Sorry, guys, but the spambots seem to have found their way to the Park. I am uncertain what to do about it, but my personal paranoia and general curmudgeonliness tell me it is time to fold camp. I would be interested in hearing what process you have to go through to comment here, and any suggestions.would be welcome. But nothing pisses me off more than uninvited ghosts and if I can't get this figured out by Monday we will have to reconvene elsewhere. Nothing lasts forever.
tj
No, no, no. Don't abandon camp.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could migrate to WordPress. There are filters you can apply that get rid of most of the spam... but I'm afraid I'm not digitally techie enough to talk you through it.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/spam-free-wordpress/
+2 on the Wordpress. While I recently reopened a sister-page here on Blogger and lost my wordpress that was several years old,it had nothing to do with outside messing with's...an ex figured out my password and deleted it :P
DeleteWP is a decent place,easy to configure and play with,and has more options than here too.
SS (or The DC,whatever you like better :p )
This would suck. I am also not techie enough to offer any help
ReplyDeleteOh, and to comment here I sign in to my google blogger account. It asks me for the anti-spam words to type in.
ReplyDeleteI left Blogger a couple of years ago for Wordpress and haven't looked back. It's a fairly painless process transferring your posts over, and the comments usually come over as well.
ReplyDeleteWordpress is great at catching spam and quarantining other comments it's not sure about (which are usually spam).
About all you can do is make it so we'd have to have either a google account or be a "registered user" (includes openID) and we'd then have to login to comment...(you do that under "Design", "Settings", "Posts and comments", and then you pick which setting you want to engage)...it might suck, but it might not...you can give one of the setting a try and go from there...hate to see you abandon ship over some spambots! (OR, you could turn on moderation...not totally sure what that does...maybe it withholds comments until you've read them and let it post..something like that). None of these are 'good' options of course...much like our loss of liberties and freedoms because of the damned bad guys. It's just a sign of the times sadly.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you could move to wordpress (they have a yearly fee I gather). Tough call...free is good.
HOW on earth do the spambots get thru the verification page?
I don't pay anything to wordpress directly, I thought it was free - but my site, even though it is wordpress, is actually hosted elsewhere and I do pay a small yearly fee for that.
DeleteIf you have to move up the road, TJ, please let us know where as I'd follow you anywhere!
ReplyDeleteI hate that you're having this trouble, bud. Let me know if I can help.
Brian in VA
Thanks gang. For the first year or so of TPC I had the verification turned on without knowing it. After a couple friends e-mailed me to say they were having trouble leaving comments I looked into it and turned it off. No problem until a couple month's ago when spam started to appear. I just shrugged and deleted it.
ReplyDeleteBut yesterday I noticed that Roadie Ryan (maybe my original reader and my patron of sorts...I'm typing this on a computer he kindly donated when my other one slipped into senility...thanks, by the way, Velo Bro...)
Where was I? Oh! Roadie Ryan's GuestPost surpassed my "Friendly Ghost" post in popularity and while Ryan is an excellent writer and maintains a fine Blog about our common passion (Old Steel and the Riding Thereof) I somehow smelled a rat and went to that post to find it littered with spam comments.
That dastardly moment coincided with my discovery that I was out of rum and I decided then and there to give up writing and blogging forever and just revert to a life of dissolute drinking and bicycle riding and to hell with the arts.
That lasted about twelve hours until this morning when I rode over to the Blonde's (her internet still works) and came on here and found all your support and consideration.
I re-installed Verification, as you guys are discovering and now I'll just wait and see what happens. But I HATE verification...sometimes when I go to your various sites that stupid Captcha looks like it is written in Aramaic and I have no idea what the words and numbers are and there have been 300 to 500 word comments that I just gave up and blew off after being told by a robot that I am apparently a robot also.
I am a comment junkie and already Sir William Hopp of the Hoosier Hopps has e-mailed me to let me know Google is now guarding my castle like a moat filled with discarded crossword puzzles and those little wooden Scrabble letters.
People think it is easy being a Bloggist. It ain't. I have long toyed with the idea (and even experimented) with closing out the Trailer Park Cyclist and just going to all my friend's Blogs and posting there in comments. Then I would put up here a list of websites where I have commented that day. For example, check out my comments at http://onetreewoodworks.wordpress.com/
Whatever the case, I'm going to let this post ride for a few days to see if Verification stops the Bots. I get the impression that it will and when the One True God (a lobster) found himself suffering from the same trouble he turned on Verification and that was that.
My Mom: If Bike Snob ran and jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?
Me: Yes.
yr bddy, the trailer park lemming
I turned off the verification by ticked the box to demand authentication (you have to log in to google or such, what Matt said) BUT I also disallowed anonymous comments. Since I turfed mr. anonymous I have not had a single spam, and I too was at the point where I was contemplating migration. I hope this helps. Please send a postcard if you move on...
ReplyDeleteby verification I mean the eye watering spam filter thingo. I confuse myself sometimes, the rest of you are probably baffled as well.
ReplyDeleteI was baffled before ya got here, Dee. The anonymous comments...hmmm...maybe I should try that...
DeleteIf you do leave this trailer park, please let us know where you will turn up next!
ReplyDeleteI am signed in to blogger and had to supply the 2 words to publish my comment.
Fair winds.
Dan
"It ain't easy being green" Or a bloggist! I know, I try and that's why I have to put so many pictures in my posts. I'm just not the wordsmith that you are!
ReplyDeleteStrictly selfish here but I hope you keep the park open, I sure have come to enjoy your thoughts and the opportunity to comment.
Keeps me fresh and thinking.
Death to all bots!
Jim
What Matt said
ReplyDelete