BMEWS In Lockdown
Drew, I look at it this way: with those “captcha” thingies you will reduce your spam commenting to almost zilch. Some folks may not like having to enter those codes every time they comment but, if truth be told, if they have something really important or pithy or witty to say, they won’t mind. Those that do mind are most likely the internet version of those who just love to hear themselves talk.
I’ve probably pissed off half your commenter-ship but that’s my nature, fulfilling a lifetime goal of pissing off people one at a time.
Posted by Vilmar
01/06/2010 at 03:25 PM
Something as simple as changing the word “comments” wouldn’t fool the spambots would it? Like “koments”.
Damn! Can you tell where the spammo comes from? It is necessary to LOGIN prior to posting so, kill the login ID that made the post. And I might be totally full of crap, too!
This place is the greatest and it saddens me when crap like that takes the fun out of it.
Hmm , suppose I’ll just have to be disgusted on your behalf if that helps carry any of the load. And yeah I’m a friggin human. Carry a gun, too.The spam - comments full of embedded links to some dipshit test prep web site - are made by a script ( a “bot") logged in as a “member”. This means someone has written a bit of a program that can reference an email address that is valid long enough for the bot to register fully. Once the response email has been sent, that email address goes away. After that, the bot just logs on and grabs text from a post, which it then pastes back as a comment, with the links inserted.
If I manually approve new members, the bots can’t get through. And if it takes me a couple days to get back to you, and we have a bit of a conversation before I admit you, then the chance of a member being a bot becomes very slight. Keeping that email address alive for a week or so is a heck of a risk for the cyber-annoying folks. And thus nobody has to deal with those annoying captcha thingies, which I hate. Until it gets totally out of control, I’m willing to do that so that you guys don’t have to go through the BS.
No, changing the name to “koments” won’t work, unless I move “koments” to some other place on that displayed line. These things (bots) are what are called “capture playback tools”. We used to use these when I was doing software testing. Silk is the name of one of the tools, WinRunner is another. These are valid tools, m’kay, but the concept itself is fairly simple: track the mouse position (it’s an interrupt that sits in a couple registers in the CPU; it’s just some numbers) and the mouse click (another interrupt) and the key strokes (more interrupts). These positions, clicks, text entered, and Enter key strokes are all recorded in a file called a script. Then when you run the tool on top of the browser, it “plays” the script and does it all automatically. So it “knows” where the mouse is located when you click on “Comments”, even if it were spelled differently. Same goes for when it goes through the steps to Copy a bit of text (mouse down, drag from HERE to THERE, mouse up, ctrl-c) it Pastes it back as a comment with the links inserted. This is not really all that complicated a thing to do for a programmer. I’ve written parts of them myself as valid tools in the software development world.
Software testing pretty much has to be automated to be effective. Even a simple program that lets the user make just a few choices soon runs into millions of possible paths in the event space. You can’t test them all even with automated tools, so you a) focus on the core set of paths, b) test the heck out of the new feature, and c) do a bit of backup testing to make sure the new feature hasn’t hurt any of the old bits. Such was my life, once upon an AT&T.
Hey Drew, kick this idea around a bit, if you can use it, please, enjoy with my compliments.
Your “Turing” factor (ie, human or machine factor) is kept in a database integer variable called “Turing”, and it starts off at 0 when a new account is created.
If your Turing factor is less than 2, and you make a post, your Turing factor is reduced by 1, and the post is auto-hidden from other users EXCEPT the admins.
Hidden posts are seen by admins who make a judgement call of Real human (versus script, or trolling idiot), and if they unhide the post, the user’s turing factor gets a boost of 2 points.
If your turing factor drops to -2, you can no longer post.
If your Turing factor reaches 2, you can post without it being hidden or approved, and your Turing factor remains at 2 evermore.
So it works like this for a spambot:
- New user signs up (Turing is set to 0)
- They post, post is hidden from others since (since Turing < 2): Turing is reduced by one and is now equal to -1.
- Administrator sees it, realizes it’s junk, and either does nothing, or deletes it so the other admins don’t have to look at it. They do NOT un-hide the post. The user account’s Turing factor stays the same at -1.
- They try posting again. Turing is reduced by one and is now equal to -2.
- Administrator sees the post, either deletes it or does nothing.
- They try posting again: Since Turing <= -2, error: “Sorry, your posting access is denied.”Here’s how it works for a real person:
- New user signs up (Turing is set to 0)
- They post, post is hidden from others since (since Turing < 2): Turing is reduced by one and is now equal to -1.
- Administrator sees it, approves it for general consumption. Add 2 to the user’s Turing factor, so now it’s set to 1.
- They try posting again. Turing is reduced by one and is now equal to 0.
- Administrator sees the post, approves it. Add 2 to the user’s Turing factor, so now it’s set to 2.
- They try posting again: Since Turing >= 2, the post is automatically allowed through, and the Turing factor remains unmodified.The regular posters would be oblivious to spam, and the admins would only see a maximum of two spams from any new accounts, and whether they chose to delete them (or do nothing), the problem would automatically “handle itself”.
Whatcha think guys, simple? Easy? Doable?
Drew - I do not know enough about computers to offer any helpful suggestions. Hope the problem is cleared soon, so you can turn your attention to more important things, like writing your great posts.
Oh, the picture of the new/old member looks familiar, by the way, but I have a mind like a steel sieve, and can’t put a name with the face.
*sees the update*
Sid, That’d be OLDCATMAN, one of the original members of this site.
OK I’ve unglazed my eyes from the computer speak and am glad that I did recognize OCM. I guess I’m not as old and stressed out as I thought I was!
welcome back OCM! been following you at Vilmar’s site.
glad you left the looney left!
b4 The Skipper died i thought your cats affected your brain! ;-Þ ®I knew that face was OCM! I remember him from the days of the Skipper (may he RIP).
Welcome back, OCM!
Drew, that’s a pretty good test to weed out the spammers . . . if they know who it is, they’re obviously human!
Posted by BlueStateSaint
01/07/2010 at 07:59 PM
Well its nice to see its oldcatman do instead of oldcatman dead, welcome back!
OCM! OCM! missed you man.
01/06/2010 at 10:52 PM
