I have several complaints about this:

  • There is no auto-expiry of spam comments; they sit in the database forever unless manual action is taken.
  • Deleting spam comments -- which seems to be the way that people are encouraged to use the spam module -- requires: checking one checkbox per message, then selecting "delete", and repeating this for each page of the spam comment listings (it only puts a few dozen per page; I get about 15 pages worth in a slow day.) Even with some Mozilla toolbar help, this is a slow and cumbersome process.
  • No "auto-delete" feature for spams referencing certain URLs.

I have to wonder -- is anybody thinking about how this module works for sites that gets hundreds or even thousands of spams per day?

Comments

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

Patches are welcome.

> No "auto-delete" feature for spams referencing certain URLs.

Go to administer >> spam >> custom filters, create a filter rule to match your URL and select "Automatically delete spam".

jgoerzen@changelog.complete.org’s picture

jgoerzen@changelog.complete.org commented

What I'm really suggesting there is that the "spam url autodetection" feature have an auto-delete feature, so when Drupal automatically learns of spammer URLs, it can automatically delete those comments in the future.

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

My fear is that it can learn a URL wrong. If it automatically started deleting comments that it thought were bad, you'd never have a chance to correct it, the comment would simply be gone.

That's why the only way to do this is through the manual "custom filters". On my website, I have 15 custom filters defined, 7 of which auto-delete. 682,286 spam comments have been automatically deleted.

That said, I think the idea to auto-expire spam comments is excellent. I originally didn't want to delete spam ever because then it would be impossible to gracefully upgrade the tokenizer logic. As it stands, the tokenizer logic seems to be fine so I'm no longer worried about this.

In any case, there are some serious design flaws in the spam module, and I intend to sit down and re-write the entire module to address these issues. Hopefully in the near future. Until then, patches are welcome.

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

I have re-written the spam module. Read my announcement here. Download it here.

The rewritten module addresses all of your concerns.

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented
Status: Active » Fixed

Fixed in the rewritten spam module.

osherl’s picture

osherl commented
Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented
jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Closing manually. (I think the project module is broken, it keeps marking them updated when they should be closed.)