SK2 has finally reached public release grade and can now be downloaded from Spam Karma’s main page.

200 Responses to “Spam Karma 2 Beta”

Fantastic! Let the testing begin and the spam end!

Either I’m not getting it but I find the blacklist part confusing, what am I removing. Note I haven’t been spammed since I installed so it may make more sense. It would look more slick if every page didn’t have a log dump.

Sorry Mog, but I do not understand what you mean: “what am I removing”… huh??
anyway, the blacklist allows you to add/remove entries, just the same as before, but in a nicer cleaner way. Thing is, you probably won’t have to use it, SK2 will use it by itself once it’s finished. but it’s there in case you need it or if you wanna control what’s in there…
The log dump is purely for debug purposes, it won’t be in the final version…

cheers

’spamk_stats’ does not seem to be implemented in SK2 – any new function doing that job or just left out for the alpha testing phase?

Installed fine, hopefully it is working. If you want to output stats go to http://mattread.com/archives/2005/03/spam-karma-2-stats/

I must have one boring site because I just don’t seem to be getting spammed like all the other guys. Not that I’m really complaining, but it would be nice to have something with which to put SK2 through it’s paces.

7
Podz Says:

Just installed.
Click here to manage Blacklist, I do and I see “Cannot load sk2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php.” No other messages.

Been having fun testing this. Got a bit fed up of not getting the spam digests so I’ve hacked together a SK2 plug-in!

sk2_pjw_daily_digest_plugin – This plugin sends you an email every n hours (default 24) with a report on the last n hours spam (at least in theory that’s what it does) the interval is editable from the sk gui.

Hope people find this useful (drdave feel free to include it in sk2 proper if you want!)

Congrats to drdave for making an easy to program too API. I haven’t done much php in the past few years and I found writing this simple plugin real easy – especially as I didn’t have to code a single UI element of it!

westi

Spam Karma 2 Simple Digest plugin

I have been running Spam Karma 2 Alpha on this site for the past few days and it seems much better at catching spam than the original Spam Karma including catching all the trackback spam that had been slipping through. I was however missing the digest…

Spam protection

Since i was getting a lot of comment spam recently, i had been running drDave’s excellent Spam Karma plug-in recently. Since a couple of days i have upgraded this to the upcoming version 2 (still under development), which does an even better job…

I would like to be able to approve false positives as comments instead of only having the option to “remove” them.

Installed and I get this when I click on Options:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare sk2_add_options() (previously declared in /pub/home/timbaker/htdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php:30) in /pub/home/timbaker/htdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php on line 28

I’ve disabled all other plugins so what’s the problem?

SK2 seems to be working great, it’s catching a lot of stuff. However, for some reason the stats aren’t being updated. It just keeps showing 4 sent to hell and 8 sent to purgatory. Any idea why it’s not being updated?

It seems that I’m getting incomplete page renders. I’m running svn 1.5.1-alpha, and for example, after a comment is submitted, the user is faced with a blank page. Also, the latest sk2 (alpha 6? it’s reported as alpha3) doesn’t let me get to the configuration page. It’s an incomplete page render, and it stops after the wp-admin menu bars on the top.

Thanks for the quick response! I redownloaded and extracted. The result is the same for me, unfortunately. It might have something to do with me using the latest svn 1.5.1-alpha? I know that I get incomplete generations in many other parts of wp as well, but never sk2. Someone suggested it might have something to do with BOM?

Does SK2 require allow_url_fopen ? I noticed that the News announcements stopped loading right after my host disabled allow_url_fopen.

17
Sævar Says:

Yes !!! This will be so great when this is done :D

Dr. Dave,

I just installed SK2 on my blog and I am impressed. It simply, frickin’ rocks.

I installed the plugin (2.0 pre-alpha 9) and the setup worked, however when I try commenting, the thing locks me out. The result is this:

Sorry, but your comment has been flagged as spam by the alpha version of the spam filter running on this blog: this might be an error, in which case all apologies. Your comment will be presented to the blog admin who will be able to restore it immediately.[Debug note] Here will go a very *nice* message explaining why you haven’t been deemed worthy of commenting.

I tried clearing tables and redoing the plugin, as well as disabling all plugins, yet it still does the same thing. Is it the plugin or is my IP cursed?

I’ve made quite a few updates to the digest plugin this evening.
Major changes are as follows:
Comment that cause digest now gets a full report.
Email contains links to allow you to spank stuff in moderation or save false positive spams
This link is very very alpha quality – it worked for my couple of tests but it’s quite a hack!

Get it while its hot – Simple Digest v0.21.

Please send all bug reports to the comments section of that page.

I had SK2 on the test blog but wasn’t getting much in the way of comments so I enabled it on my regular blog. I noticed on normal settings a few spam comments got thru but it was very easy to blacklist the domains. Much better interface than SK1, and I am using WP1.5, yesterday’s nightly.

Spam Karma 2

Ack! I just got my first spam at my very well protected personal email address. You know the one that I never give out at websites, and made a fake spam-collecting one to protect? The one that has been completely spam free for more than a year? Well…

I have installed it and when I try to go to options, I get the following:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_plugin_page_hook() in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/kinuk.co.uk/httpdocs/blog/wp-admin/menu-header.php on line 43

I’ve replaced the menu-header.php file with the one from Eric Anderson and it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I used the original menu-header.php and that doesn’t make any difference either. Is there anything that I can do?

Well…so I found out I needed to reinstall WP to get SK2 working, so long story short, working now. NM about a bug report. I guess my WP options were screwed or something.

The 2.0 alpha plugin activates but then I get this error message when I go to configure it under Options:

Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: sk2_referrer_check_plugin in /home/exogeno/public_html/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_core_class.php on line 294

When I click on any of the sub tabs (such as “Recent Spam Harvest”) I get the following error:

Warning: Unexpected character in input: '' (ASCII=6) state=1 in /usr/local/dh/cgi-system/php.cgi on line 124

Warning: Unexpected character in input: '' (ASCII=8) state=1 in /usr/local/dh/cgi-system/php.cgi on line 124

Parse error: parse error, unexpected '/' in /usr/local/dh/cgi-system/php.cgi on line 124

It looks like it might be something with my host? (I use Dreamhost.

I’ve had this version installed for about two weeks now, and I just want to commend you (and everyone involved) on a job superbly well done. I haven’t had one false positive since upgrading from SK1…though, I notice that my logs are insanely filled (there are like 20 entries at time for creating a single blacklist entry). I’m not so sure if it’s a bug, but I thought I’d mention it. Again thank you!

Very nice job with SK2… I really like it :-) (and I wanted to get subscribed to this thread of comments.)

You might want to check out , which allows readers to subscribe without actually posting a comment.

Just installed this plugin, I hope it proves better than the capcha I’ve been trying to use.

Anyway, since I’m not on PHP 4.3, I had to change
sk2_plugin_class.php line 46 from
$this->{__CLASS__}();
to
$this->{sk2_plugin}();

I _think_ that’s the correct change, based on the PHP4 documentation of get_class().

Oh, and I had to turn off open_basedir, but I believe that may be a bug in 4.1, since the file’s definately _within_ the open_basedir tree.

Thanks for the great update!

When I install the plugin, and activate it that part goes fine. However, after I go and click on the options for it, I get nothing but a blank page. Any suggestions?

-DR

Nevermind. It’s working, and I have a shortbus to catch.

-DR

33
Jason Says:

I also get a blank page under the options part – any ideas what you did to fix it please.

yeah me too. it’s been like that since a few weeks ago. how did you fix it?

Strangely my problem at comment 25 above turned into this “blank page under options” problem that other people have seen. This morning I installed the karmapress 1.5.1 and re-installed SK 2.0 alpha. Now when I go to options/SK2 it says:
Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: sk2_anubis_plugin in /home/exogeno/public_html/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_core_class.php on line 294

I fixed it by installing the 1.5.1WP, and that took care of it for me. I missed that part when I was reading the instructions.

-DR

Sir, I was using wp 1.5.0 and follow the instruction to upgrade to 1.5.1 which was downloaded from link above, I can install it and SKII well . but my admin page got some lines of display which I don’t know how to fix it.
Will they effect my usage? or any other function?
can you tell me how to fix it?

following is the messge i got now
————————————–
} } else { if ( preg_match(‘|\.php$|’, $file) ) $plugin_files[] = $file; } } } if (!$plugins_dir || !$plugin_files) { return $wp_plugins; } sort($plugin_files); foreach($plugin_files as $plugin_file) { $plugin_data = get_plugin_data(“$plugin_root/$plugin_file”); if (empty($plugin_data['Name'])) { continue; } $wp_plugins[plugin_basename($plugin_file)] = $plugin_data; } return $wp_plugins; } function get_plugin_page_hookname($plugin_page, $parent_page) { global $admin_page_hooks; $parent = get_admin_page_parent(); if ( empty($parent_page) || ‘admin.php’ == $parent_page ) { if ( isset($admin_page_hooks[$plugin_page]) ) $page_type = ‘toplevel’; else if ( isset($admin_page_hooks[$parent]) ) $page_type = $admin_page_hooks[$parent]; } else if ( isset($admin_page_hooks[$parent_page]) ) { $page_type = $admin_page_hooks[$parent_page]; } else { $page_type = ‘admin’; } $plugin_name = preg_replace(‘!\.php!’, ”, $plugin_page); return $page_type . ‘_page_’ . $plugin_name; } function get_plugin_page_hook($plugin_page, $parent_page) { global $wp_filter; $hook = get_plugin_page_hookname($plugin_page, $parent_page); if ( isset($wp_filter[$hook]) ) return $hook; else return ”; } ?>

Clarification request: is the Options page issue the only thing preventing the plugin from working on 1.5.0? I’ve put a few manual fixes in (to my shame, without keeping track of which ones) and thought I’d wait for the full release before upgrading the whole site. I’ve got SK2 running on 1.5.0 and it seems OK so far (had the blank option page at first, but disabled the only other plugin I use that uses an Options page, and it was fine), but I thought I’d see if there’s something I’m missing.

Thanks for continuing to invest effort into this must-have plugin!

problem pointed out couple comments before [#35] is very easy to fix:
each plugin should call $this->register_plugin(); at the end of the file [after all class declarations], in other case you’ll see error msg about non-existant class.

btw, nice work man, thx :>

Awesome! Moving the lines
$this->register_plugin();
in each plugin fixed my problem.

Thanks Sija and Dr. Dave!

Hey all – I’ve installed the WP 1.5.1 and SK2 on my domain and it seems like all is working. The only thing that isn’t working is the tabs other than the main SK2 options tab. It’s catching spam and sort of mailing me the reports, but when I try to access any of the additional tabs (recent spam harvest, approved comments, etc), I get this error:

Warning: Unexpected character in input: ‘ ‘ (ASCII=12) state=1 in /usr/local/dh/cgi-system/php.cgi on line 2966

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING in /usr/local/dh/cgi-system/php.cgi on line 2966

Does anyone know what’s causing this? I’m on DreamHost, which means we have to run PHP as CGI, but I’d hate to think that SK2 is unrunnable for anyone who’s on DH.

Ack, also – there seems to be a problem in using SK2 and BAStats – when I install it running the KarmaPress version of WP, I get:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_currentuserinfo() in /home/.radialdryer/slainte/eurotrash.cc/wp-content/plugins/BAStats/BAStats.php on line 537

It worked fine until I upgraded, and now the minute I upload the plugin files for BAStats (http://asymptomatic.net/wp-hacks/), I get that error. I’m thinking there’s something missing in the upgrade?

Beth, I get exactly the same errors on Dreamhost. Obviously, it’s something with how our servers are set up … would be nice to get to the bottom of it though.

I’m also on Dreamhost and I chose not to run php as cgi, It is an option for added security.
https://panel.dreamhost.com/kbase/index.cgi?area=2933&keyword=php%20as%20cgi
And SKII works fine except for the trackback referrer check which is disabled on the install I have. If you went with Dreamhost’s one click install which defaults to running it as cgi, you might not be able to change.

I just wanted to thank you for creating such a handy tool for WP. I also wanted to share my very simple plugin that catches empty bodied comments.

I’m not sure why but I have been getting alot of empty comments from anonymous and this plugin pretty much takes care of them.

How do I go about sharing my plugin? should I just put a link to a file here or is there a central repository of plugins?

Thank again.

Bill

As per Daves instructions I will put my plugin up at the wp-plugins.net site tomorrow (when I’m on my work laptop). However, for the time being it is at my site http://rawlinson.us/blog/?p=298 if anyone wants to read about it and grab it.

I installed SK2 yesterday and I’d like to say that it rules. :)

I have a possible bug though. When using the ‘Purge Comments older than’ button under the ‘Recent Spam Harvest’ tab I get the following error message, no matter what time period I set it to:


Failed to remove comment spam entries
SQL error: Unknown table 'wp_comments' in MULTI DELETE

Since I have comments on my site I’m pretty sure that table is there. ;) The prefix is correct too.

If you need any further info just give me a shout.

I am stuck, got the latest version of SK2 and it caught a legit comment but when I try to recover it, it won’t let me and the comment is still listed as spam. How do I fix it? I’ve changed settings to easier ones without any effect.

Update: after testing and help from Dave, when I made settings easier, I had disabled Anubis, a nono. Don’t do that. By enabling it, I fixed the problem.

I’d like to make a minor suggestion. When I go to the spam karma options page and view the approved and moderated comments – most of the time I want to jump to the message thread to view it in context – particularly on the approved comments.

However, there isn’t really an easy way to do that from the spam karma page. I end up having to to the manage | comments page then click on view thread.

So could you add a link to view the post (maybe just hyperlink the topic title) on both the moderate and approved comments list page?

Thanks
Bill

When I install this according to your instructions including installing the newer version of WordPress I get a whole lot of errors at the top of the admin pages:


Warning: sk2_output_admin_css(sk2_admin_css.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /path_to_wp/wp-content/plugins/SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php on line 770

Kind of a pain. Don’t know whether I can trust WordPress at all now… Goes away if I uninstall SK2.

This is a really odd bug. Tried various things, such as disabling other plugins, changing permissions on directories and files. It went away on a complete reinstall of SK2, but returned shortly after while editing user levels. Why that would affect SpamKarma2 is beyond me…

Are trackbacks checked against the content regexes? I don’t know if I’m using the wrong syntax (“/word/i”) or what, but I’ve had TBs show up that should have tripped a rule I added, but haven’t.

Also, I suspect some spammers are starting to temporarily link back to the target entries to get around the trackback referrer check. I had one come through that didn’t trigger that rule, and when I checked the site (in lynx, I’m not completely insane) for a link, there wasn’t one… but other trackbacks have tripped that rule and been blocked.

OK, I seem to be encountering someone with an unusual trackback scheme that bypasses most of SK. I’ve got three sets of trackback spam hitting my site today. SK is blocking 2 of them handily, but one of them just sails through every time with a 0.5 for “Comment has no URL in content (but one author URL)” — despite the fact that I’ve added the domain to the domain blacklist, the path to the regex blacklist, and their most consistent keyword to the regexp content blacklist. This is also the same site that seems to be bypassing the referrer check. All rules are firing just fine on the other trackback spam runs today.

56
Armitage Says:

How about a whitelist feature? Allow blog owners to add IP Ranges/Hosts to the database of frequent commentors.

Armitage: both a whitelist (for IP, content or domain) and a “snowball” (automatic whitelisting of frequent commenters) exist. We are, of course, solely discussing SK2 here (although SK1 did have similar features)…

Have you experienced any false positives with SK2? If so, could you email me in private with the complete info of the comments that were stopped, as well as SK2’s message…

Cheers

I get the following if clicking on any of the SK2 tabs besides “General Settings”. Host is Dreamhost:

Warning: Unexpected character in input: ‘ ‘ (ASCII=12) state=1 in /usr/local/dh/cgi-system/php.cgi on line 2966

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING in /usr/local/dh/cgi-system/php.cgi on line 2966

Replying to my own post. This seems to be the links are coded as:
[site]/cgi-system/php.cgi?page=SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php&sk2_section=approved

if I replace that end part with something like:
[site]/wordpress/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php&sk2_section=spam

It seems to work fine.

I just noticed that my host, DreamHost, disabled allow_url_fopen(), so I can’t get news or get the blacklist updated. Will someone please provide either an update or a patch to fix this? Definitely would be appreciated.

Jon, You could probably dig into it some and maybe use curl or fsockopen instead of fopen.

My good doctor, SK2 pre alpha 9 ate two trackbacks. :)

Jon,

I’m on Dreamhost and _think_ I have fixed it. Check it out:
http://www.ushimitsudoki.com/wordpress/archives/2005/04/28/spam-karma-2-dreamhost-and-curl/

Shaweet! Thanks, Jason, for the fix. :)

could you make “autowhitelist for IPs” as an option? i have lot of commenters using a dial-up-connection and it doesn’t make sense if their IP becomes “white”.

I used Eric Anderson’s one-file fix for the 1.5 bug, ( he links to it here: http://ericanderson.us/projects/delicious-integrator/) any reason that wouldn’t work as well as your CVS nightly rebuild thingy?

I upgraded to WP 1.5.1, but I keep getting the following error when trying to access the options panel, and at the bottom of comment pages:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: __class__() in
(blahblah)/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_plugin_class.php on line 46

Is this a PHP version thing? My hosts are running 4.1.2 (and unfortunately I don’t think they will ever upgrade, they’re pretty useless).

Guilty as charged – I had my settings for SK1 too high, and found out later that I was getting heaps of false positives. SK2 seems to be much easier and nicer on the commenters already – and it’s only been one day!
I have two minor suggestions. First, a captcha font that is harder to read for PWNtcha – maybe VeriWord, or Drupal, as suggested in in Gudlyf’s AuthImage hack. Second, the designer in me hates the pages that come up if I don’t go through with my comment right away. I see that some of these messages are just php generated text (nothin’ doin’), but with the actual pages (such as the captcha), why not take advantage of 1.5 themes/functions, and plop in the header, footer, and sidebar?

My sk2_logs table now equals the same size as my posts/comments combined. What’s the easiest way of reclaiming the space (for keeping backups nice and compact)

How would I add an email address to a whitelist in sk2 ?

Thanks for your time !

Spam Karma 2: Why Can’t Everything Work This Well?

I had to write a post on the excellent job Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma 2 does at blocking virtually all kinds of blog spam. If you have a WordPress blog and don’t have SK2, you need it. After Google upped my PR from a goose egg to a 3, I got nailed wit…

71
lordrich Says:

I’m sseeing legitimate comments failing the Encrypted Payload test yet the spam all appears to be passing that test. I’m therefore seeing some false positives and have had to reduce the strength of that test.

I’ve no idea why – checking the comments form reports that both files are OK.

Also, a .me.uk site failed this test which meant that the whole of .me.uk got blacklisted.

lordrich: I had that happen once (false positive on the payload test), and it turned out that the guy was making the comment at the same time I was changing my Spam Karma settings. I submitted my changes during the 5-minute window between the time he loaded the form and the time he submitted it, so the random seed changed and SK couldn’t validate the payload. A couple of minutes either way and it wouldn’t have been a problem.

i found a kind of bug with the “second_change”.

in spam_karma_2_plugin.php around line 867 there’s:

$location = str_replace($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'], “”, dirname(__FILE__)) . “/” . sk2_second_chance_file .”?c_id=$comment_ID&c_author=” . urlencode($sk2_core->cur_comment->author_email);

this builds a wrong url for the captcha-fallback.
people are redirected to: http://www.foo.bar/abc/abc/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_second_chance.php?….
but it should be:
http://www.foo.bar/abc/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_second_chance.php?….

the directory where my WP is located is double. any fix or workaround?

in the meantime i found a fix. but i don’t know if it works for everyone.
just change the line to:

$location = “/”.str_replace($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'], “”, dirname(__FILE__)) . “/” . sk2_second_chance_file .”?c_id=$comment_ID&c_author=” . urlencode($sk2_core->cur_comment->author_email);

the important thing is to start with “/”.

75
Armitage Says:

I have had a few false positives,

-19.5
0.5: Comment has no URL in content (but one author URL)
-20: Encrypted Payload missing from form.

I’m guessing it has something to do with my very old (from the b2 days) comment page. Is there some hook I need to ad in? I did a few searches on this site and google and found no answer.

I’m having some problems with SK2 causing my MySQL database to either drop, or even cause it to shut down…

It only happens on the Recent Spam Harvest and Approved Comments pages.

It also seems to stop my entire web server running temporarily… :P Any ideas?

Actually, it just got my entire account suspended… seems as though it was getting stuck in an infinite loop. I was running 2.0 pre-alpha 9. :(

My helpful hosting support team has this to say about what was happening:

Unfortunately we werent able to get much of a snapshot of the system as it was going down as the load on the server had increased by so much, preventing us from doing much, but i do know that your site had multiple connections to the MYSQL server at the time the server went down. It seemed the second time this happened during the night the call was to the following URL (but I cant guarantee that this is what increased the load so much):
httpd [www.webfroot.co.nz] [/wp-admin/options-general.php?pageSK2/spam_karma_2_plugin]

that is very odd as I have been running that version of SK2 for about a month now without incident (other than it blocking all spam).

For anybody with the “encrypted payload missing” read the following:

I’m running Wordpress 1.5 but am still using a 1.2 theme, so it doesn’t come with the necesary hooks required.

It’s really very easy to fix. First (optionally) disable this check in Spam Karma settings so you don’t see any more false positives whilst doing the editing – you can re-enable it later.

Secondly, edit wp-comments.php in your site root. Find the line saying

<form action=”<?php echo get_option(’siteurl’); ?>/wp-comments-post.php” method=”post” id=”commentform”>

Just below it, add:
<?php do_action(“comment_form”); ?>

Save and upload and check your comment form for hidden inputs starting with sk2. Presuming it’s all working you can then re-enable the check and all will be good again.

Appologies if the html above gets filtered by the comment form. And thanks to Dr Dave for his hints on getting it working.

I’ve just recently started using WordPress on one of my domains (I also use B2Evo and MT + MTblacklist on other domains) and I am very, very impressed with what I see in this plugin (as well as WP in general) so far.

Thanks for all the hours you’ve put into this.

81
Karl Bedingfield Says:

Hi there,

I think there are some conflicts with WP 1.5.1 comment moderation and Official Comments: http://inner.geek.nz/archives/2005/01/12/wp-plugin-official-comments/

When I post a comment as a regular punter my post is released to the site even if moderation is set.

Any fixes?

Many thanks

Hey Karl,
I’m getting a similar problem with first time commenters. Before I installed SK2 they were successfully sent to moderation, now they go through like any other comment. I saw a thread on the WP forums about it, but there was no resolution. I’m not even sure if it’s really an SK2 issue or not.

I’m crying here :( First SK1 starts eating everything as spam, now SK2 just shows me a blank options page on 1.5.1 official :( Anyone help? Pleeeease? :D

84
Simon Parr Says:

Be warned this does not work well with 1.5.1. It passes comments even if moderation is enabled.

I would love to know more about what people are doing to get SK2 to NOT work. I just installed it and it has worked fine.

Maybe I’m not using 1.5.1 (just 1.5 perhaps?)

Now, I don’t have the checkbox checked:
“Before a Comment Appears: An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below)”

I left it unchecked because the SK2 documentation somewhere said to leave it unchecked (or at least that is how I interpreted it).

Is this the setting your talking about Simon?

I’m only asking so I know how to avoid breaking my currently working copy – particularly if I update WP or decide to change WP settings.

A few answers:

First and regarding compatibility with WP’s built-in moderation: This is not a bug, it’s a feature
The principle behind SK/SK2 is to make commenting seamless, both for visitors and admins, i.e., it take the reins and only moderates when it doesn’t think it can call a case. For that reason, and also because it would be quite a pain to make it coexist with WP’s built in moderation options, the latter are simply ignored. The same will go with most other Spam plugins: it will work, but their actions will be overridden.

As an aside, SK2 provides a strong and easy API to extend its filtering process, it would be a very easy deal for anybody with basic knowledge of PHP to make an SK2 plugin to mimic WP’s own moderation options (not quite sure I’d personally find a use for that, but if somebody does, that’s what this API is for). Check out the wiki for more info, and do not hesitate to contact me if you got questions.

For everybody with install problems (such as the “blank option screen”), this seems to have been pinpointed to an issue between nested plugin folders and WP/PHP: supposedly, WP supports them as of 1.5, but it would appear some installs do not work properly. Fix is simply to move all SK2 files and folders out of the SK2 folder and directly within “plugins”. More info (feel free to add), in the wiki: http://www.wp-plugins.net/wiki/index.php?title=SK2_Troubleshooting

Needless to say: you should start by updating both WP and SK to the latest official releases (respectively 1.5.1 and 2.0 beta 1).

BTW, it might help me to work on this issue in the future if you contact me by email with a quick summary of your system (versions of WP, PHP, MySQL, HTTP server and whether you are running on *nix or Windows) exact symptoms, and whether any of the fix listed did it.

Thanks for the support everybody,

87
Simon Parr Says:

My only concern is that if I get some juvenile saying certain swear words etc that they will go straight to the comments page etc.

I was having the “blank options screen” and other erros and moved all files into the plugins folder. I can now modify the Spam Karma options, but I get the following error at the top of the page:

Cannot get file list: ‘/home/john/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sk2_plugins/’ is not a valid folder path

Keep the folder structure within the “SK2″ folder intact. The final result should be “/wp-content/plugins/” containing the 13 files from the SK2 folder, plus the folder “sk2_plugins”.

John: see Rust’s comment above (will edit the wiki to make that clearer).

Simon: if you really want filtering by word, you can perfectly well use SK2’s blacklist (add a “content match” entry). Once again, if anybody with a passing knowledge of PHP wants to take a stab at it, it’d be very easy to add such a filter to SK2…

Je viens de l’installer, et rien que de parcourir les quelques pages, je ne peux que me dire “le truc de malade!” :)
Maintenant, j’attend le spam de pied ferme :)
Merci!

First of all, thanks for the great plugin, and all the hard work. :-)

I have installed 2.0b1 on my WP1.5 site (with the menu-header hack), because 1.5.1 moved get_current_userinfo to a new file (pluggable-functions.php), which broke a number of my plugins/theme. Is there anything I will be missing out on in regards to SK2 by not having the official 1.5.1?

Hey! I posted a while ago about how one of the alphas (9?) I couldn’t get to work on my blog. The result was only the blank page. I had been keeping up with the svn’s and it was still bad. Finally, I tried the Karmapress and it worked like a charm. Since then, I’ve been keeping karmapress up to date with svn, and a few days ago, I got via svn the final 1.5.1

And today I updated to 2.0b1, and again I’m faced with the blank page. I read the troubleshooting and moved the files to the plugins root but it didn’t help. I downloaded a fresh 1.5.1 from wordpress.org and installed sk2 but it didn’t work. I deleted all the sk2 tables in mysql but it didn’t help.

So now I’m stuck with no sk2 again. I’m sorry; I’m such a pain :(

Thanks so much!

I wanna upgrade to SK2 but I’m afraid of messing up the DB. My site is a little weird, and actually has four WP installs like this::

WP 1.5 [some comment & spam]
WP 1.5 [comments disabled]
WP 1.2 [some comments, lots of spam]
WP 1.2/pictorialis [almost no comments, little spam]

I’m running SK1 on most all of them, and I’m not going to upgrade the 1.2 stuff for a while. If I run both SK1 and SK2 using the same database, will they hurt eachother? Should I wait until I’m all at 1.5.1 (or 1.6????) or go ahead and upgrade to SK2 for my more modern installs?

95
BLB Says:

Will SK2 beta 1 run on a two week old 1.5x nightly? :D

OK… a quick rundown of what this ought to be working on:

- WP 1.2, WP 1.3: Most definitely not
- WP 1.5: with the “options” patch applied, should be fine, although I’d recommend upgrading to 1.5.1.
- SVN, less than a few weeks old, should also be fine (basically, any SVN snapshot taken at least a few days after 1.5’s official release date).
- WP 1.5.1: no problem

To conclude: you all ought to upgrade to the recently released 1.5.1 version of WP and install SK2. You shouldn’t have any problem.

In all cases, running other plugins shouldn’t be an issue, although you ought to disable SK1 first (and any other spam plugin you may have).

Obviously, no point installing SK2 if you do not also re-open the comments…

Contact me via email if you bump into any problems when installing…

Hey all – I’m hoping you can help me. So far, SK2 seems to work well, but it has done something ‘odd’ to my comments – or rather, a post and its comments.

For some odd reason, one of my posts can not be viewed other than on the main page anymore unless you’re logged in as the admin. If you’re logged in as the admin, then it’s there, and no problems.

If you’re not, you click on the title and it takes you to a page that says “Sorry. No posts matched your criteria.”

Now, you may be saying: “what makes you think this is SK2’s issue?”

Well, this error appears at the bottom of the comment page that I can see when I’m logged in:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/abd/public_html/sitename/blog/wp-content/plugins/SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php on line 916

So — any thoughts?

Good answers, but not quite the right question:

Can I have the following installs both running on the same server and sharing the same blacklist database?

WP 1.2 / SK 1
AND
WP 1.5.1 / SK 2

Will SK1 and SK2 disagree with eachother? If not, I can upgrade half to SK2 real soon now and save all those kittens within a three mile radius! If not, I’ll have to wait until I upgrade all my commentable blogs.

SK1 and SK2, on different installs of WP will live together just fine in the same DB.
They won’t be able to share their blacklist, as the format used is different (but different versions of SK2 between themselves, will).

I never had any problems with 1.2 alpha 1 (or whatever the previous version was), but the interface on this one is MUCH nicer. Great work!

I’ve tried to make the theme I’m using (Manji2, if it matters…and yes, I’m aware of Rin, but I do not like it as much) “compatible” with Spam Karma. I cannot, for the life of me, find a “wp-comments.php” file. I have a wp-comments-post.php in my root, and then the comments.php in the theme folder in wp-content. I can’t find “/wp-comments-post.php” method=”post” id=”commentform”>” anywhere in either file.

What am I doing wrong?

By the way, I really love the way Spam Karma 2 looks in the admin panel. Great job!

SK2 beta gives me a 404 error when I go to Options and click SK2. I didn’t get that error on the alpha plugin, and yes, I am using wp1.5.1. No idea why it’s not finding spam_karma_2_plugin.php, the file is there and chmod’d right. Is it possible there is a path wrong or something? I dropped the whole folder in, just like the directions told me to.

Dave, I re-installed the upgrade for WP 1.5.1, and now your plugin works as intended. I don’t know why it didn’t work right the first time, all I can think of that would have made a difference is some quirky PHP-5 thing going on at the time I upgraded from alpha to beta on spam karma 2 + there was some strange things happening with the upgrade as I later found out thru reading the support blog (headers and such, which I found the updated file for late last night and installed).

All is fixed now. :)

I’ve been testing SK2 on my test blog (WP 1.5.1) with a 1.3 theme and I am getting the following error.

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/pdabruce/public_html/wpress/wp-content/plugins/spam_karma_2_plugin.php on line 903

Doesn’t happen on the CleanBreeze theme and I’ve added the comment hooks to the comments.php files.

Any ideas what to check? These 1.3 themes are for my wife’s blog but she is running WP 1.5.1

Nevermind about the above error, I have solved the problem. I took the current classic comments.php and modified it. All is working now.

Have seen it on a few websites and I find it annoying when my comments are characterized as SPAM. Maybe it should become slightly smarter.

Bruce,

I don’t know what you did — I had the exact same error with a WP Theme I had “ported” to 1.5.x. When I looked at the differences between the comments.php from the classic theme from 1.5.1, the “classic” theme lacked the do_action hook.

When I disabled the do_action hook, that error went away.

I have no idea why SK2 is having an error with the sk2_settings object and my theme. If there are themes that definitely have the do_action hook and work with SK2, please give me a pointer. Heck, the “default” theme in WP 1.5.1 doesn’t have the do_action hook.

Spam Karma 2.0

The inimitable Dr. Dave has just recently released Spam Karma 2.0, the WordPress 1.5.1 update to the awesome Spam Karma. The install was quick and painless and all seems to be well. My one quibble: I couldn’t use one-click and I can’t us…

Geoff, you are correct. I added the do_action hook to the comments.php and it didn’t work. So I just copied the current 1.5.1 comments.php from the classic theme and added back in my comment numbering ID and style. Works fine.

Dave I had a notice in SK2 (last week I think) that said SK2 beta 2 was out. Yet the page here still says beta 1. Is the archive here beta 2 or beta 1?

I haven’t upgraded yet (unless I was dreaming and never really saw the notice) because I have been unsure of the status of the archive on this page.

thanks
Bill

Has anyone else had problems with 404 errors being thrown up when SpamKarma2’s Spam Warning Message or Second Chance (Captcha) screen should be displayed?

I was doing some testing and when I try to submit a fake spam post (with three links in it), I don’t get the warning message, I get a 404 error. I did get the warning message once when I submitted a fake spam post with 4 links in it. Also, I’m not even sure if the captcha 2nd chance screen is being displayed.

A comment with four links submittted gets SpamKarma2’s warning message, like it should.

The 404 error and the warning message are both appearing at:

/wp-comments-post.php

Anyone have any ideas on where to begin?

Just a note: I got a blank screen here when I submitted the above comment/request. Perhaps a fluke?

Is anyone here … or is there somewhere else I should be to discuss this?

Here would be an appropriate place, but give the man a chance to respond. Not to put words in his mouth, but last I read DrDave had 4 jobs, so 24/7 support of his free software may be a little difficult. Be patient, he’ll be along.

115
Gregg Says:

Is a valid entry for the “regex entry blacklist”:

gregg|matt|jimmy|karren

And will this prevent comments from containing those names from appearing if I set SK2 options for Blacklists to strong? And the value for that blacklist entry to 100?

thanks

116
Gregg Says:

There seems to be nothing in the WiKi on the blacklist and I’m RegEx-illiterate. I’m good at copy-pasting from SpamAssassin resource sites, and I know that word pipe word pipe word is a list of ORd words such that any one match makes it true — that’d be enough for me if I could figure it out.

thanks for the fantabulatisic plugin!

oh but I wish on syntax errors the plugin would *not* show the failed expression to the would-be poster :(

First and foremost: if you use RegEx’s, be extra careful! and do some extensive testing (with the “approve logged-in users” filter disabled), as it is super-easy to kill all your comments with a bad move.

Now, for the format: it is the regular RegEx format, with *delimiters*… the way PHP requires them. PHP doc has some info on delimiters, Google will have tons of stuff on regex in general (but if someone feels like adding a quick page to the Wiki, please do :) )
To make it very short, all your regex’s must be between a unique character that acts as a delimiter, for example, you should input your example above as:
#gregg|matt|jimmy|karren# or /gregg|matt|jimmy|karren/ etc. (I recommend using ‘#’)

You need to escape special characters (e.g. ‘.’ becomes ‘\.’), but do not escape twice, as you may be inclined to if you have experience using RegEx in PHP (SK2 does the second escaping for you).

Re. error display, I agree, it shouldn’t show to the end-user… will be back working on code at the end of June…

Cheers everybody

I just installed SK2 on a week-old blog using WordPress 1.5.1.1. In Options | SpamKarma 2 | General Settings, I see the following line:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: curl_init() in ../wp-content/plugins/sk2_functions.php on line 145

The SK2 stuff is in my /plugins directory; there’s a /sk2_plugins directory below that one. That was the first tip under “troubleshooting” after my first try didn’t seem to go so well, so I did it.

Is the curl_init() line anything to worry about?

@Eddie:
I believe this error means that sk2 will not work correctly as some of the plugins will not be able to run. Looking at the code around that line in the sk2_functions.php file the error is because you host does not allow url fopen and does not have the curl php extension installed. This means that any of the plugins that check external pages such as the “TrackBack Referrer Check” will not work correctly – you can disable this plugin within the sk2 options page and rely on the other checks if you want.

The best solution is to find out if you host will allow one of “url fopen” or “curl”.

there is an error if i try to recover a comment:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare sk2_add_options() (previously declared in /www/htdocs/xxx/blog/wp-content/plugins/SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php:32) in /www/htdocs/xxx/blog/wp-content/plugins/SK2/spam_karma_2_plugin.php on line 30

any idea who to fix it?

Hello,

I am using SK2 b2 on WP 1.5.1.1. It works fine.

But I found that only trackback/pingback spams are kept in “recent spam harvest”, normal comment spams just disappear(I knew there are comment spams by looking into apache log).

Why?

SK2 rocks. One thing that scared me, though, is in the “Recent Harvest” tab, the button labeled “Purge comments older than:”. I didn’t want to click it, for fear that all my old comments would be deleted. Could you possibly change this to “Purge HARVESTED comments…” instead?

I am not scared of that feature – but I wish it worked for me. I get the following error:

Failed to purge comment spam entries.
Query: DELETE `newsblog_comments`, `newsblog_sk2_spams` FROM `newsblog_comments` LEFT JOIN `newsblog_sk2_spams` ON `newsblog_sk2_spams`.`comment_ID` = `newsblog_comments`.`comment_ID` WHERE (`newsblog_comments`.`comment_approved` = '0' OR `newsblog_comments`.`comment_approved` = 'spam') AND `newsblog_comments`.`comment_date_gmt`

This might be down an old version of MySQL running the on the server - have you come across this?

If people would like to try out the new improved RBL plugin, head on over to http://www.grooblehonk.co.uk/sk2/rbl-plugin/

Your plugin is the bee’s knees!! It has caught all my spam (550+ in like 4 days)!! keep up the absolutely FANTASTIC work!

I was wondering if this is true:

The trackback plugin says since fopen() isn’t active on my server (Dreamhost), I shouldn’t use it. However, I took a gander at the code, and it looks like it has an if statement looking for fopen, and if fopen isn’t active, it uses CURL. I activated it and it immediately caught the TB spammer that had been escaping other Spam Karma capture attempts. I was wondering if it’s just capturing him because I haven’t had any other Trackbacks or if this is in fact using the CURL libraries despite all warnings to the countrary.

Thanks.

Elana,

It’s working. The code that displays the warning is now incorrect and needs to be commented out. It’s simple to do, if you want.

See:
http://www.ushimitsudoki.com/wordpress/archives/2005/04/28/spam-karma-2-dreamhost-and-curl/

Jason -

Thanks. Nah, it doesn’t bother me all that much. I just wanted to confirm I wasn’t misreading the code.

Dave,
I am installing SK2 on my fresh 1.5.1.2 site using the Dimension 2k theme. I ran the compatibility check and got the following:

“URL http://www.davereed.org/wordpress/2005/06/16/test/#comments : Could not find Payload in comment form. Your theme is likely not compatible. Make sure you used a URL that contains your blog’s comment form, try again and, if still getting this result, please refer to SK2’s documentation.

“Temporarily disabling form payload check.”

Should I be worried is am I good to go?

dave

ushimitsudoki. jason: thanks for the curl implementation. I’m on Dreamhost as well and while SK1.? was catching my recent spate of trackback spam it wasn’t totally removing them from the DB (I think it was just removing the pointers so they didn’t show up on the entries) – this caused my “recent comments” box on my front page to still be displaying the spammed trackbacks.

Hopefully SK2 fixes this problem. Since I’ve been getting about 40 a night the last two days, hopefully I get another attack to confirm that this has been fixed.

Great work on the plugin, dave. Do you recommend going with all “normal” settings to start with?

Upgrade & Fighting Comment/Trackback Spam

Okay so I’m going to try to upgrade WordPress to 1.5.1.2. If the site goes away and/or totally gets hosed that is why. Wish me luck.
Update: Sweet. Everything is working. The comments showing up in “recent comments” isn’t nec…

132
Anonymous Says:

I’m having the same problems as #73 and #74. Except the fix in #74 doesn’t work for me.

Hi everybody,

I was on an extensive break (well, not a break per se, but a break from SK2 coding anyway), so sorry for lack of response to any bug reports you may have sent here or through email. I’m back on it and a new release of SK2 is planned for the end of the week that should hopefully bring even better stability and perhaps the last few small features and tweaking I meant to add… If you have any outstanding issue with SK2 and WP 1.5.1 that I haven’t contacted you about yet, please use the contact form above (under the “about” menu) to remind me…

Regarding the Curl/fopen problem: it’s a very small bug that displays an error message even though things are fine. It’s been fixed and will be in the next release, you can safely ignore it until then…

Settings should be fine on normal, only tweak them if you kinda know what you are doing or have special needs…

Cheers

Punishing Bad Behavior

It’s been two months now since I started the Bad Behavior project. I’m stopping for a moment to take a look back to see how far it’s come, and to glance at the journey ahead.

Dave: I’m having trouble installing this properly. I tried dropping the entire folder into my plugins folder as you suggest & that didn’t work (the plugin didn’t show up in the plugin list to activate).

Then I tried droping the subfolder & various folders directly into the plugin folder. At least the plugin showed up in my plugins list & I activated it. But now, I don’t see spam karma in my Options bar. Is this due to files being in the wrong folder or what do you think?

I just installed SpamKarma2 on my site. It seems to be working fine however all of the help links on the General settings page point to wiki pages on the wp-plugins wiki that don’t seem to exist. I don’t really have a good feel for how each plugin works and what the settings really do.
Looks like a great plugin though!

thank you, for doin’ a great job!

Dave,
Are there plans to eventually make SK2 compatible with your Wordpress Plugin Manager or has that idea been scrapped? I’ve been holding off on upgrading my wordpress installtion (from 1.5), just because I have a problem with the idea of upgrading a piece of software every other week like the WP folks would have us do. I’m a huge fan of the earlier versions of SK2, but haven’t upgraded to the most recent version.
Jabley

I’m getting the same error as Dunx … “Failed to purge comment spam entries.
Query: DELETE `imho_comments`, `imho_sk2_spams` FROM `imho_comments` LEFT JOIN `imho_sk2_spams` ON `imho_sk2_spams`.`comment_ID` = `imho_comments`.`comment_ID` WHERE (`imho_comments`.`comment_approved` = ‘0′ OR `imho_comments`.`comment_approved` = ’spam’) AND `imho_comments`.`comment_date_gmt`

Hello Dave,

SK2 crashes PHP on my server – very weird error !

[19762] EACCELERATOR: PHP crashed on opline 22 of load_plugin_files() at /home/CPANEL/public_html/wireless/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_core_class.php:65

I hope this can be fixed in a future version :)

and…..I’m the first to upgrade! woop woop (2.0 beta 3)!

ok, the update to beta 3 worked without any problem. but there is still a problem – i forgot to mention earlier.
if i go to “approved comments” and press “run selected filters” then the new karma values are added every time.
an example: the comment has 25 points because the commenter is logged in. now in run the filters again and the comment has 50 points. two times 25 because of being logged in. the same is happening for every other karma.

btw: how can i change this “1120161162 – Commenter granularity (based on email): 310 old comment(s) (karma avg: 5.4884249457827E+37), 3 recent comment(s) (karma avg: 25).”? the average karma has gone mad and i would like to fix it.

I’m getting blank pages when I try to load wp-admin/options-general.php?page=spam_karma_2_plugin.php

I’m running 1.5.2

Any idea what’s going on?

just upgraded to Beta3… noticed inthe logs somethign about a greylist and adding blogspot, livejournal, typepad and xanga to it… what’s the greylist? is it sort of an ‘almost blacklist’ that treats comments/trackbacks from there with more scrutiny? are there options for the greylist?

I tried looking in the wiki but couldn’t find anything on this.

otherwise, loving sk2. NO comment or trackback spam has gotten through and I don’t htink I’v ehad any false positives either.

Regarding Greylist: it’s is indeed, somewhat between white and black list… simply put, it tells SK2 to treat the domains as neutral. If there’s also a white or blacklist entry for a domain that has been greylisted, it is ignored.
I added this because of Blogspot (and figured I may as well cover the other major ones), which has been known to host spammers, and thus getting auto-blacklisted by SK2. Obviously we cannot blacklist the whole blogspot domain, nor give it a preferential treatment (since there are still many spam URLs coming from there), hence the greylist, that basically tells SK2 to ignore the domain altogether. Feel free to remove the greylist and either white or blacklist these… depending on how much tolerance you have for semi-spamming hosts.

[sorry for lack of doc/specs about this... barely had time to write code, kinda hoping somebody/people will show up and add to the wiki :D ]

No problem. sounds like great functionality, I just wanted to be clear on what it was since I saw it and it looked knew.

thanks again for SK and SK2. It’s been a godsend.

Jason: I got the blank pages too, until I realized I had accidentally uploaded everything into the wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_plugins directory. So the main SK2 files were still beta2, and the plugins were beta3 plus the regular beta3 files.

I just erased everything in the SK2 folder and uploaded it again, and it was fine.

i’d been having the trouble described in comment 52 and thought i’d drop a line explaining what fixed it:

i upgraded from 1.5.1.1 to 1.5.1.2. this wasn’t directly the cause though, i don’t think.

when i installed 1.5.1.1 (an upgrade from 1.2) i also installed a theme for the admin page. i believe something in that theme caused the errors i saw. when i installed 1.5.1.2, i did what the instructions said: deleted wp-admin/ and wp-includes/. when i logged back in i saw that the layout had changed on the admin pages: i’d zapped the theme i’d forgotten i’d installed.

just a troubleshooting tip: make sure you’re using the default admin pages, not a themed setup.

[...] The filter (which is Spam Karma 2) blocks spam using a series of criteria including the urls you post with your comment, the number of comments from your ip/email address approved before and some other more complicated factors. [...]

151
romu Says:

bonjour existe il un upgrade a partir de sk1 ou faut il tout virer et remettre ??

The plugin list is blank.

153
Andy Says:

I’d like to test the captcha-feature to see what they look like
(is the average user that visits my blog intelligent enough to use SK2-captchas?).
Which is the best way to test captchas?

[...] 自從好久以前裝了 spam-karma v1 就再也沒有 spam 出現, 最近我整個版面, 系統修改了不少, 所以順道過去 spam-karma 的網站看看, 才知道 spam-karma 2.0-beta 已經出了, 那就順道升一下版本好囉 :p [...]

[...] Just got a pop up in sk2 beta 3 saying there is now an update available to sk2 beta 4 So what are you waiting for, go get it ! [...]

I just upgraded to WP version=1.5.1.3, and SK 2.0 beta 4.

When I run the advanced compatibility check I get the error:
“Could not find Payload in comment form.”

This happens if I use my theme, the new default, or the new classic theme.

I saw the ‘easy fix’ suggestedby lordrich in #79, but there is no wp-comments.php in the site root of v1.5.1.3, or anywhere else that I can find.

Both v1.5.1.3 themes do have a file ‘comments.php’ which contain the line:
?php do_action(‘comment_form’, $post->ID); ?
just before the end of the form, is this not the hook required?

If yes, why doesn’t SK find the payload?

[...] I’ve added a new plugin which looks to be the preeminent solution to comment and trackback spam, Spam Karma II. I’ve tested it pretty estensively, and am truly impressed with its abilities; as one example, it blocked a trackback I attempted from the manual trackback pinger that otherwise would have been spam! [...]

Further to #156

I can see the 3 hidden SK2 inputs (time, ip, payload) in my page source code, so presumably I don’t in fact have a hook issue.

Pehaps it is just the Advanced Compatibility Check that is buggy?

Re #156
I’ve got it sussed…

The Advanced Compatibility Check was failing because I have checked the option:

‘Users must be registered and logged in to comment’

in the WP General Tab. If I uncheck it the test reports a pass.

I realise this means I don’t actually need SK at this point, but I just want the re-assurance it is all set to go if I want it.

Tinkering continues

I’ve been fooling around, trying to determine what will be the best way to protect my shiny new site from the various forms of blog spam that are out there. Right now it’s still set to disable comments by default (though trackbacks and pin…

[...] Had a lovely line-up of trackback spam flowing into the blog this morning, so I found, downloaded, and activated a WordPress plugin called Spam Karma 2. It worked. Thanks Dave! No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]

[...] Take that SPAMBITCHES, I know have SPAMKARMA installed and you bastards are going down. Spam me, I dare you. No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. [...]

[...] Now available for a Spam Karma 2 install near you: SK2 Moderate Plugin. [...]

[...] Feedback Rating Framework This new system in MT is directly related to controlling comment spam. The system sounds a lot like that in Spam Karma 2, where a base set of rules is applied to spam to generate a rating, and additional plugins can provide adjstments to that rating. Rather than tacking on the spam rating system as a plugin like Spam Karma, MT 3.2 includes the framework in the core. I feel torn on this behavior. [...]

[...] It is recommended that before using this, you install a spamkiller plugin to your wordpress folder, for exemple the famous SpamKarma [...]

[...] Installed Spam Karma 2. Very cool! Does whitelist, RBL checks, etc. Seems better than the old jank I was using. You need wordpress 1.5.x to run this. [...]

[...] Ich hoffe jetzt is erstma Schlu� mit Kommentarm�ll. SpamKarma2 von drDave verspricht ganz ordentlich zu funktionieren. Deutsche Erkl�rung gibts bei projektguerilla. Falls jetzt jemand nicht kommentieren darf mailt bitte an enzo�Tnzeferatu.de [...]

[...] But I have Spam Karma 2 now. Ha. [...]

[...] It is recommended that before using this, you install a spamkiller plugin to your wordpress folder, for exemple the famous SpamKarma. [...]

[...] A minor update to the SK2 Digest Plugin has been released to fix the following feature -”Link at top of email to spam section of SK2 pages doesn’t work” – current version is 0.951 and is available for download from the SK2 Digest Plugin page. I’m sure DrDave will pull this in to the next Spam Karma 2 release. « This entry is part of a series read the rest: 1, 2, 3, 4 » Comment on this post [...]

Can someone explain to me the ways you can use the SK blacklist? I have a nasty troll with unlimited IP access. I know how to use domain & IP blacklist. But what are the other options like Regex, Regex content, kumo & RBL? And is there any way to use them to defend against this jerk? Since he seems to use the same e mail address at least twice, can I add that to the SK blacklist?

BTW, none of my WP comment settings are working including blacklist keywords, etc. So SK is my only defense.

Installed SK2 and it’s very impressive in its power, except that (a) I have no idea what the color coding means and (b) it’s taken over approving comments that should not actually be approved. In other words, shouldn’t it still let me approve all comments that it does not identify as spam? Today, for example, SK2 let in two “approved” comments, one of which was definitely a piece of spam that only a human would have picked up. The comment was “hello”, and it appeared to be from someone who was likely looking for Google page ranking. This happened with another comment a couple of days ago.

Dr. Dave in a different comment thread in this blog told me that essentially SK2 ignores all your WP spam settings:

K2 doesn’t really look at email addresses, as they are generally meaningless for comment spam. Indeed, SK2 overrides regular WP spam settings since they would be redundant.

I’m not sure whether he means that SK2 overrides comment moderation settings as well. But I’ll tell you that all of my WP comment settings essentially stopped working too. It’s extremely frustrating. Westi has offered to create a new plugin I requested that will restore the Wp setting for forcing moderation on all new comments.

Personally, I think it was a mistake for SK2 to override comment settings (if that’s what it indeed does). There should be a way to get them to co-exist because WP’s comment settings do important things which SK2’s features don’t.

Thank you Richard. Yes, SP2 overrides my WordPress comment moderation settings. I’m using WordPress 1.5.2. SP2 is “approving” comments that it thinks are not spam. This is not proper behavior, IMHO, for any kind of software, I don’t care how good it is. I’d rather have false positives than comments being posted that I can’t review/moderate first. Since I’ve had no anti-spam protection for a little while, SP2 is definitely the problem, and from what some others are saying, it looks like this is a design flaw. What’s strange is about this situation is that there’s a SP2 general setting to “Automatically approve logged-in users above or equal to level” and I have it set to 10 since I’m the only registered user of my blog. I also have the drop-down user-level strength to Supastrong. So tell me, Dr Dave, how can SP2 be auto-moderating comments that are left by anonymous users when I have those two settings at their highest strength? The answer for me, though I’m not a programmer, on how to fix this issue would be to have all non-spam comments piped through to the comment moderation part of WordPress.

@David: The SK2 setting “Automatically approve logged-in users above or equal to level” is designed to allow you to auto-approve comments by registered users of a particular level and above. It is not designed to give negative karma to logged in users below this level but rather to ensure that comments by users above that level do no got through any of the other filters wasting computative time – all sk2 filters/plugins have karma levels above/below which they do/do not run so as to not run too many checks when something has been identified as good/bad already.

If you want SK2 to obey the WordPress option “An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below)” (under Options … Discussion) – Then you can use this sk2 plugin sk2-moderate-plugin which Richard mentioned above. I will be soon extending this plugin to support some more of the main WordPress comment moderation options as I have already offered to Richard.

As for the following comment:

I’m using WordPress 1.5.2. SP2 is “approving” comments that it thinks are not spam. This is not proper behavior, IMHO, for any kind of software, I don’t care how good it is. I’d rather have false positives than comments being posted that I can’t review/moderate first.

The way in which SK2 work is designed based on the fact that once you start getting a lot of comment spam coming in manual moderation becomes a chore and takes up a lot of your time – therefore if the comment passes through the SK2 checks and ends up with positive karma then it goes live straight away – this behaviour stops people double posting because there comment doesn’t appear and will in heated/busy discussions help the discussion flow much quicker – unless you sit infront of you computer 24/7 approving true comments that are sitting in moderation then you will find that enforcing the moderation as you suggest will stifle the discussion heavily.

The most important thing to remember is that if a comment slips through SK2 and ends up live that was spam enure that you mark it as spam using the SK2 admin pages – this way SK2 will learn that the IP used by the spammer and any urls in the comment / url of the spammers website are bad and add them to the blacklist so they won’t slip through again. :-)

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[...] Since I started blogging again I’ve noticed a huge increase in traffic and of course comment spam. So I’ve installed Spam Karma 2 in a effort to get things sorted. Good news is it seems to be working well already, I’m not sure how I managed to miss installing this plugin when I upgraded Geekpulp from wordpress 1.3. So if you wanna see how well the spam karma is doing you can check out its stats in the footer. [...]

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Since an upgrade from my hosting service (probably MySQL), the “Recent Spam Harvest” and “Approved Comments” do not work anymore. I get:

Can’t fetch comments.
Query: SELECT `posts_table`.`post_title`, `spam_table`.`karma`, `spam_table`.`id` as `spam_id`,`spam_table`.`karma_cmts`, `comments_table`.* FROM `wp_comments` AS `comments_table`, `wp_posts` AS `posts_table` LEFT JOIN `wp_sk2_spams` AS `spam_table` ON `spam_table`.`comment_ID` = `comments_table`.`comment_ID` WHERE `comment_approved` = ‘1′ AND `posts_table`.`ID` = `comments_table`.`comment_post_ID` ORDER BY `comments_table`.`comment_date_gmt` DESC LIMIT 30
SQL error: Unknown column ‘comments_table.comment_ID’ in ‘on clause’

(the same manual command in the “mysql” shell leads to the same error)

However, “select count(comment_ID) from wp_comments as comments_table” works fine, the column is present.

Do you know if there is a problem with table renaming in ON clauses? The following seems to work fine:

select a.comment_ID from wp_comments as a left join wp_comments as b on a.comment_ID=b.comment_ID limit 1;

MySQL 5.0.15.

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[...] Der Spam in den Kommentaren und Trackbacks nimmt zu. Ich habe soeben das Plugin Karma2 instaliiert. Sollte es zu Problemen kommen bitte Bescheid geben. [...]

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[...] In my never ending fight against comment spam on this blog I have installed a few different plugins. The most recent is Spam Karma 2 written by a guy dubbed “Dr. Dave”. It is pretty cool and extensible. That means if you want you can add your own plugins to the plugin to help fight the types of spam you are seeing. For instance my blog has been getting a bunch of anonymous posts with no content – to me that is spam. So, I cranked out a very simple, and easy Spam Karma plugin titled “Blank Comment Detector”. If your using Spam Karma 2 then feel free to grab my plugin. [...]

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[...] Over the past 7 days I saw my spam activity on this blog go from the normal 20-something posts per day to three days over 100! I thank my lucky stars for Spam Karma which did not let a single one get through despite some rather crafty attempts on the part of the spammers. Anyone else seen such a jump lately? [...]

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[...] Spam Karma 2 by dr Dave [...]

[...] 今天收到Spam Karma 2的信,說我的Blog好像有一個spam叫我去確認一下,一開始我還覺得納悶:”我有裝SKII ?!”一度以為是廣告信,後來順著他給的連結過去看,原來是我的舊百般厭倦… [...]

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