94% of all comments are spam.
Hardly a surprising statistic when you look at the amount of trouble this meagre site has had with the spamming hordes. I wouldn’t care to guess what the ratio of spam-to-ham is like here, but I bet it’s nowhere near as good as 6% real meat.
Fortunately, the spammers that hit this site regularly are a particularly stupid bunch, and even a small sample of their automated antics was enough to build a bulletproof spam filter back in January. Recently, though, they’ve started being a bit more subtle:
These enigmatic gems pushed me over the edge and I implemented Akismet, an online service for preventing comment spam. Their home page is where I got my 94% figure.
The idea’s simple enough: when someone sees fit to hurl their erudite observations at your feet, your blog queries Akismet’s web service with the contents, and receives the thumbs-up or thumbs-down from them in reply.
So far it seems to work, with one minor drawback: all my own comments are flagged as spam. Less than ideal, but hopefully that’ll stop with time.
Victory over the bastards again - for another six months at least.
