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Spam and Splogs defeated ( Montyspam looking for testers) (257 posts)

  1. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I am polishing off the last of a Spam plugin (Montyspam) after 3 months(!) and I'm looking for one of two people to act as Beta testers.

    Montyspam is Bayesian spam filter - i.e. it statistically works out the probability that a comment or post is Spam or not. So far on my site it has proved more than 99% effective. It has proved pretty much immune to spammers techniques such as random words etc. In fact, it works so well that on my site comment spam essentially is defeated.

    It's designed to be as easy to administer as possible. Essentially an administrator simply has to manually classify messages that Montyspam regards as 'difficult to classify' which is rare anyway. Because the Bayesian filter 'learns' there are basically no complicated settings. It's also designed to have a minimal impact on legitimate users. So neither the site admin or your users have to go through dozens of messages to check whether they are Spam or not, and there is no Capcha.

    If anyone is interested in trying it out could they put a message here. At the moment I'm really looking for a just a few Beta testers for feedback and suggestions. You do need at the moment to alter one line of the Wordpress code (so that a menu appears in the Admin area).

  2. Ovidiu
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I am interested.
    does it work for simple wp too or just for wpmu?

    I have seen a few of this type of plugin in earliear times, I remember having seen a plugin that would use spamassassin and its (if enabled) bayesian features, but that was looong ago.
    I am a big fan of bayesian techniques, so I could try it out. you can give me details where to downlaod or simply mail it to ovizii at zice dot ro

  3. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    At the moment it works only for WPMU (although I'm going to adapt it for regular WP).

  4. Farms
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I'm happy to test too :)

    james (ad) incsub /dot/ org

  5. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Ovidiu & Farms,
    I've sent a mail to you both. Check the your spam filter hasn't trashed it :-)

  6. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    MG: I'd give it a whirl. blogs ( ) thunderlounge () com

  7. andrea_r
    Moderator
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Add me in. andrea at atypicalife dot net

    (Damn, i keep getting pulled back here.)

  8. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    It's like a black hole... you can't escape its gravity.

  9. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I do have a question though...

    What is this filter being activated on to control splogs?

    Is it on posts, signup, both, or what?

  10. suleiman
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    suleiman@hadithuna.com, and I would love to test it.

  11. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Been away for a day so sorry for the late reply!

    Mails going to everyone soon.

    To answer lunabyte's question:
    Essentially I developed it originally to catch comment spam. It's a Bayesian filter so it calculates a score from 0 (ham) to 100 (spam). Anything at the extremes are classified accordingly, and anything in the middle is regarded as unknown. In tests so far after an initial training period Montyspam has never wrongly classified something but does give things an 'unknown' on occasion (about 1 or 2%) requiring the admin to teach Monty the correct answer (and thus he learns).

    My rational when designing the system is that normal users are not really affected. Now for comment spam a 'sorry, this is being moderated' is not a big deal but for splogs an incorrect block is a major inconvenience. Therefore when I extended the system for the splogs it doesn't block the post it simply informs me in the admin area - a single click and the splog is spamified (is that a word - if not it should be :-)

    Part of this testing will be so that I can perhaps get a better statistical idea of how fast Monty learns. So far he's very very good. Spams often get ratings of 99.9999% or 100% and it would probably be safe to blog such probable splogs automatically perhaps with a Capcha to unblock.

    That's probably a longer answer than you were looking for!

  12. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Not really too long, but thanks.

    I've got a couple more, but I'll send them over email later on today.

  13. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I'm going to post the code for Beta Testers to download probably next Tuesday. I've decided to delay it a couple of days so I can add a statistical checker at signup. This won't block anything but will rate the signup. Hopefully, this will enable us to catch those splogs right at the beginning.

  14. xknown
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I would like to test it too :).

    alex (at) buayacorp (dot) com

  15. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Short delay - will be ready in August though. I added Chinese/Japanese analysis due to the number of Kanji spam that was appearing so I've delayed Beta for a couple of weeks.

  16. caribmon
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Interested in beta testing

    info at blogdom dot eu

  17. caribmon
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    dupe

  18. coppertop
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I'm also interested in beta testing.
    greg.kuchyt gmail <dot> com

  19. alexz
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I'm also interested! smartson at gmail dot com.

  20. JuanManuel
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    me too please. I installed a couple of plugings including captcha and I have splogs... juanmanuel.mx at gmail

  21. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    More and more :-)

    OK. What I'll probably do is have 3 or 4 people do the very first test. Mainly to make sure installation works smoothly etc. Then after a week or so making sure that there is no problem there, I'll add the rest.

  22. byjournal
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    support@byjournal.com
    to me, please :) i can make russian translation =)

  23. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Still hard at work. The interface is taking just a little longer than I expected. The good news is it's still working well. Hopefully, a first beta out this week.

  24. GIGALinux
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Me too, send me a mail to gigalinux@gmail.com

    I can make the german translation

  25. Ovidiu
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    :-) anything new?
    I just noticed august is gone - it started raining over here already and still no montyspam beta ;-)

  26. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    macgruder said this on Sept 4th:

    "Still hard at work. The interface is taking just a little longer than I expected. The good news is it's still working well. Hopefully, a first beta out this week."

  27. Farms
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Maybe we're all being added to a big spamming list, in a bizarre double-agent-style counter strike ;)

    Or did I just pay too much attention to Bourne last night....

  28. drmiketemp
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    No, that when through my head when I first saw this thread as well. Seen it many times before, usually by a troll or someone who wants attention.

  29. macgruder
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Sorry guys. I'm really working hard at it!! Running the system myself has suggested some improvements which I wanted to roll into the system before sending out a Beta.

    Plus a couple of people had requests. The main one was catching splogs at Signup which obviously has less data to work on than posts and comments, but if you catch people here it makes other stuff easier. It's taken me a bit of time to get this right. (You come across unexpected problems like when you successfully block someone from signing up that keep trying with the same username which by definition doesn't happen if the spammer succeeds!)

    Please be patient. It'll be ready very soon :-)

  30. MazZziKa
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    i wanna to test this ..
    mazzika@hotmail.com

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About this Topic

  • Started 16 years ago by macgruder
  • Latest reply from anointed