I installed new Anti-Spam protocols here. If you have any trouble connecting to this Urban Semiotic blog or if you are unable to post a comment please find a way to let me know so I can investigate the problem. If you are a first-time commenter your first comment is moderated — so if you don’t see your first post published you’re in moderation and not caught in a Spam trap.
If you are unable to get access here you should be provided with an error page that creates a key string. Send me that key so I can follow up.
Thanks!

30 Comments

  5. So far so good!
    Blog speed and posting and commenting appears normal with ZERO Spam so far! On an ordinary day we’d have at least 60 Spam comments by now.

  6. I skim over the meme postings. I don’t even know what meme means and don’t want to know. – I will blog surf those days because I like to rack up the credits and I figure mine is the only blog that is different those days.

  10. Exquisite? – Never considered myself that…
    I hope this spam catcher works for you in all browsers. Firefox seems to work well.

  11. Hey prying1 —
    Oh, you are exquisite and your blog is a great read, too!
    😀
    The Spam catcher is working really great. Zero spam so far. After two new posts I usually expect to get Pingback spam in the hundreds. Nothing so far. Nothing. I’m still tingling.
    :mrgreen:

  15. Hi David,
    I have to test to see if I’ll be banned.
    I should run a test to see how many hotlinks gets one thrown into the spam can. I seem to get banned if I put more than a couple in a comment.
    (My comment to my Ghost of Gary post about Miller Beach had a lot of links and ended up going into the spam trap. I was able to pull it out via the control panel).

  16. Hey Chris!
    You’re not banned so far!
    😀
    Hotlinks in posts are interesting. I set a default level of 4 links in my WordPress Admin panel so if there are 4 or more links in a comment it gets thrown into moderation.
    I don’t know if Akismet has its own trigger number for hotlinks or not.

  18. Hey Chris —
    Yes, those six links were put into moderation. I could raise the link trigger if you would prefer to try that as a more reasonable solution. I wish I had a way to create a “Chris exemption” for you that would allow unlimited comment links for you!
    😀

  19. David I think my Askimet is set to two hotlinks but that part is configurable.
    You’ll maybe have to email me what spam protector you are using.

  20. Hiya Mik!
    How are you able to set Akismet-specific options? Is there a newer version? Where in the WordPress Admin panel are you seeing those settings?
    If you want the Spam blocker, send me an email and I’ll send you the info.

  21. Hi David,
    Four links is probably a good trigger point. I’ll keep that in mind when I’m posting a comment.

  22. Okay, Chris!
    I’m all for good hotlinks so if you need more — let me know — or just post as many as you like and if it’s 4 or more send me a note so I can clear you. Or, better yet, post two or three comments in a row and break up the URL count that way!

  23. I think I can clear myself also from my control panel, if I don’t see my post. I haven’t tried it when I wasn’t the author of the post, but I think the option to look at all the Akismet spam is available to me.

  24. Hi Chris!
    Okay, cool. I’m glad to know there’s a way to self-correct if necessary.
    Akismet is interesting. I would clear that Spam cache at least every five minutes all day long to delete everything caught in there. I just couldn’t bear the idea of all that Spam sitting there staring at me.
    With the new Spam prevention protocols in place – there’s no Spam! – but I keep checking anyway out of habit.

  25. I finally installed the Akismet anti-SPAM Wordpres plugin. I was being buried by SPAM, now I am free and clear. The thing that annoyed me about Akismet was that I had to setup a WordPress.com blog to get the API key, why isn’t one just generated from within the WordPress software? The API key was greatly delayed my adoption, but SPAM brought me to my knees.

  26. David – re: “I just couldn’t bear the idea of all that Spam sitting there staring at me.”
    I should think you would want to save it for a whle just to laugh at it. Spam hates being scorned and ridiculed. No better way to get back at it.
    ~~~~~
    Honestly I wonder if there is a program out there that would automatically overload spam into the spammer’s mailbox?
    Better yet, shoot 20,000 volts into his system, fry his motherboard, explode his monitor and crash his hard drives!

  27. Jonathan!
    The idea behind the new counter-measures I installed is to not allow any Spam to even get caught by Akismet! It’s pretty nifty in theory.
    I think the API key acquisition through WordPress.com is a way to get WordPress.com lots of sign ups even if the site isn’t used as a main blogging portal. There’s power and money in big numbers!
    😀
    This morning, however, there were 19 Spam messages caught by Akismet. My new Anti-Spam measure failed overnight for some reason. My database entry for the new Anti-Spam measure rose to 3.1MB with 6,324 records from 0 and 0 in less than 24 hours.

  30. Hi Michael!
    Okay, then!
    The program is Michael Hampton’s OUTSTANDINB Bad Behavior 2 Alpha 2 (yes, it’s in Alpha testing and not even in Beta yet but it is very stable) and you can find it and immediately install it here:
    http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/
    Make a donation to Michael if you love Bad Behavior 2 as much as I do.
    I put my money where my blog is and my money is on Michael Hampton and I hope he gets millions of dollars from the successful implementation of Bad Behavior across the world!

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