I’ve added a new anti-comment-spam tool here at the Blog of Heroes, MT TinyTuring. This plug-in for Movable Type does a text-based question/answer that would be non-trivial for a spam-bot to figure out, but is exceedingly simple for a human. It’s sort of a text-based CAPTCHA, without the graphics/accessibility issue of that technology.
The other thing it means is that it’s not necessary to have a TypeKey identity to post comments here. It’s fine if you do (it makes authenticating you as a white hat for other anti-spam tests easier), but it’s not required.
I actually implemented this in order to help out BD, whose blog I’m proud to host here, but I “tested” it out on this blog first, and decided to leave it in place. Since TypeKey didn’t work well on BD’s blog (because of the different domain and the vagaries of how M$ implemented cross-domain cookie stuff in IE), this will help block a lot of potential spam over there. Here, probably not so much, but it does let people comment without doing
TypeKey registration, which some might prefer.
I like this a lot better than trying to decipher the wavy smooshed-together characters some blogs use to identify humanoids. You know, where “rn” can be indistinguishable from “m” and the like. This is relatively painless (once you figure out that it changes the necessary letter if you preview your comment).
I also like not having to sign in to TypeKey, as it seems to have problems keeping me signed in for the two weeks the little checkbox promises. :p
Cool.
And though the text doesn’t really specify it (unless I went in and manually modified the text), you only have to do the letter if you’re Posting — you don’t need it for Preview.
Woot!
I finally figured that out and stopped typing in the letter before previewing (I typically do a lot of editing before I post).