Lovely spam

Well, now I know what happens when I go too long without posting: the spambots swarm in.

It's actually been interesting watching them work. First a single spam comment shows up, all on its own. Not so bad, you think. It's just one. I'll get around to deleting it in a day or two. But that was just a test, you see-- the spambots are checking to see if the blog is under active moderation. Since I'm lazy, the blog looks abandoned to the spambots (and my readers, too, I unfortunately suspect), and they post hundreds more spam-comments just like it the next day. Ugh.

There are several ways I can deal with this, but I'm loathe to use many of them. I want it to be as convenient as possible to comment, and so I don't want to require actual people to register for accounts to type in CAPCHAs. Instead, I've turned on Bayesian filtering. With luck, this will be able to separate the spam from actual comments and contributions (all of which I appreciate, by the way) in a manner completely transparent to my readers. But if any comment of yours is accidentally captured by the spam filter, drop me some email and I'll free it from the filter's clutches.

Thanks, and more actual content coming soon.