Akismet looks great, I hadn't been familiar with this before.

But it doesn't look to me like a university and/or library can use 
Akismet for free; it looks like it might be $25/month ($300 a year), 
which is a bit steep.  But I'm not certain; anyone know if a university 
library can maybe in fact use it for free?

Jonathan

Ross Singer wrote:
> What about Akismet?
>
> -Ross.
>
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 9:49 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>   
>> The Recaptcha device specifically also provides an audio test. But point
>> taken, even so it could prevent accessibility challenges.
>>
>> Nevertheless, when my system is currently receiving around one software
>> powered spam per minute, I need a quick pre-built drop-in solution to this;
>> I don't have time to write my own AI!  If you have any other free or
>> affordable pre-built drop-in solutions to spam protection to suggest, this
>> would be a great forum to do so!
>>
>> My particular situation isn't even a web forum---it's a comment form that
>> does nothing but send email to librarians. But the spam bots don't know
>> that, and are sending 1 spam per minute to it.  "Pre-moderation" is not a
>> solution; that's what we're doing now, but we can't afford to hire an FTE
>> just to seperate our actual user feedback from spam!
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> MJ Ray wrote:
>>     
>>> Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote: [...]
>>>
>>>       
>>>> And then fails. Anyone managed to do this, or have any other advice for
>>>> using Recaptcha from perl?
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Please don't use it as a barrier on the only access route to a
>>> service, else you will be locking out humans with vision or hearing
>>> problems, or even simply high browser security settings.
>>>
>>> More info: http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/
>>>
>>> If you want to combat spam, there are better ways, including some
>>> premoderation and heuristic checks of user submissions.  After all,
>>> Recaptcha doesn't stop all human-powered spam (whether directly by a
>>> spammer or by porn-trojans).
>>>
>>> Hope that helps,
>>>
>>>       
>> --
>> Jonathan Rochkind
>> Digital Services Software Engineer
>> The Sheridan Libraries
>> Johns Hopkins University
>> 410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu
>>
>>     
>
>   

-- 
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind (at) jhu.edu