I’ve added a captcha-esque math test to the comment system in an effort to cut down on spam.
The spam filter is working great in preventing comments from actually getting posted, but it’s leaving me with hundreds of comments to scan through every day to make sure legitimate comments aren’t getting lost. That’s too heavy a load and it’s resulted in several comments getting lost forever.
If you have any problems, please drop me a note so that I can fix it.
If you’re running wordpress, you should install the Askimet plugin. It kills spam dead without using annoying captchas.
Akismet is the spam filter I’m using. The problem is that it false-positives several comments every week and digging those out of a spam filter that gets hit with 300-400 pieces of spam every day is too difficult.
I’m hoping the math captcha will reduce the amount of spam that goes to the filter, which will make it easier to scan the filter and find the legitimate messages.