The Stupid Filter for Comments
We are not kidding about this boffo new server plug in that is currently in development, while it is server side, and there is no Word Press Plugin for it yet (come on guys lets see what word press can do with this idea), the idea of a stupid filter for comments has general benefits that reach far beyond the some 4800 spam messages. If you want intelligent discourse on your blog or website, this is going to end up being the must have plug in for 2008 (or what ever year it comes out).
The stupid-filter team is trying to accommodate this behavior with a variety of rules of thumb. For instance, Ortiz, who studied linguistics as an undergrad, recently noticed a pattern in the way some writers use letter repetition. The clueless tend to repeat consonants: “This video is amazinggggg!!!” By comparison, says Ortiz, “when you repeat a vowel, you’re being sarcastic — ‘Yeaaaaaah.’ We’ll be using several different methods to try to mediate this.” Source: CNN.Com
While spammers will quickly figure out ways around this by changing the way that they speak, what this can do for spam filters, Bayesian filters, and a larger pile of software that tends to estimate what people are talking about, in context of the file being quoted.
You can help them out by going to http://stupidfilter.org/main to help them test out and score their filter and how it learns/works.
This has a lot of promise, should kill off some of the more stupid comments we get, or just about anyone gets, and might add some much needed civility to the Internet and the comments that are happening, if you have to swear to make your point, then you “ain’t smart”, we would have that filter so ratcheted up that only a PHD would be able to make a comment.
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