I saw a post from yesterday, by Michael Heilemann (the guy that created the Kubrick theme for Wordpress). He was advocating against "advanced" spam blockers (like link counters and bayesian voodoo), and was suggesting just using a simple funky-looking-comments-go-to-moderation strategy, as an easy way to let people post comments without interference by well-meaning software.
So, I gave it a shot today. After months of absolutely zero spam on this blog, I turned off my spam blockers, and tried Michael's technique.
Big. Mistake. Sure, nothing actually got through to my blog, but those damned casino-viagra-poker spamroaches are pretty damned persistent. I had the pleasure of deleting several dozen spam attempts just this afternoon.
Sorry, Michael. I'm going back to Spam Karma, Spam Words, Three Strikes Spam, and Spaminator. I don't have the energy to be cleaning up after these mindless eaters-of-souls. I'm more likely to give up the whole blog thing rather than put up with that crap. So, to walk the fine balancing line, I'll re-enable the automated spam blockers, at the risk of theoretically inconveniencing the occasional human comment-poster (but I will never install a Captcha), to keep spam manageable. This is, after all, my blog. If it stops being fun for me, it stops altogether.