Month: December 2004

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Comment spam prevention in Wordform

I believe that, eventually, most comment spam strategies will have to have a system-wide component in place to truly combat this problem — something to watch for comment spam patterns happening on a server, and throttle accordingly. However, that’s something that can’t really be handled with the application. So, I’ll focus on what I can do in Wordform.

My comment spam protections are not going to include a blacklist, in any shape or form. These require too much processing, and are too vulnerable to corruption. Instead, I’ll use a variety of techniques that combined should protect a site — even a heavily hit site.

First, I’ve added individual comment moderation so that you can turn moderation on for a specific post, or a group of posts. When this is turned on, a message will show near the comment form stating that the comment is currently moderated.

Next, I’m adding new capability to search in comments for those that fall into a range of dates, and then be able to delete all comments that match a search criteria. With this, if you do get hit, it should be easier to delete the spam.

(I’m also adding a one-touch button to globally approve, or delete, all moderated comments.)

The comment posting page will have a throttle that can be configured in options. This throttle will check the number of comments received within a certain period of time, and if the count exceeds a value that the user can specificy, will either moderate the comment, or deny it (again, something that can be configured). At Burningbird, the throttles are no more than ten comments in a minute (a WordPress option); and no more than 50 comments in a day (my option). These two values can be changed, and I’m also adding a maximum count for number of comments allowed in an hour. All of this will prevent ‘crapfloods’, which can overwhelm a site, and even a server.

Currently I’m using database queries for the comment throttle I have at Burningbird, but for Wordform, I’ll be using other caching methods to hold timestamps and comment counts. This should make the throttle lightweight and robust.

I’m also adding a configurable option to either close or moderate all comments over a certain number of days old. I use this with Burningbird, whereby the first comment to a post over so many days old gets moderated, and then the post gets closed. This has eliminated probably about 98% of my comment spams, while still giving me the option of determining (from this last comment), whether I want to keep the post open, but moderated.

A new functionality for Wordform not currently implemented at Burningbird is the ability to close a discussion. By closing a discussion, the post (or the web site) is temporarily put into a lock-down form, where only those people who have previously written published comments can add new comments. When they do, the comment is posted immediately. If a person hasn’t added a comment previously (based on the person’s email, which is a requirement for lock-down, though it’s not printed), their comment will be put into moderation.

Finally, I’m experimenting around with a new comment spam prevention method that I’m calling “Stealth Mode”. However, this is one item I am leaving for a “Ta Da!” moment when I release Wordform’s first alpha release.

(Most of these comment spam moderation techniques will also apply to trackbacks. I’m currently wavering on my support of pingback, which is really nothing more than recording a link, and this is accessible via the vanity sites.)

Between all of these–Throttle, Lock-down, individual and weblog moderation, better comment management, closing older posts, and Stealth Mode–the comment spam problem should end up being no more than a minor irritation in Wordform. Then if I can just get people to accept that comment spam is not an invasion of a person’s personal space, and that it’s a way of life and to not spend so much time fretting about it, we’ll have the comment spam problem managed.

Categories
outdoors

What are shut-ins?

A couple of people have asked, in comments and in emails, what are ’shut-ins’, such as the ones featured in Pink Saphires and Blue Diamonds.

According to the Missouri Conservationist:

Shut-ins are geologic features that are formed as streams erode away relatively soft limestone and dolomite, until they encounter deeper igneous rock, which is much harder to erode.

Streams and rivers running through igneous rock can cut only deep, narrow channels and are given little opportunity to form meanders as most streams do. As a given volume of water passes though these shut-ins, the water’s velocity increases, creating the rushing, bubbling effect that makes the scene at Amidon so appealing.

The only reference to shut-ins I could find are to those in Missouri, leading me to believe these may be a purely Missouri phenomena.

I have been to, and photographed both the Johnson Shut-Ins and the recently described Castor. Both are wonderful places, but the Castor is the one that’s stolen my heart.

Categories
Writing

Technical writing and thankless tasks

I think that both Dana Blankenhorn and Marius Coomans will be good for open source, as they both question the concept without worry of offending the legions of open source fans, and seemingly without any axe to grind.

Dana recently questioned the lack of documentation and support associated with open source projects. In particular documentation, writing:

Documentation, I thought, is the Achilles Heel for open source.

It’s baked into the process. Great coders volunteer to write great code, but documentation is a go-to-market process, and when you’re giving stuff away that’s not part of the strategy.

His statement isn’t without merit; when you access many free, open source applications, the first thing you read is something to the effect that “this is free, so don’t expect support”. There’s some justification to this philosophy; it becomes a warning to users that the software they’re using is free; however, they’ll have to hunt around for support on their own, because there’s no one paying the bills for either documentation or support.

Marius agrees with Dana, but takes it a step further. In response to my push to have users be more responsive to those who provide both documentation and support for open source tools, he writes, in comments at his shared weblog:

Shelley, when was the last time you rang the phone company to thank them when you successfully placed a call? Documentation will never be appreciated because most of us only use it as a last alternative, when all else fails. Being a writer is a thankless job, so are garbagemen, car mechanics and loss adjusters. Live with it.

Ouch!

Having focused much of my time this last decade in technical writing, either for books or articles, tips, how-tos, and yes, documentation, I can agree with Marius, in that it seems to be a thankless task, at times. But there’s also something else implicit in his statement, whether it was intended or not: that it isn’t necessarily all writing that is thankless; it’s primarily technical writing that is thankless.

That leads me to wonder: is technical writing, or more specifically writing about technology, valued less than other writing? In other words, if we place the poet, the journalist, the writer of romance or the pundit on one scale, and the writer about technology on the other, will the scales tilt away from the technical writer, every time?

Categories
Critters Diversity

The lion walks tonight

Today I took Zoe to the vet for her six months checkup, both for her rare seizures and her slightly enlarged thyroid gland. The doctor and I talked about putting Zoe on Phenol Barbital, a small risk anti-seizure drug for cats. However, roommate and I are hesitant to start her on a lifetime medicine when her seizures are about one every two years.

We spent a fairly long time chatting, which unfortunately made the doctor late for her next appointment. In the office afterwards, paying the bill, a large, heavyset man stormed out of one of the waiting rooms into the reception area, complaining bitterly about having to wait 20 minutes for the doctor.

After he stormed away, I apologized to the receptionist and she said not to worry about it; that his behavior wasn’t uncommon with men, especially middle aged men, as the place is very female centric and this brings out the male need to assert their dominant status.

I hadn’t noticed before, but the cat clinic does have a strongly feminine environment. All the doctors and assistants and other office workers are women, and the décor has a very feminine, feline feel to it–not to mention that all the cats that wonder around the office are also female.

All except the newest addition to the office — an eight week old orange tabby kitten that jumped up on the receptionist’s keyboard when she was making out my bill (”Well, your bill is now 362.00 dollars”); and then jumped up on the counter and immediately planted it’s tiny paws on my chest, gazing at me with eyes gold and round and very intense.

Entranced, I stroked and coo’d, which he seemed to take as encouragement, for it launched itself down from the counter to the floor (me catching it halfway, because that was a heck of a jump), and he immediately went over to Zoe’s carrier and started batting at her with his paws through the wire.

Zoe was hunkered down in the corner in misery, as she always is when at the vet’s and ignored him at first. But he was having none of this and after about a minute, she was nose to nose with him, each softly batting at each her, she as charmed by this wonderful little character, as I was.

I asked the receptionist who the new kitten was, and she said he was another abandoned kitten, dropped off at the office. The clinic won’t turn any cat away, and after making sure they’re healthy and nicely social, the workers manage to always find a home for the orphans. It took every ounce of self-control — every ounce! — not to pop up with, “I’ll take him!”

The receptionist turned back to the bill, dropping the eight blood tests that the kitten had added with his dance on the keyboard, while I watched the kitten gambol about the room. Suddenly, we hear a door slam, and heavy footsteps stomping down the corridor.

It’s the Big Man again, and he enters the room, drawing his breath to start huffing and puffing about his importance and how his time is valuable. However, the kitten spots him from across the room, makes a mad dash straight for him, and then with a flying leap, plants his tiny little kitten claws into the mans polyester pants, and starts climbing his leg, for all its little worth.

The man was startled, and sputtered out in surprise, looking down at this little kitten hanging off his leg, looking up at him. After just a moment of man and kitten staring at each other, the kitten jumps down from his leg, and glaring equally at me and the receptionist, the man storms off without saying a word. The kitten watches after him a moment, and then starts its mad dash around the room again.

The receptionist and I look at each other, both trying not to laugh; a resolve I couldn’t maintain when she turned back to the bill, casually tossing out about, “…knowing who’s the dominant male in the place is now, don’t we?”

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Why Wordform needs active users

Wordform is not being developed in isolation, specifically because I hope to capture input from people who could be considered the potential users of the product. It is more fun to go ‘Ta Da!’ and have the application all finished, to ooohs and ahhhs; but an inherent problem with this is that each of us brings our own interpretation of what is an oooh, and what is an ahhh.

A better approach, then, is to communicate as you develop (rather than after), keep your mind open, and solicit feedback as much as possible. And for this, I need active users — people who are willing to step up and say what they want, and how they want it.

For instance, when Marius points out the polished interface to the textarea within Blogger, saying that this is more meaningful than the Quicktags within WordPress, we can quickly show him a screenshot of the prototype for the Wordform edit page, currently in development. This is using the beta of HTMLArea, which is a very rich text editor currently being tested with Mozilla-based browsers, such as Firefox. It, as with Blogger, will work with IE and any of the Mozilla browsers. Unfortunately, it won’t work with Safari; but then, neither will Blogger.

The PHP program will test browser and insert quicktags, HTML tags, for browsers that can’t work with these rich text editors. However, Blogger’s switching back and forth between WYSIWYG and HTML tags, is a very nice feature. Luckily it’s already included as a feature within HTMLArea — just click the button labeled “<>” to toggle between HTML source and WYSIWYG.

As a sidenote, the new Comment Edit window in Wordform will also have a rich text editor, but I’m removing the HTML capability (HTMLArea is completely customizable). Why? So that I can ensure that tags are properly closed and that nothing harmful is added, while giving commenters a very rich editing experience.

Oh, and HTMLArea has plugins that will allow me to add in spellcheckers and various other nifty goodies. Don’t you just love open source?