[wp-hackers] Addition to check_comment(): return false if the post is older than 21 days

[Owen Winkler]

David House wrote:
> Adding this to check_comment() (possibly under a statement like
> if(get_settings('use_auto_comment_shutoff'))) would cut out a lot of spam. For
> maximum effects I suggest we check it before outputting the comment form.

Why 21 days?  And why not moderate instead of killing the comment form?

No, I don't like this.  I like having less comment spam, but I want the 
flexibility to plug in what filtering best works for me.

I'm not trying to sound nasty with the above, but I'm curious why there 
have been so many suggestions on how to patch the core, when we're 
presumably a hacker/plugin group.  Why aren't people more interested in 
a pluggable solution that lets everyone have a shot at preventing spam 
in their own way?

There are so many benefits, including:  Being able to live-test possible 
solutions before reporting on their actual efficacy, having more than 
one solution in use at a time on the same blog, rotating solutions to 
keep the spammers guessing at what method might be employed, and 
releasing maintainable plugins that work with the core without modifying 
core code.

The only stumbling block I see is that the plugin architecture only 
passes a single value to the plugin function.  As a result, this value 
would need to be a structure of some kind to hold all of the comment 
info, which is possible, but isn't something any other hook does.   We 
couldn't simply pass the comment ID as previously suggested, since at 
the point that a comment is being processed for spamminess, the comment 
has (thankfully) not yet been stored in the database.

Every suggestion that has passed the list so far could be implemented 
using this plugin.  If the hook was installed, you could be writing your 
custom comment spam filters immediately, without worrying about 
modifying core code or lobbying for a dev to include your idea.

Owen