. Which would contain not an interesting article for readers but advertising for — quick, guess — that’s right, online poker, the bane of all blogs featuring comments and, if you’ve been following USSM since we cranked up commenting, particularly ours.
So trackbacks become another cool thing destroyed by assbags.
More comment fixes
Three things —
Since the last comment-checker thing seems to have worked remarkably well so far, I’m going to slowly start rolling back some of the moderation queues. AOL users in particular should appreciate this.
I may go ahead and implement a follow-up fix (also by Dave Pease), that sets a cookie in your browser so you only have to go through the anti-spammer check once. So keep an eye out.
Also in the near future, I’ll “get on the no-follow” bandwagon as one reader suggested. That’ll change the way links in comments work in a way that should be transparent to visitors but help things a little on our side.
New comment spam deterrent implemented
You may not have seen it, but we’ve been getting slammed by a new wave of difficult-to-defeat comment spammers. They’re leaving innocous comments and then linking in the text and using the URL field to point somewhere that offers some… product that has to be spammed, I guess. They’re coming from many different IPs, probably on end user hacked PCs, so it’s been hard to stop with filtering or my secret anti-spamminator technology, which relies on knowing that.
So anyway, I’ve implemented a tweak courtesy of one Dave Pease that should entirely knock out automated comment spammers and huuuuuuuuuuugely reduce the amount of time we spend keeping the comments clean.
Bad part is, it requires an extra keystroke/mouse move for every comment submission. Compared to the burden of registration, it’s no big deal, but I wanted to point it out.
Also, I know we’ve been having sporadic site outages — can’t connect, database didn’t serve a page up. Apologies, as always. I’m still working on finding better hosting.
Anyway, back to the grind.
[update: I want to also say that if this proves effective, I plan to scale back some of the back-end restrictions that result in moderation for many AOL users]
Comment comments
Top 5 non-link-spammers, discovered while hunting down link spammers early this morning.
(tie) Mr. Corcoran & myself, both with 546 comments
eponymous coward, 410
Dave, 409
Evan, 334
HM: Jim Thomsen, 324
Just thought that was funny
Comments guidleline revisions
So there was a day a week or so ago when a comment spammer went after us, 125 comments in a day. Our filters got them all. {Update: as I wrote this, one of the spammers figured out how to get through the filters. @#$@#$@#$} That makes me super-happy. And yet–
I am increasingly annoyed (and I think Dave agrees) with some of the bizarre comment drifting. If your comment, or a paragraph in your comment, starts “Off-topic:” or “This is off topic” or “I know this is off-topic” please, please, please don’t post it. If you want us to talk about something or start a thread, email us. We’ll do it.
I’m annoyed (and I think no one else is) with some of the self-site promotion. We go to great efforts to keep advertisements off this site, and while “ESPN has commentary on this at this link” is one thing, I’m uncomfortable with people pushing their own stuff. If it’s good enough, people will link to it on their own. And even though there’s a whole issue of intent, and who they are, and I feel lame saying this — this is sort of bad manners. Instead of bringing something to the party, it’s like hanging around and saying “hey, this sucks, come on over to my place.” We link to M’s sites. If people leave us to find other sites they like better, we’re cool with that. Many people from awesome blogs post great comments here, and their names are URL-ified if you’re interested in checking out more of what they have to say. Beyond that, it’s a long and slipperly slope of interpretation and argumentation, and I’m inclined to draw the line pretty strictly to avoid having larger problems later.
On both counts, we may crank the Despot-o-meter up a little. We’ll see. This kind of makes me want to just go ahead and implement registration, but… I don’t want to. Anyway, I’m revising the guidelines so this is stated policy now.
Off-season tinkering
Updated a couple of links (the NGFT link, as I guess they never got a redirect working, and the grandfathered Sports & Bremertonians, the only link to a site not exclusively about the M’s or Mariner-related stuff), added a new blog (“Mariner Madness“).
Comments stuff and registration
The thing I heard at the Feed about the site was that people were tired of the comments. Particularly the me-too comments, but they had many of the same frustrations as Dave and I have expressed at different times here. While I think the comments have for the most part fostered a good discussion with many viewpoints, it’s not without a cost.
There are over 3,000 specific anti-spam bans in place. Some use my Comment Spam Retaliator, many throw comments into a queue to be reviewed.
There are about 30 moderation bans in place in response to trolls (like the people who thought it was funny to make anti-Japanese comments about Ichiro!). Some may encompass problem ranges (like when we’re getting hammered from AOL, I may widen one). So if you’re from AOL, for instance, and you’re allowed to make a comment but it doesn’t show up, just hang out and it’ll be cleared. Generally, these are temporary and get lifted as possible.
This also means I get people yelling at me because they’re mad they’re being censored but what’s actually happened is no one’s gone through the queue to wave their comments on through (this is you, Dan).
There are two bans for particular people for doing something that forced the issue. When they get around the bans, the bans get adjusted. I can’t keep them from reading, but they don’t get to play in the sandbox. They know what they did, and it’s between them and us.
When I started this, I’d have thought that number would be much higher than two.
To the main point, and whether we’re going to registration or not — we’re considering things. I threw some ideas around at the Feed in talking to people individually, but I’m reluctant to implement those that stop people from being able to easily come by and write something up.
It is quite likely comments will require registration to post soon, unless we come up with a better solution. Suggestions welcome.
In search of new hosting
As you may have noticed today, it hasn’t taken long for us to grow out of this hosting solution. I’m tired of the constant outages, so — we’re looking for new digs. If you think you can help us find a new home and want the specs for what we’re looking for, read on. Read more
Site protection upgrade
Because the other site info update comments are coming thick and heavy, I figured you folks were insatiable for site information!
I’m doing some work this weekend on implementing a, uh… widget of some kind (cough) that should significantly reduce the amount of time I spend fighting comment spammers. It is, however… um, how about this — as always, if you see something screwy with the site, email us. Particularly this weekend.
If you’re at all interested in what the site would look like had I not started to arm the server, check out the second page and after of comments here on some political blog — ignore the actual comments, please, and just check out how these spammers do drive-by after drive-by. I found that page looking up information on one of the more heinous and persistent attackers here. If you ever wonder why I’m in a bad mood about comments sometimes, on a bad day we’ll have 5-6 distinct comment spam attacks go at us.
Hence my new… widget. Hee hee hee. The less said about it, the better.
Update: seriously, hee hee hee.