The version of MT installed on the NYU server is clearly a relic from more innocent days, when comment spam either didn't exist or wasn't a big enough problem to build in defenses against. Remember those golden days? Since anything that can be spammed, will be, at this point releasing any application without built-in spam guards is a usability no-no akin to not supporting copy and paste.
For the past two days, I've been getting 100+ spam comments/day. Since this blog is hosted on an NYU server, I don't have access to install a spam filter. This has never been a big problem before, but apparently I just hit the spam tipping point and am a prime target. And given the unwieldiness of MT's comment-deleting process, I just can't click fast enough. Which means that, unfortunately, you might be hit with some unpleasant comments. When I'm deleting the comments, I actually have to hold my left hand against the screen to block out the offending text (bringing in Disney characters and explicit sex acts is just unbelievably low, even for a spammer).
Hopefully sometime soon we'll get a filter running here. I am not Joi Ito, and I don't have 5 hours to spend every day on this blog. In fact, with a 2hr commute to Palo Alto, I have considerably less time. So the more time I spend deleting nasty spam, the less time I have to do anything like writing. Which is sad. And sadly, I'm disabling commenting until further notice. Given that people don't actually comment on this blog that often, it's not a major disaster. But it's not the way I wanted to run things. Send me an email if you've got the urge to say hi.
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