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Comment notifications, but without the comment body #1341
Description
Activity
Tagging #308 for completeness.
Not exactly a solution, but as a temporary measure, can you visit Preferences->Comments and set Email comments to author? to 'None' or 'All but spam'?
EDIT: We could extend this with another option in future: 'Just notification, no content'.
Hi @Bloke - that's pretty much what I've done already as a stop-gap. All the spam that gets through is classed as ham (not spam) by Textpattern, unfortunately -- which is making it a bit tricky. The email server has more stringent checking, and their email policy doesn't permit whitelist exceptions (somewhat annoyingly).
Right. So we probably need to revisit our heuristics (whatever they may be: I didn't even know we had any!) to update it for 2018 and make it better at ham/spam detection.
Or, radical outlook, pop a cap in the ass of the current comments system and modularise it so it's a self-contained unit - Admin panel, prefs, article integration, notifications and tags - eject it from core and then gradually iterate to improve the whole darn thing, tags and all, as a separate entity. Dunno.
My understanding is that there's room to add in known spam check endpoints (Spamhaus et al), and the feedback from there is what defines spam/ham. Out of the box, no spam check endpoints – so it's not really a surprise this is happening. In this case they're using a spam check endpoint, but its not effective…and I assume on those grounds if you defer to their authority, Textpattern is acting as it should.
Based on the info I have, I'm +1 in favour of modularising it, which then creates a heap of work to get it up to snuff. #308 is the marker for the comments overhaul, maybe best to subsume this issue into the outcomes or work involved with that and keep the noise level to a minimum.
Added note to #308 - closing this issue.
Is your feature request related to a problem?
Yes, minor problem at client, potential to grow.
What is the feature?
Article comment notifications in email without the comment content, just a hyperlink to the comment in the admin-side.
There's a comment spam campaign going on, it appears to include human submitters getting past the preview-then-submit tripwire on comments form. The email alert comes from the site server, passes through various commercial SMTP server(s) on various domains and the content is (rightly) classified as spam.
The knock-on effect after some weeks of this happening is that the Textpattern server IP is now considered to be sending spam, and has blacklist entries at 4 organisations. There are no other obvious adverse effects at present, and I can redeploy the server elsewhere, but I have a gut feeling this might affect more sites/people in future.
Potential solutions: