Comments Again »
After keeping an eye on things for the better part of the day, it looks like all is normal again. Most importantly, comments should be functional once more. You will notice a difference however. Notably, you are not allowed to post a comment without previewing it first. What's more, if you preview your comment and then change it, you will have to preview it again before you can post it.
This is because I'm now testing my latest plugin. This plugin creates a hash - a sort of computed total - on several different fields used during the comment process. Naturally, until you have previewed it, there is nothing to compute. So that explains the first preview. The second preview is there because once you change some values, the hash will no longer match. You must preview again in order to rebuild the hash, and thus be allowed to comment.
This plugin was built due to the recent activity on multiple blogs and mailing lists that have to do with comment spam problems. By requiring this hash, it makes it that much more difficult for comment spammers to bypass the check. At the same time, hitting the preview button once or twice generally doesn't interfere with the posting process, so hopefully you will not notice much difference.
I hesitate to implement TypeKey security because I don't use it. I won't ask you to do something that I won't do. As things continue to stay up (hopefully) and I can monitor the success - or failure - of this plugin, I will continue to update it until I have the right product. Essentially I don't want to overload the system with my plugin, because that does the same thing as receiving too much comment spam. I'll also make the hash more difficult for someone to break so as to keep those comment spammers on their toes, but I do need to monitor it and make sure that it doesn't overload the server.
In the meantime, please let me know if you run into any problems. If you can't comment, try one of the other contact methods. Thanks!
