bug in writeback leading to lots of spam

I was getting lots and lots of random word comment spam this week until
I noticed that they all had an empty "name" field. I was pretty
surprised to find that the writeback plugin wasn't actually enforcing
required fields. I added this into my writeback+akismet version last
night and you can get it here:

http://kevin.scaldeferri.com/dist/writeback_akismet

If you use another variant of writeback, it should be fairly easy to
backport the changes.

-kevin

Looking at your page, it seems like the comment form isn't showing up.
I'm not sure how you had it set up previously, but it seems like some
stuff is missing from your story.html. Mine looks like:

<li class="story">
<h2 class="storytitle">;
<a href=";$url/$yr/$mo_num/$da/$fn.html&quot;
name=";$fn" rel="bookmark&quot;>$title</a&gt;
</h2>
<p><span class=&quot;date";>$yr-$mo_num-$da $ti</span>
<?$path> in <span class=&quot;path";><a
href=&quot;$url$path">;$path</a></span><;/?>
&lt;/p>

<div class=&quot;storybody">
$body
&lt;/div>

<div class=&quot;storyfooter"&gt;
<p class=&quot;permalink"><a
href=&quot;$url/$yr/$mo_num/$da/$fn.html">;permalink&lt;/a>
- <a href=";$url/$yr/$mo_num/$da/$fn.html#comments&quot;>comments</a>
<;/p>
&lt;/div> <!-- storyfooter -->

<?$path_info unlike=&quot;(^[^\.]+/?$)|(^$)|(index\.\w+$)&quot;>
&lt;div class=&quot;comments&quot;>
<a name=";comments&quot; />
<;h3>Comments</h3>
$writeback::writebacks

<h3>Leave a comment<;/h3>

$writeback::writebacksform
<;/div>
</?>
</li>; <!-- story -->

-kevin

On Jul 1, 2006, at 10:54 PM, Robert Thomas beau Hayes Link wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 10:50:22AM -0700, Kevin Scaldeferri wrote:
&gt;> I added this into my writeback&#43;akismet version last
>> night and you can get it here:
>; Kevin,
&gt;
> I'm very excited to get the askimet addition to my comments; I had
> unplugged comments in frustration a while back. But I'm not having any
> luck getting this to work. The site in question is
> http://www.oblios-cap.com, the only plugin currently enabled is your
> writeback-askimet. Previously I had used the figlet captcha plugin
> with
> my writebacksplus, but that wasn't enough to keep my spam levels lower
>; than my legit comments. As part of my troubleshooting to date I have
> pulled out all plugins except your writeback-askimet (renamed to
> 1writeback and set to 755 permissions) and I have refreshed my
> writeback.writebacks and writeback.writebacksform to their original
> state (by copying them in from the writebacksplus.zip at Doug's site.)
&gt;
> Here's my story.html:
>
&gt; ^I^I^I^I&lt;h3>&lt;a name=";$fn"&gt;</a&gt;$title&lt;/h3>$
> ^I^I^I^I&lt;p><strong>$tagging::tag_list<;/strong&gt;</p&gt;$
> ^I^I^I$
&gt; ^I^I^I^I$body$
> ^I^I^I<p>$
>; ^I^I^I^I&lt;a href=";$url/$yr/$mo_num/$da#$fn">static link</a></em><br />$
&gt; ^I^I^I^I$writeback::writebacks_response$
> ^I^I^I</p>$
&gt;
> I'm grateful for any clues y'all blosxom guru's can send my way, and
> plan to devote a few hours to this on Monday. Many thanks!
&gt;
> --
> Robert Thomas "beau" Hayes Link
> (c)2006ISR http://www.semanticrestructuring.com
&gt; Discussion, News and Chat at:
> http://lawboards.semanticrestructuring.com/
> "In dreams one is not tethered to earthly limitations."--G.T.Snail

Kevin,

Thanks for giving me a look at your story.html. Apparetnly that's not
where the problem lies. After trying directly modifying my story html
to include $writeback::writebacks and $writeback::writebacksform I still
had nothing. Next I tried directly using your story.html as listed in
your last email on my site. Likewise, nothing; $writeback::writebacks
and ...form are not getting written (or their values are null) and I'm
at a loss to guess why.

--
Robert Thomas "beau" Hayes Link
(c)2006ISR http://www.semanticrestructuring.com
Discussion, News and Chat at:
http://lawboards.semanticrestructuring.com/
"In dreams one is not tethered to earthly limitations."--G.T.Snail

Kevin,

I still don't know what went wrong before, but I was able to move some
files from another domain which was still set up with my old system, and
this seems to have fixed things and your akismet enabled plugin worked
as a drop-in replacement. I'd be happier knowing how to fix whatever
was wrong before, but I'm not gonna complain. ;) Thanks again for
creating your verison of the plugin.

--
Robert Thomas "beau" Hayes Link
(c)2006ISR http://www.semanticrestructuring.com
Discussion, News and Chat at:
http://lawboards.semanticrestructuring.com/
"In dreams one is not tethered to earthly limitations."--G.T.Snail

On Jul 3, 2006, at 7:30 AM, Robert Thomas beau Hayes Link wrote:

> Kevin,
&gt;
> Thanks for giving me a look at your story.html. Apparetnly that's not
> where the problem lies. After trying directly modifying my story html
> to include $writeback::writebacks and $writeback::writebacksform I
> still
>; had nothing. Next I tried directly using your story.html as listed in
> your last email on my site. Likewise, nothing; $writeback::writebacks
> and ...form are not getting written (or their values are null) and I'm
> at a loss to guess why.
>

Sound like you managed to get things working already, but you might
want to check your server logs. Maybe that will have some clue about
what was going wrong.

-kevin

On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 10:34:34AM -0700, Kevin Scaldeferri wrote:
&gt; Sound like you managed to get things working already, but you might
> want to check your server logs. Maybe that will have some clue about
> what was going wrong.
Failure to glean anything useful from my server logs is part of what
drove me to the methods I used. At least I left myself with a rollback
path of sorts.

--
Robert Thomas "beau" Hayes Link
(c)2006ISR http://www.semanticrestructuring.com
Discussion, News and Chat at:
http://lawboards.semanticrestructuring.com/
"In dreams one is not tethered to earthly limitations."--G.T.Snail