The Movable Type war on spam.

Recetly an updated version of Movable Type was released. The main feature upgrade was one declaring war on comment spam. Instead of writing the original URL a proxy is created that redirects you to the commenters site.

Shortly after that another upgrade was released. Still using the same technique only now assigning an ID to the URL.

This all seems nice was it not that this technique hurts legitimate comments. It hurts the trust relationship between a blogger and his/her reader. And well it is simply annoying.

You see I have this habbit of rolling over a link before clicking on it. This gives me the chance to have a look at my statusbar and see where the link will take me. The first solution of MT was still bearable because, despite the MT generated URL the original URL was still in the proxy. But now I have to look at a meaningless ID, an ID that gives me no clue of to where it will take me.

Now, because I don't take the time to memorize everbody's name and site on each blog I read, this results in visiting sites I don't want to visit.

It's a good thing MT wants to do something about the comment spam, but isn't there an alternative? Please.

Thanks to my lazyness I haven't upgraded yet, an I don't think I will. Unless it is possible not to use these proxy URL's.

20 januari 2004

Bloggen, English, MT, spam, Web

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