…is it a deeper issue - far beyond just spam? is it about miscomprehension of what constitutes spam and what is simply the intellectual dross that surrounds all online dialogue? there’s an interesting discussion going on over at the blog of dries buytaert, most famous for being the big brain behind drupal…

basically, dries has conjured up another clever approach to fighting ‘the shit’ on web sites, including his own drupal…and it’s great - certainly worth a look…but the discussion at his blog feels like a deafening echo chamber…it’s high fives all around, buddy!…but since you know i’m a bit of a shit, i had something entirely different to say (i’m a thinker that way):

“…[from my comment over there, but edited] i’m not so sure that i agree with any of this, though it all sounds wonderful…in the real world, this analog physical thing that we deal with each day, when one opens up a storefront he or she allows for any person to enter - and while we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody, it is often not the ‘terrifying looking’ stranger who causes problems, it’s the seemingly innocuous dude who accosts patrons or does something far worse…

…and so how is the internet any different? sadly, people have come to believe that if they produce a content site (blog, drupal install or other), they reserve the right to implement all sorts of draconian measures to keep out unwanted comments and contributions, rooted in their own baseless assumptions about what ‘probably’ constitutes bad behavior…

but that means different things to different people. if i’m on your site hawking vitamins and mlm schemes, you’ll catch my links and bar entry - just as you would stop me at the door of your store if i were carrying a ballpark vendor’s tray around my neck trying to sell peanuts to your patrons…

…but what if i turn into that other kind of visitor? fuck this and fuck that, hate slurs and so on, then where do you stand? hard selling evangelist popping crosses in my forum signature? will you one day move beyond the molloms of the world to implement or simply define “acceptable standards” for content contributions as yahoo and others have tried to do for years?

you’re fighting an uphill battle dudes. perhaps a mass ip registry with ip range blocking is an effective long term option, with a centralized store of all such data - similar to how society aggregates information about known offenders and makes such information available to a local community as well as enforcement agencies…but another captcha riddle-me-this approach, cryptic words with lines through them? it will be reverse engineered and duped in no time - and because many of you are doing it in the open source community, it will be that much easier to find a back door…

…either allow comments and participation from only people you know (moderate all) or shut them off.

stop trying to automate all of the responsibilities of being a human being while serving up a digital deluge of content or media. if you’re after the ‘everybody contributes’ model of every site out there and embrace this internet ideal, then think about more traditional approaches - eg wordpress’ option to only allow a commenter to post if he/she has had a previously approved comment. that allows you to keep it all turned off, shut down - and still for anybody to participate…but that will mean work for you, sorting through the shit to find what is simply the mental detritus of your community participants…

there’s no easy answer. spam fighting tools are wonderful…but there’s a reason why there are sooooo many, and there’s a reason why there’s another new one every month or two, with bold new claims…only to discover within months that it has been fooled and figured out…perhaps now you know why comments on passingnotes are almost completely locked down.

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