Spam Control

Dear Bloggers,

You may have noticed lately that we are suffering from some spam attacks.  We've communicated with WordPress who run this TypePad-based blogging platform and they are looking at some improvements to their anti-spam defenses.  But there are no improvements in the immediate future so they are suggesting, and we have decided to implement, "moderated comments" for awhile.

This means that when you add a comment to a post, it will sit in queue until one of the editors approves it as a real comment--not a vague advertisement for sneakers, Viagra, Ugg boots or anything else.  Please be assured that any and all real comments about anything on the blog will be approved and will appear as they have in the past.

We suspect that the spam is coming from hired, human spammers in Asia and this approach may well push them to go spam elsewhere.  We can turn "moderated comments" on and off at will, so there may be times when your comment appears immediately and times when it does not.  It's sort of like cat-and-mouse while Wordpress works on the challenge.

Blog on,

The Editorial Board

Comments

[Joe]

Testing moderated comments

[Joe]

Turning on moderated comments appears to have worked well. We've turned it back off now and will see if the spam returns.

[Joe]

Louis Vuitton has caused us to turn moderated comments back on. Perhaps turning it on a night and off in the day might work.

[Joe]

Thanks everyone for your patience as we go back and forth between moderating comments and not. It seems to be working for the most part.