I am sufficiently annoyed by by the sudden recent burst of evil spam comment posts on my blogs that I've gone off and made a suggestion list for extensions to MovableType to deal with spam posts. Fortunately, it turns out that Jay Allen is working on MT-blacklist for MovableType users to help try to block spam posts. He indicates that he likes some of my suggestions and so I'm responding by making ever more additional suggestions.

If you are a blogger using MovableType go get an account on the MT support forums and add your own two cents on the suggestions offered and the features that Jay is working on for MT-blacklist. Blog spamming shows every sign of being about to take off and become a really bad problem. I got 30 spam posts Saturday morning and 50 Sunday morning. In each case they all were made in about 2-3 minutes. Consider the possibilities once many more spammers start attacking the blogs with automated tools.

I think we might need to start implementing mechanisms to require commenting visitors to register for a user name and password with an authentication system that prevents bots from doing automated registration. Then maybe limit new users to few posts per day until they are shown to be responsible posters. A cross-blog user registration system could reduce the overhead hassle of such an approach.