What Would Bill Gates Do?

[steepholm]

They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers.
But what’s the real cost?
‘Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper. (The Flight of the Conchords)

I mentioned recently that spam had forced me to put CAPTCHA on anonymous comments. Both dorianegray and owlfish reported that doing this hadn't stemmed the spamflow for them, and I've got to say

Comments

[jemck]

I disabled anonymous comments a while ago, as so many folk told me it was the only way to foil the spammers. A shame.

[steepholm]

Yes, I'm reluctant to do it, but...

[lnhammer]

FWIW, the day after turning on CAPTCHAs, I went from 13 to 2 spam comments overnight. That 13 is down from a high of 24 a couple days before, so it's possible it was simply the trough of a wave. We'll see what happens over the next week.

---L.

[steepholm]

I haven't been keeping statistics, but my impression is that it made no appreciable difference. Of course, that could be an illusion born of my growing irritation.

[lnhammer]

I can be an obsessive counter sometimes.

---L.

[gillpolack]

I have bean an obsessive counter... (I feel like I ought to apologise for that one)

[malkhos]

It didn't help me either. Though what you report here seems incredible.

[steepholm]

I'll be very interested to hear if there is any alternative explanation to manual input.

[strange_complex]

On the other other hand, deleting all those spam comments is wasting your time, which also has an economic value. If you'd like to channel some of your salary towards supporting people in developing countries, there are more constructive (and less annoying!) ways to do it.

[steepholm]

This is very true! In fact I don't really need to delete them. They can sit happily in my gmail folder (always expanding, like the universe) and on the LJ servers (they don't seem to care), and no one's worse off. But I do delete them, of course.

[strange_complex]

Yes, so do I. I don't get very many, because I have banned anonymous commenting (though I did it more to deter trolls than spammers), but it still feels untidy to leave them undeleted on my journal.

[houseboatonstyx]

But what about wasting the time of legitimate readers who would like to be making constructive comments, who are instead having to spend their spoons guessing at ambiguous captchas?

[nightspore]

I have heard that the spammers supply a porn front-end; people get to see porn if they solve the captchas, so all the spammers have to do is have some porn they can make available.

[steepholm]

Okay, that sort of makes sense. Although, porn is hardly difficult to come across on the internet (or so I've heard) should one wish to see it.