The Daily Ping

The 10,000th Ping will be published on May 24, 2027. Paul will be just about 50 years old.

January 2nd, 2005

The Trouble with Comment Spam

Yesterday, the Ping entered manhood – practically on the eve of its fifth birthday. We got visited by a comment spammer.

The good news is that the damage wasn’t horrible. Empty comments everywhere. The bad news is that Ryan and I need to take some action on this, but we wanted to get the opinions and thoughts of regular Pingers. We’re going to have to do something in order to thwart these schmucks who want to tell us all about free online poker.

We’re kicking around a few concepts but want to hear yours. Possibilities include, but aren’t limited to, comment throttling (anyone can only comment every x minutes,) email confirmation of your posts (it doesn’t go on the site until you confirm it via email,) and full-on registration (you need to be a Ping member to post.) Obviously any option involving registration could change the whole tenor of the site… that’s why we want to handle this with kid gloves.

What do you think?

Posted in Technology

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