Sunday, May 15, 2011

On Site Comment

3rd party comment system

  • fb comments
  • disqus
  • intense debate
  • js-kit
  • sezwho

self-hosted comments

  • threaded comments
  • subscribe to replies
  • reply by email

Anti-spam options (for app-handled comments)

  • akismet (free for personal use, not for commercial use)
  • reCaptcha (free, bought by google)
  • app's "own" captcha
  • moderate all comments
  • moderate comments if they contain N or more links (default: N=1)
  • only allow comments from authenticated users
  • autoapprove comments from a commenter after first approval
  • moderate all comments for content items older than X days
  • close commenting for content items older than X days
  • ip-based throttling (system will only accept N comments per M units of time from a given IP)
  • system-wide throttling (system will only accept N SYSTEM-WIDE TOTAL comments per M units of time)

Security by obscurity?

  • require random special inputs
  • disallow extraneous inputs
  • require that a form take at least N units of time to complete (spammers may submit immediately, people take at least a couple seconds to type something)

Suggestions from "User-generated spam - Webmaster Tools Help"

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer#81749

  • rel#"nofollow"

Use a blacklist to prevent repetitive spamming attempts.

  • Google often sees large numbers of fake profiles on one innocent site all linking to the same domain. Once you find a single spammy profile, make it simple to remove any others.

Add a "report spam" feature to user profiles and friend invitations.

  • Your users care about your community and are annoyed by spam too. Let them help you solve the problem.

Monitor your site for spammy pages.

  • One of the best tools for this is Google Alerts. Set up a site: query using commercial or adult keywords that you wouldn't expect to see on your site. Google Alerts is also a great tool to help detect hacked pages. The Keywords page in Webmaster Tools lists significant keywords found on your site, so it's a good idea to check this regularly for unexpected and volatile vocabulary.

// (end content from google.com)

Further thoughts and links