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Challenges Presented By The New Commenting System - Part 2

As many of us are discovering the benefits of the new comment filtering system, and the collaborative heuristic filters, some bloggers are finding an unfortunate corollary. If "n" number of people, reporting together that a given comment style constitutes spam, manage to get the new filter entry created in "x" number of days, "n / 2" number of people will require "x * 2" number of days to accomplish the same thing.

Taken to the extreme, 1 person reporting a given comment style as spam will require "n * x" days to get the new filter entry created.

As the more blatant spam, shared by more bloggers, is detected and added to the filters, the less blatant spam will become progressively more individual, and will require longer to create new filter entries. And an increasing number of individual bloggers, observing the spam taking longer and longer to be added to the filters, will start to question the validity of the new system.

Besides the individual bloggers questioning the new system, there will be more spammers protesting the new system.

As the new system becomes mature, we should expect more complaints about it. That is in spite of the filters eliminating progressively more spam. We will have to expect progressively more questions about the new system, even as the new system becomes more effective.

So as we see more complaints about inability to disable the new system, we have to realise that this does not indicate that there actually is a problem. And we must persevere, in spite of the complaints, and continue to flag the spam.

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Comments

Great post. Thank you!

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