Some nice commenters let me know that they were still having trouble posting comments and receiving errors. This was due to the anti-comment spam plugin I was using, Bad Behavior 2. Compounding the issue was the cryptic error messages BB2 generated when its “5-second wait-before-you-can-post” trigger was activated. I eventually modified my copy so it didn’t give the people the impression my entire site was on the verge of collapse; most people just saw ERROR and tons of tiny text, and (naturally) assumed that some kind of severe system error had occured due to errors in my PHP coding or my ISP’s server configuration. That is in fact what I thought until I read the text more carefully.

Anyway, today I was hapy to see that Beta 1 is available. It gets rid of the 5-second wait that caused the problems I just mentioned.

• Just installed it. Crossing my fingers.

• I was about to give WP-Hashcash a try again, but people have been reporting that it’s also letting spam comments through again…figured I would try BB2 first.

• I also deactivated Spam Karma 2 and enabled Akismet 1.15 to see what happens. I know, it looks like bad debugging methodology…I should just keep BB2 on for a while first to establish any change in behavior, then try swapping Akismet in. However, the input is pretty variable: new spamming techniques arise every day, as do new spammers and spam surges. I wouldn’t be able to tell, without spending a lot of time I don’t have, what the causal relationship is between spam stopped and a particular plugin combination. So I might as well just see how they work from an administrative perspective.

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p>Without these plugins, I would have to shut off comments. It is incredibly irritating that these spammers STEAL OTHER PEOPLES TIME AND PROPERTY to make their money. This starts to make the non-anonymous Internet look attractive, but then you have the problem of TRUSTING THE GATEKEEPERS of the system to maintain the egalitarian policies of a Free Internet in the face of commercial greed. Sigh.