Some questions:

a) How compatible is this stuff with MT 3.34?
b) Fearing conflicts, I have turned off "over five links -> moderation" featur eon MT-Blacklist; what kind of conflicts between SpamLookup and MT-Blacklist can occur and how should I deal with them?
c) Your .pl script had a typo, so I had to add /mt/ to the directory listing for the "Despam" feature to work (but maybe this is how stuff is set up only on my own server).
d) Is there any way to modify the script so that it really deletes the junk posts instead of archiving them in the Junk folder? (What's the rationale behind keeping them, anyway?)
e) Finally: your opinion - why does SpamLookup suck so badly, compared to MT-Blacklist?! The same guy made it...so why'd he make it *worse* than before?

Hope this doesn't get deleted as blogspam, heh,

-- Mike ;)

Mike, here are answers:

a) To be honest, this is not my primary anti-spam tool right now (I use mod_security, but that is a separate topic). That said, this plugin is still enabled in my MT 3.33 installation and still catches spam. So it does work, and I am not aware of any incompatibilities.

b) Don't worry about that one. This plugin doesn't implement all of the Blacklist feature, it merely scans each comment / trackback against the content of the blacklist. It doesn't implement any of the link counting features -- you can use SpamLookup for that if you want.

c) Probably your server, but I could have done a better job coding that part so that it works no matter what ;)

d) No. Since this plugin hooks into MT's junk filters, you can't tell it to delete completely. There are a few reason you want them to go to the junk folder. Number one is that sometimes a valid comment gets junked -- if it was deleted, you would never know, and you wouldn't be able to publish it.

e) First, different guys made MT-Blacklist and Spamlookup. Second, spamlookup does actually suck -- it is actually quite capable. The difference between the two approaches is that MT-B included a master blacklist that was continually be updated -- whereas SpamLookup doesn't have this. SpamLookup ships with a blank filter list. Because of this, out of the box, it isn't very effective. But if you added a long list of words and patterns to block, it can be just as effective as MT-B. Most people don't have the knowledge or the time to compile such a list, so in practical use, spamlookup ends up being ineffective.

Thanks for the fast reply, Mark! You have been very thorough in answering my questions.

Now, I guess, I want to learn more about mod_security. Ever since my upgrade to MT 3.34, I've been flooded with spam, and I guess I want better protection now.

Thanks in advance for your time! ;)

Oh, another plug in I might need!

Actually I was just looking for reassurance that MT_blacklist will still work with MT3.3.

I'll have to try this out once I'm stable and running on 3.3

What I like about blacklist is it deletes the obvious spam. I get 300-500 a day so I don't want to have to look at the junk folder and glance at the completely obvious ones and maybe miss a real comment. I like looking in there and only having a few dozen I need to look at...

Thanks!