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Auto-Closing Old Posts

Jan 13, 2004 3:21 PM
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update I'm using Dave Sifry's tiny Perl script instead.

In an effort to head off blogspam, I'm now using David Raynes' comment-closing cgi script. From now on, any entries older than seven days will have commenting automatically closed.

I do appreciate the random commenter who finds an archived page and has something interesting to say, but this is outweighed by the annoyance of spammers who abuse that.

I've also installed MT-Blacklist, FWIW.


Comments: Auto-Closing Old Posts

Is this really an issue?

I have yet to receive a "blog spam".

And does closing the old comment threads help?

(So many questions...)

Posted by: David Kearns on January 13, 2004 5:51 PM | permalink

The short version of this is that almost all MT blogs share common templates, field names, labels, script names, etc. This makes it very easy to automate spammer bots that post stuff.

The longer, more eloquent version:
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/000236.html
"Software Monoculture" as he calls it.

It's been a minor annoyance so far -- definitely under control -- but I've started hearing a few horror stories of people who have gotten hammered by it.

Posted by: Joe Grossberg on January 13, 2004 7:40 PM | permalink

No more comments! Either someone has violated Godwin's Law, I'm tired of the discussion or, most likely, the ten-week window has closed. You can, however, contact me through email.