E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

ajax apple blogs browsers business design django ebay fp fun google hardware haskell intellectual property iphone javascript linux media mercurial mobile open source os x oscon oscon2007 palm php programming python rails rants reading risks ruby site spam textmate the well tips tools unix vcs web development web frameworks webservers wmassdevs writing

Stuff I Use

Akismet, bitbucket, del.icio.us, Django, Emacs, FreeBSD, Git, jQuery, LaunchBar, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, Review Board, S3, SQLite, TextMate, Ubuntu Linux

Spam Report

At least 95844 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Comment Spam Stats

Since January 12th:

I don't have a number for false positives, but given that I've received zero email complaints I'll assume the number is low if not zero. This gives Akismet about a 98% success rate on catching spam, which is pretty good. It makes my life better. Having more spam comments than real comments get through the gates can be really depressing for a blog owner.

At some point I'll post my Django newforms/Akismet integration code. It's very simple, and clearly worth the effort.

Update: James Bennett reminds me that his comment_utils wrap up anti-spam and comment moderation measures in one tidy package.

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
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2 comments

Some related posts: Comment Spam • Spam, del.icio.us spam • Is Akismet broken again? • Akismet anti-comment-spam • Moving the blog to Django • Well blogs • More on "Splogs" • Fixing Web Spam • Google blog search • Comment spam
• Comment from Alex Ezell , later that day

I like to say that comment spam is the reason I always quit blogging, but I suspect it's because no one wants to read what I write about :)

I guess one of these days, I'll get around to redoing my blog with Django.

Does anyone else think that Akismet should be doing better? For a distributed spam system, I would expect 99% or better catching spam. I say that based on my, perhaps incorrect, belief that comment spammers usually post the same junk on tons of sites all in a short period of time.

After the first 2 or 3 bloggers mark this stuff, shouldn't Akismet catch the rest? I probably just don't know enough about how it happens.

• Comment from Paul , later that day

I suspect that there's a significant random component to the spam, so that it's not *exactly* the same junk everywhere. But given that good Bayesian email filters seem to be able to do better, I do agree that there seems to be room for improvement.

Nonetheless, I can't begrudge the free service that Akismet is giving me. As we've both experienced, comment spam is demoralizing, and it's nice to be (mostly) free of it.

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