(CC-ing comrel@ as the team that seems closest to the Social Contract. If that's incorrect, please suggest who to CC instead) For some time, spam filtering on blogs.g.o no longer 'works out-of-the-box'. Instead, you are requested to obtain an API key for proprietary Akismet service. This leaves you with two options: 1. You ignore Akismet, and your blog is flooded with spam to the point where you simply disable comments because you can't find a single valid comment in the flood of spam. 2. You get the API key, and rely on your blog feeding comments to a third-party, proprietary service. Which means the whole thing violates the Social Contract, not to mention users' privacy. I think if Gentoo is supposed to host developer blogs, they should be really stand-alone and not rely on proprietary software that explicitly requires developers to obtain license for.
I'm dropping ComRel as we have nothing to do with the "Social Contract" and have no way to "enforce" it. I'm adding Trustees for that. <infra hat on> As far as I understand, the blog software that we use provides only this option. Do you know of any other plugin that can deal with the spam filtering? Do you have any suggestions for alternatives? </infra>
(In reply to Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto from comment #1) > <infra hat on> > As far as I understand, the blog software that we use provides only this > option. > Do you know of any other plugin that can deal with the spam filtering? Do > you have any suggestions for alternatives? > </infra> To be honest, I have no clue. I believe this software has been chosen because of its popularity, so it should have more than one spam filtering solution. In fact, I believe that even some minor customization in commenting procedure would reduce the amount of spam by confusing the 'catch-all' kind of bots.
I guess I'm not entirely buying the argument that akismet is "required" but I will attempt to avoid being a lawyer about it. We could perhaps make available some other modules? https://wordpress.org/plugins/anti-spam/
(In reply to Alec Warner from comment #3) > I guess I'm not entirely buying the argument that akismet is "required" but > I will attempt to avoid being a lawyer about it. 5k spam comments a month makes me think this isn't something anyone sane can process by hand.
While I'd support a non-proprietary solution, there isn't one that has been presented here. Reopen if you can present a solution that does work.
