May 14, 2006
Be Stingy With Links in Comments

The upgrading of the site to Movable Type 3.2 put a restriction on live links in comments.  A comment with two or more live links, such as this one, will be held for approval by the author of the post.  It's a clumsy attempt to limit spam, as I understand it.

For now, if you need to put more links in a comment, make them bare links, such as this one: http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/05/nsa_thread.html. Or be prepared to wait for the author to notice that your comment needs his permission.

Thanks to Stefan for explaining this so promptly.  And for all the work he does to keep this site going well.

(The link to Just One Minute has no special meaning here; it was just handy when I needed an example.)

Correction: It is two or more live links, not three, as I originally wrote.  I have corrected the text above.

Posted by Jim Miller at May 14, 2006 04:22 PM | Email This
Comments
1. My comment to your "Useful Net References" had only two links, but still got sent to the moderation queue. Granted, they were not bare, but it was only two.

Unpleasant surprises like this were the primary reason I resisted upgrading my blog. The various versions of Moveable Type have some seriously different implementations of fairly basic tasks, and changeovers are a pain. I only upgraded once, and that was when the Berkeley flat database I was using flatlined, and I had to switch to an SQL database. If my hosting company had not been so helpful, I would have thrown in the towel at that point.

Posted by: timekeeper on May 14, 2006 07:01 PM
2. http://www.taxpayersnetwork.org

Posted by: TB on May 14, 2006 11:32 PM
3. Timekeeper - You are right. Two links will do it. But you are now getting a message that your comment is being held for approval.

But two bare links will work, for example:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025514.900?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19025514.900
www.jimxc.com

Posted by: Jim Miller on May 15, 2006 04:51 AM
4. This is actually due to a setting in the Spam Lookup plugin, not Movable Type itself, and you can edit it. You can find info about the setting in the manual.

http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/docs/3.2/k_preinstalled_plugins/spamlookup/link_limits.html

Posted by: Sarah on May 15, 2006 09:07 PM
5. bump

Posted by: alphabet soup on May 15, 2006 09:32 PM
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