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

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

moonbird — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:18:39 -0800

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.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:20:58 -0800

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.

By: bshort

bshort — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:27:13 -0800

MT-Blacklist is what you might be looking for.

By: bcwinters

bcwinters — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:34:30 -0800

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.

By: moonbird

moonbird — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:37:56 -0800

i tried using my mt-blacklist and it didn't detect any spam, despite the landslide of crap.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:46:33 -0800

bcwinters, MT-Blacklist 2.0 coming soon

By: hyperizer

hyperizer — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:45:04 -0800

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.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 17:35:11 -0800

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!

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:01:16 -0800

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.

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:21:51 -0800

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.

By: samuelad

samuelad — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:22:44 -0800

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.

By: dg

dg — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 04:04:07 -0800

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.

By: moonbird

moonbird — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 04:38:43 -0800

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.

By: fooljay

fooljay — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 05:06:58 -0800

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.

By: angry modem

angry modem — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 06:40:30 -0800

Was it spam or a flood?