Captcha

Well, I adjusted some of the plugin code over the weekend. The comments’ data (name, e-mail, url, content) isn’t stored in the database anymore but embedded in the CAPTCHA form as a collection of hidden fields. As I don’t want to store the data clientside (cookies and the likes) this seems to be the best way out. The comment is saved only if the CAPTCHA test was succesfully completed.

A particular issue I face are special characters like backslashes, quotes,… things you might encounter in URL’s and such. Luckily, WordPress is quite flexible as it takes this into account during the process of saving a comment in the database. The issue I have to focus on is not breaking the HTML CAPTCHA form itself. This will probably need some extensive testing.

Today, I had an e-mail discussion with Dries and Benjamin over the use of a moderation queue within the context Mollom provides. I have on implemented in my plugin. The idea is that ‘unsure’ comments that don’t get through the CAPTCHA test, land in a moderation queue… sort of.

Mollom was actually designed to get rid of the queue. Checking if a commenter is human or a spambot happens through the CAPTCHA test. Early on in the process of posting a comment. That makes a queue where an administrator has to do the check after the facts quite unnecessary.

Hum. The plugin in WordPress doesn’t support trackback checking yet. No big deal? Well, I have 24 spams in my moderation queue, the majority of them are trackback spam.

So… yet another feature to implement. Just wondering how the flow of operations should look like. Moreover: how/where do I implement a CAPTCHA? Is it necessary to do this implement? Given the 99.8% accuracy Mollom claims, is it a bad thing if a trackback would be identified as a false positive and the CAPTCHA step is skipped altogether? One can retrieve the false positive through the moderation queue altogheter, no?

Zo. We zijn een half dagje verder. Dit is de tussenstand: 0 spammers door de mazen van het net gegelipt. 7 spams in de moderation queue waarvan er 3 door jullie werden achtergelaten. 1 spam (Houbi) per ongeluk in de moderation queue blijven hangen. Niettegenstaande de mens legit is.

Kijk, voorlopig laat ik alles daar even hangen. Ik moet nog een feedback module in mijn plugin hangen zodat ik de Mollom servers kan terugsturen waarom iets wel of niet spam/profanity/unwanted/… is.