First and foremost, I love having this blog and all the chances it gives me to vent/share things. But if there's one thing I hate about it, it's all the idiots out there who seem to think that my website is there for them to spam and take advantage of. You know who you are, and cut it out.

Having said that, I've found a new resource in my battle against said idiots: MT-ProxyPlug. It checks to see if the commenter is coming through an open web-proxy and shuts them out. I don't really like that part - I'd rather have it moderate - but the consensus on the page of the plugin seems to be that when they come in this way, it's for no good, so what the heck.

I'm also happy to report that MT-Blacklist, which I've been using almost since it came out, is kicking ass and taking names.

Some stats:
Comment spams blocked: 19923
Comment spams moderated: 3600
Duplicates blocked: 84

That means that out of all the posts I've dealt with personally, 3600 have been moderated because they fit MT-Blacklists profile of spam - and I'd say about 99% of the time, it's dead on. It also means that 19,923 times someone tried to "comment" on my site and link to their site, a site that was intended to make them money or sell some cheap ass product or just generally take advantage of the interweb thingee. That's 19,923 comments that I never ever ever ever had to see - it just took care of them. That's like 40 hours of work that it saved me. Maybe less, I don't know - but that's not the point - it's that the plugin not only works, it KICKS ASS.

I've very glad that Jay now works for SixApart.