Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["H. Wade Minter" <minter AT lunenburg.org>]

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On Thu, 3 Feb 2005, Ian Meyer wrote:

> On the topic of comment spam, check this out:
> http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
>
> Its pretty slick, and has been picked up all over the place, by other
> search engines and tons of blogging tools and sites

rel=nofollow isn't going to do much to stop comment spam in the short 
term, if at all.  It's a way to try to remove the incentive from comment 
spammers to spam, but will need to be widely adopted to have much of an 
effect.

For the moment, most good blogging software has some sort of antispam 
plugin.  MovableType has the outstanding MT-Blacklist 
(http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/).  A friend of mine has 
developed a SpamAssassin plugin for Wordpress 
(http://www.ioerror.us/wp-spamassassin/).  Other packages probably have 
something similar.

A defensive approach like above is currently the best way to stop comment 
spam.  Hopefully things like rel=nofollow will succeed over a longer term.

- --Wade
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