I’ve had a lot of trouble with comment spam. This blog has blocked many thousands of comment spams. And unfortunately, it’s blocked a few of Cliff’s legitimate posts, too.

So I have switched to the new captcha module for Drupal. In case you don’t know, a captcha is an automated test designed to tell humans and computers apart. It often takes the form of a graphic with letters or numbers in it — letters or numbers than humans can read, but computers can’t.

I used this idea before with WordPress and it was 100% successful.

So now, you can prove that you are a human right when you make a post — and you will be told instantly if the post is accepted or not. And if it is, it appears instantly.

A lot of comment spam is arriving via trackbacks, and captchas can’t be used with them, so I’ve disabled trackbacks for now.

I think this should make blogging a lot less annoying.

This change also applies to the other Drupal sites hosted here: The Haskell Sequence, Forest of the Plains, and Rail Passenger.