Comment spam

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be experimenting with some new anti-spam tactics. My existing solution, which had been working pretty well, now has some serious shortcomings following the most recent update to the content management system, so I’m going to need to try something different. (I get hundreds of obvious spam comments every day and having my email inbox flooded with spam comment notifications every few minutes is not fun!)

Since I’m going to have to resort to a certain amount of trial and error, there may be some oddities with commenting or the forms. If you have problems or encounter something strange when leaving a comment or submitting a form, please let me know. I’m very concerned that spam prevention not present an irritation or accessibility problem for my sapient readers.

Going along with this, I decided it would be prudent to clarify some of the language in the comments and contact forms sections of the Privacy Policy. The gist is unchanged (that the website may use information associated with your comment or form submission — some of which is or could potentially be personally identifiable — to confirm that you’re a human user and not some kind of bot or automated script), but I wanted to make clear that the website may conduct those tests in a variety of different ways. (At present, I’m not sure what the final method(s) may end up being.) ETA: For your convenience, the Privacy Policy now has a recent revision log, too.

3 Comments

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  1. I left some comments on Chrysler’s Concept 25x (chopped Duster) on the Gremlin page. While typing, the comment window showed a bunch of horizontal blue lines. I clicked the post comment button and my post disappeared. Is it awaiting moderation, or vaporized by a bug?

    1. It went into the moderation queue and I approved it just now — I’m not sure what the deal was with the blue lines, but I’ll look into it. Sorry for the inconvenience!

  2. For what it’s worth, I chuckled madly at “sapient readers”.

    I’m actually somewhat relieved that there’s no new article; it’s already past my bed time.

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