Unbelievably, I still get spam comments posted to my journal every once in a while. Some time ago I installed an extension to Movable Type that blacklisted certain sites and keywords. I got a spam comment after that. After having gone through the pain of trying to blacklist sites, senders, and Subject: lines in regular email, I now know that that’s a losing battle.

What I’ve done now is remove the ability to post a comment immediately. In order to post, you’ve got to click on the “Post / Preview” button, and then click on Post. This two step process makes it more unlikely that any kind of automated script (yes, there are scripts out there that now hunt down blog sites and spam them) to produce this kind of garbage on my site.

It may be a bit of an inconvience for “good” posters, but I have almost zero traffic here anyway – plus, it is somewhat beneficial to see what you’re about to post anyway since, often, you catch typos and other mistakes if you see a preview.