So I’ve been getting a crapton of completely illegitimate ‘PORNO!’ and ‘VIAGRA!’ type of comments which get stuck in Akismet’s spam queue.
Because each of these comments is literally a full screen’s height long and mostly contains text which I cannot read (language, huge blocks of text and links, AND tiny font sizes), shuffling through more than a pageful to make sure legit comments make it through to me is honestly a serious pain on my EYES and can trigger migraines on a bad day.
In an effort to cut back on this sort of spam in my spam queue and in an attempt to not alienate any of my potential commentors, I have installed a plugin called Conditional CAPTCHA.
What this plugin does is this: If the Akismet spam identifier identifies a comment as a potential spam (yes, the plugin works alongside Akismet!), it will present to the person who is submitting the comment a fill-in-the-blank/text-based CAPTCHA.
The commentor will be asked to identify and type in two digits (eg: first digit and third digit) from a string of text-based digits and if they type in the right ones, the comment will pass and if they type in the wrong ones or don’t type at all, the comment gets auto-deleted.
It is not an ideal solution, but as I struggle with a status migraine, it is something I am going to implement until I can find a better alternative.
If anyone has any ideas or comments, please share them!
And to reiterate: The CAPTCHA ONLY shows up when Akismet has already identified the comment as potentially spammy.
~ EMG
