[wp-hackers] Anti spam idea

[Mark Jaquith]

I wrote some WP code that does this... but only if a comment has been 
moderated.  Thus, if a user accidentally trips into moderation, he will 
have a chance to moderate his own comment by completing the CAPTCHA.  
This way, handicapped users aren't penalized (can still approve the 
comment manually), and legitamate users (including the handicapped) are 
only burdened with a CAPTCHA if they get sent to moderation.  I used the 
PHP class HN_CAPTCHA for the CAPTCHA part.

Go here to try it out (submit a comment with "texas-holdem" in the 
body): http://txfx.net/wp-cvs/2004/11/10/test/

This code was integrated by Dr Dave into his upcoming Spam Karma plugin, 
which is going to be a comprehensive rolling together of more than a 
dozen methods of stopping spam (including another method I came up with 
for recognizing a sudden barrage of comments from the same IP, or with 
the same URI or e-mail address that weighs this barrage against comments 
submitted more than 24 hours ago, so legitimate commenters aren't 
penalized.)  Think of it as the Three Strikes or Spaminator plugin, but 
with many more checks.

Stay tuned... it's still buggy (as of last night, when I tried it), but 
it's going to be massively effective when it is released.

>It seems like is should be possible for WP to impliment the same kind
>of anti automation that sites like Yahoo! use.  We could create a
>image for each letter in the latin (english) alphabet and number 1-10
>that are manipulated to make if very difficult for a spam posting
>program to read.
>
>That way the person making the comment only has to enter the 6
>charater "code" to make the post.  The benefits are no moderation and
>no keywords.
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