12 years, 1 month ago-
Posts
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This last week I’ve noticed a lot of Tea Trade member comments on my posts going to the spam folder. Did security get kicked up a little here at TT? I’m wondering if others are seeing this happen too. Of if you aren’t maybe check your spam comments. Our nice/real comments might be hiding there! 🙂
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Security didn’t get kicked up per se, but we did fire the previous police chief and hire a new one.
Our previous anti-spam system started going through some sort of anomoly where it was completely locking out registered members. That system was designed to prevent spam registrations, but it also protected the blogs. It did so by checking an external database against known spammers. Unfortunately, it started flagging some of our members. To prevent our members from getting flagged in the external database, I deactivated the system immediately because that database is used to protect thousands of websites. If someone gets flagged as a spammer in that database, it can be hard to undo the damage and that system wasn’t deeply integrated into Tea Trade, but was installed ages ago as way to combat a huge number of spam registrations we were getting.
Since I removed that software, I had to put other software in place to protect blogs’ comment areas since they are open for comment to the public. I went back to using the default WordPress anti-spam system (the one that comes built-in to WordPress). I also uses an external database, but a different one that uses different mechanics about how it flags people and it is better integrated with our system.
The result is that known users might get marked as spammers, but the system is intelligent and remembers when you unspam somebody. In time, it is supposed to work itself through as the system is educated by the blog owners.
The best way of managing spam is to leave real spam in the system (it’ll automatically delete after 30 days) and unspam real comments when you get them. If you get a spam comment, just mark it as spam and forget about it – don’t delete it, let the system learn.
You can always tweak your moderation settings in the dashboard under Settings -> Discussion. Changes there have an impact on how your blog reacts to comments. There are several options, just read through them and set them to the behavior you think is best for your way of working.
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I have been noticing that across the board. A comment of @Xavier‘s AND @thepurrfectcup both landed in my spam folders. That and I think some of my comments on other blogs have been lost in the aether.
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One by one they are returned to the visible world.
Might be useful to give out a more visible warning though. Or a private message/email to all bloggers to make sure they all know what to do. In @lazyliteratus case I had to remove it from spam and then approve it. Time will tell whether this will improve over time.
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@Bram – I figured that’s what’s been happening. Yay, I’m spam!
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@bram I’ve had to do the same for a number of TT members posts.
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@thepurrfectcup what I’d like to know is if you’ve had to unspam the same member more than once. For example, Xavier posts a comment a Saturday morning and it goes to spam, you unspam him Saturday night. Then he posts again on Sunday morning, does the Sunday morning post go to spam too?
I need to figure out if the system is learning. It my not be sophisticated enough to tell the different between the websites though. It may learn for your site, but may not apply your unspam to Xavier the next day on @bram‘s site. I’ve trying to see if the anti-spam is adapting properly. If not, I may end up going back to our old system and see if I can tweak it into performing better.
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* @peter Why not create/choose one or more test blog posts where we can experiment with this.
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* @peter, yes I just noticed I had to again go and make @lazyliteratus not spam, and then approve his comment again.
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Okay, I’ve had enough of this. That spam protection is too harsh. I’ve deactivated and turned on our original one (the original one was blocking proper users from the site though) and adjusted the configuration. I need to somehow get this all under control.
As of this post, everything is different in terms of spam protection. If you have issues, continue to post in this thread and I’ll monitor it. If, for some reason, anyone gets blocked out when they attempt to sign in, send me a message. Please include your IP address in the message so I can clear it up faster. You can obtain your IP address simply by doing a Google search on the phrase “what is my ip”.
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*I missed all this. But I will now be squinting suspiciously at @xavier and @lazyliteratus
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@thedevotea As if you never did.
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