Releases for Spam

Finally, an "official" 6.x release!

To answer what seems the most likely question: yes, this is live on some production sites. We're actively beta testing this; it's stable, and just has a few quirks to still iron out. See the issues queue for details.

The third complete rewrite of the spam module has finally entered beta status. This suggests that it is mostly feature complete, and the the underlying database schema's have stabilized. While minor features may still be added between now and the first 1.0 release, no major features should be allowed. The goal between no and the 1.0 release is to improve stability, solving any remaining bugs.

This release includes a number of new features and bug fixes since the last release.

New features:

• Custom filters: It's now possible to define custom spam filter rules, a missing feature restored from the old 5.x-1.x version of the module. Custom filter rules previously defined for the 5.x-1.x spam module will be automatically upgraded.
• Users can now automatically upgrade from the 5.x-1.x spam module by replacing their old code with the new code then running update.php.

There was an effort to better support PostgreSQL as well, though this effort is not yet complete.

Features:

• Scan user profile fields if filtering users.
• Allow users to report when the spam filter incorrectly flags them as a spammer.
• Allow administrators to manage feedback, publishing content that was incorrectly flagged as spam.

Bug fixes:

• #302472: fix node_age.module to support PHP4
• #287551: allow editing of all options on spam administrative configuration page

New features:

• Comments: integrate spam management into comment administration forms
• Comments: give spam its own status code, removing it from the 'Approval queue'
• Comments: update comment edit form so comments can be published, unpublished, or spam

Bug fixes:

• Silence unnecessary errors when upgrading from 2.x spam module
• Properly install the spam_statistics table

And more...

New features in alpha3:

• spam content overview page with filtering and bulk actions
• administrative pages for viewing spam module logs
• administrative pages for viewing blocked IP addresses
• log tracing, groups all spam module logs generated by one page load together

Be sure to run update.php if upgrading from earlier alpha release.

About the 3.0 rewrite of the spam module:
This is a complete rewrite of the spam module.

The spam module includes four spam filter plug-ins:

• duplicate filter: track if the same piece of content is posted multiple times
• bayesian filter: auto-learn whether or not content is spam
• URL filter: utilizes bayesian filter to auto-learn whether certain URLs are spam URLs
• node_age filter: a tunable filter that assumes the older a node is, the more likely a comment posted to it is spam

Each filter can be assigned a weight. For example, if the duplicate module is more effective, you can weight it's score 250%. If the node_age filter is less accurate, you can only weight it's score 50%. Filter types automatically set their suggested defaults.

Implementing new filters is simple thanks to the (currently undocumented) spamapi.

The spam module also Includes three content-type plug-ins:

A complete rewrite of the spam module. This is not functionally complete (most notably missing an administrative interface for spam content), but basic filtering is working.

Includes four spam filter plug-ins:

• duplicate filter: track if the same piece of content is posted multiple times
• bayesian filter: auto-learn whether or not content is spam
• URL filter: utilizes bayesian filter to auto-learn whether certain URLs are spam URLs
• node_age filter: a tunable filter that assumes the older a node is, the more likely a comment posted to it is spam

Each filter can be assigned a weight. For example, if the duplicate module is more effective, you can weight it's score 250%. If the node_age filter is less accurate, you can only weight it's score 50%. Filter types automatically set their suggested defaults.

New filters can be easily implemented thanks to the spamapi.

Includes three content-type plug-ins:

• comment: filters comments before they hit the database, as well as when they are inserted/updated
• node: filters nodes before they hit the database, as well as when they are inserted/updated
• user: minimal support for filtering users, not yet a completely support content-type

Support for new content-types is easily added thanks to the spamapi.

Yikes, a second brown paper bag release. The first didn't quite work as advertised, resulting in an error when trying to flush the cache_menu table.

Features:

• page displaying all blocked IP addresses (admin/logs/spam/blockedips), thanks to coofercat
• _uninstall hook (in progress, only cleans spam tables, not spam variables), thanks to nancyw
• improve administrative pages organization, thanks to nancyw

Bug fixes:

• when admin marks content as spam, don't blacklist admin's IP address
• dont redirect users to invalid URL when they report spam
• properly purge reported spam once content is dealt with
• temporarily switch to privileged user when cron needs to delete nodes
• fix PostgreSQL schema definition
• many more

This release tracks the latest development for the Drupal 5.0 compatible version of the spam module.