Ask the user for a 'VIP code', which is programatically generated elsewhere
on the page or another page.

Worked well on a PHBB2 board I once used.

David.

2008/7/1 - Jonathan Rochkind, Johns Hopkins Univ. <[log in to unmask]>:

> 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
>



-- 
David Kane
Systems Librarian
Waterford Institute of Technology
http://library.wit.ie/
T: ++353.51302838
M: ++353.876693212