[spam-stopper] 404 to spam!

[Benj. Mako Hill]

<quote who="Rubén Marrero" date="Fri, Apr 20, 2007 at 07:34:17PM -0500">
> I could hack my Akismet install to update the DB as soon as it has  
> received a response from the central server, but I thought that maybe  
> this feature could be discussed and maybe integrated into the main  
> devel line of this plugin. What do you think?

I think this would be a bad idea. This type of IP blocking is both
over-broad and under-broad and the reason I Akismet is interesting to me
is because it is content based as opposed to originator based.

Very frequently, machines that spam are badware infected computers are
being used by spammers as proxies. Often, those computers will be fixed
later.  Then there are dynamic IP ranges or shared IP blocks with NAT.

It's bad enough when your IP is flagged and you have to moderate a
comment before it's posted. In your system, people are never given that
option chance.  There's no moderation queue or even an option for one.

If it works for you, that's great. But the price of the false positives
from an IP-based addition to Akimset like the one that you suggest is
far too high for me to be comfortable with.

I also have run into performance problems on Vservers. My solution was
to buy server space from someone who did not overload their hosts.

Regards,
Mako

-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako at atdot.cc
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so
far as society is free to use the results. --RMS
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