I know there are probably only about three people who will see this post, but if anyone has links to concrete solutions to prevent message board spam, I'd love to hear it. So would Matthew Schaeffer. I'm pretty sure I spelled his name right.
I have heard tell of a technique that is similar to the realtime blacklists (RBL) used to combat email spam. When a poster submits a message, their IP is checked against a public list of known spammer IPs. If it's on the list, they don't get to post. If it's not on the list, the post is displayed.
I searched a little on Google, but haven't found much yet.
Update: Moderating the first x number of posts from each user is one way to combat message board spam. Usually a spammer won't post a couple of useful messages before sending up the spam.
Adam Kalsey's post "Cutting comment spammers off at the knees" is good reading.
We don't use Moveable Type, but if we did we could use this plugin: MT-Blacklist, aimed at preventing comment and trackback spam.
Searching on the words "comment spam" returns additional interesting references.
Here's another idea: a community-based anti-spam feature. It could work something like this:
- Spammer posts on TechSoup message board
- Before the post is displayed, the IP of the poster is compared against a community-contributed list of IP addresses for known message board spammers.
- If the poster's IP is on the list, no postie. Otherwise the post is displayed.
Another idea, courtesy of my pal Phil. It has actually been implemented for Movable Type, it seems.
- Let the message board community decide whether a post is spam or not by offering a "spam" button on every post.
- When a post is marked as spam, it is removed for review, and the content of the message is fed into a Bayesian filter.
- Over time, the system proactively prevents the display of messages that match the spam signature in the filter.
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