Is there a way in Movable Type to view and delete comment by comment?

July 29, 2004 3:18 PM

Could be a stupid question here- thought I had good comment spam protection, but alas, overnight I got hit with 3,300 comments. Is there a way in MT to view and delete comment by comment, is there a plug-in for such a thing, is there an end to the madness?! Thanks.
posted by moonbird to computers & internet (14 comments total)

MT 3 has a comment-editing panel where you can just select-all and delete (without the need to rebuild for each delete). If you haven't upgraded (and I assume you haven't) might be worthwhile just to get rid of so many spams.
posted by Robot Johnny at 3:20 PM on July 29, 2004

MT-Blacklist is what you might be looking for.
posted by bshort at 3:27 PM on July 29, 2004

Don't upgrade to 3.0 if you haven't already; MT-Blacklist isn't yet compatible with it and I can't imagine being able to use my blog without the protection of the blacklist.

MT-Blacklist also lets you delete in huge swathes without rebuilding between each one, so I don't think that's a reason to go to 3.0 in and of itself.
posted by bcwinters at 3:34 PM on July 29, 2004

i tried using my mt-blacklist and it didn't detect any spam, despite the landslide of crap.
posted by moonbird at 3:37 PM on July 29, 2004

bcwinters, MT-Blacklist 2.0 coming soon
posted by Robot Johnny at 3:46 PM on July 29, 2004

If you're using MySQL, you can delete from the mt_comment table all records with a certain comment_created_on date or comment_author or comment_ip.

I ended up just disabling comments on my e-zine.
posted by hyperizer at 4:45 PM on July 29, 2004

MT-Blacklist rocks, but it doesn't (unless I'm missing something) show you a list of all the comments in their entirety. The list view just has the poster's information, not the text of the comment they posted. Usually, this is enough to work with. Not sure what your needs are, though.

3,300? Damn, that sucks!
posted by scarabic at 5:35 PM on July 29, 2004

Make sure you keep grabbing the latest updated spam list and feeding it into MT-Blacklist every few days! Also, grab the one base link from your comment spam and add that too. For example, if you get spam that leads to aaa.something.com/index1.html and bbb.something.com/index2.html, add something.com to your add list in MT-Blacklist and it will ban all subdomains and pages on that server. Then hit de-spam and it will let you delete the bad comments in batches of 25 or more at a time.
posted by Asparagirl at 11:01 PM on July 29, 2004

I've only gotten about 3 pieces of comment spam in the 3 weeks since I implemented just the first two steps from this article.

And what they said regarding MT-Blacklist.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 12:21 AM on July 30, 2004

Actually, if you are sure that the last 3,300 consecutive comments are spam, MT Blacklist 1.6.4 will let you select all of those comments and delete them at once, not just in batches of 25. Click on De-spam, enter 3,300 in the "Search last _____entries" box, and then click the "All (i.e. no filter)" button. Hit the "Search" button and the last 3,300 comments will pop up ready to be deleted. Click "Delete" and they are gone forever. This will work whether you are using the most recently updated spam list or not, but you will definitely want to add the found URLs to your list, when the plugin offers you that option upon completion.

The no filter option, if I am not mistaken, just showed up in 1.6.4 and, in my opinion, makes the MT Blacklist much more useful, especially in cases like yours, moonbird.
posted by samuelad at 12:22 AM on July 30, 2004

You can also add the MT CloseComments plug-in, which disables comments on posts that are not on the main index page, which drastically cuts down the number of posts available for stinking rotten mongrel bastards to attack.
posted by dg at 4:04 AM on July 30, 2004

Thanks for all the tips- this weekend i'll upgrade to mt 3.0 and mt-blacklist 1.6.4 (currently running 2.63 and 1.6.2 respectively), and install that plugin.
posted by moonbird at 4:38 AM on July 30, 2004

The list view just has the poster's information, not the text of the comment they posted

There's a link on the despam page that says "toggle comment/trackback text". Click it.

Thanks for all the tips- this weekend i'll upgrade to mt 3.0 and mt-blacklist 1.6.4

Those two are NOT compatible. 1.6.4 is MT v2.x compatible. The upcoming (Sunday/Monday probably) MTB v2.0 is MT 3.0 compatible... Be warned.
posted by fooljay at 5:06 AM on July 30, 2004

Was it spam or a flood?
posted by angry modem at 6:40 AM on July 30, 2004