Pardon the inconvenience

I have just added a feature that should help to reduce the amount of time required to run OrangePolitics. We currently get about 100-200 spam comments each day, and they all go into the same moderation queue as comments from new users who simply have to be verified and approved.

On the comment form you will now find an extra field where you can type in the numbers and letters that appear next to it to prove that you are a human and not a spam-bot (a captcha). Please let me know if you have any problems!

I know there are a few other broken things around here. I haven't addressed all of the problems as I am hoping to move the site to a whole new platform later this year. More about that later, but if you have any suggestions for hosted drupal solutions, do let me know. ;-)

Comments

BTW, I also updated the About Us page today since I was prompted to write a new blurb in preparation for a meeting I'm attending on on local political blogging next week (and for Placeblogger.com). Check it out: http://orangepolitics.org/about

Ruby,

Typing in the letters/numerals is a minor inconvenience that is easily suffered for the pleasure of having access to OP.org. Thanks for all the hard work to provide this forum.

I'm fine with this. It's like a little brain teaser.

I might need to add this to my wordpress site. Comment spam sucks.

What plug-in are you using for this?

For people with visual impairments, I'd suggest an optional alternative method, such as voice. I've seen this on I think a blogger blog before.

C., if you know of a Wordpress plug-in that stops spam and offers an accessible alternative to visual captcha, please let me know.

Ed, the plug in is here: http://www.infor96.com/~nio/archives/369

It seems to be working pretty well so far, only a trickle of spam is getting through.

http://larve.net/people/hugo/2005/blog/2006/08/01/fighting-blog-spam-wit... talks about the issues with accessibility and links to a plugin that he says is ADA-useable.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools is a list, but I bet you already found that.

A friend of mine has become blind as an adult, and I hear about her issues with non-accessible websites (poor contrast, too-busy backgrounds, too-small fonts...)

Ruby, I couldn't get to that URL.

The verification is working fine with Firefox, but I don't think it's supported by Safari. I kept trying to post through Safari, kept getting the "incorrect" response, and finally switched to Firefox. Minor bug, (if it is one, and not just my own incompetence). Just thought I'd point it out.

C., I tried installing the "Did you pass math" plug-in and it broke the whole site. I will keep messing with it.

Sorry, Ed. The author's site seems to have disappeared! The list at http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools is actually a better place to look anyway. There are tons of options.

Alright! I just installed a math-based spam blocker (different from the suggestion above, but same concept). Please test it out and let me know if you have any problems!

(If you are a registered OP user, you have to log out to see the spam test.)

Thanks for your support and all the good ideas, y'all.

Thanks, Ruby! The nice thing about text is that text-to-speech programs don't barf on it, like they do with images.

 

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