[wp-testers] Aksimet banning?

[Matt Mullenweg]

Travis Snoozy wrote:
> Assuming that the majority of this spam is generated via botnets (which
> I think is a pretty safe bet), you're not banning spammers so much as
> innocent schmucks who have had their computer hijacked -- or worse,
> innocent schmucks behind the same NAT as some *other* poor schmuck who
> has had their computer hijacked.

This is true, banning IPs has an extremely high false positive rate. 
There is a plugin to add frequently caught spam IPs to an .htaccess 
file, presumably to save server resources. However it's not something 
we're going to add to the Akismet plugin.

> I'd much prefer to see accessible CAPTCHA support integrated into core
> WordPress. While it won't solve the problem, it'll make posting a much
> bigger pain in the butt for spammers, and is a reasonable middle-ground
> between super-easy posting and requiring a user account.

That would do nothing for trackbacks and pingbacks. Trackbacks are 
responsible for the vast majority of spam.

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
  http://photomatt.net | http://wordpress.org
http://automattic.com | http://akismet.com