MT-Blacklist: will it ever get updated again? Steal my current list!
A guy named Jay Allen created a plugin for Movable Type called MT-Blacklist. This plugin automates comment spam removal and made my life as a blogger much easier. I was so impressed with it I even donated some money toward this free plugin -- not a lot of money, mind you, but what I could spare at the time. Pretty regularly, I'd go to the newly updated list and add in the latest additions, and I love that my efforts were also contributing to the MT-blacklist clearinghouse. A true community tool.
Only, I noticed a few weeks ago that the list was not being updated -- that it stopped being updated as of October 9. So I wondered what was going on.
Jay's MT-Blacklist plugin was one of the winners the plug-in contest that MT ran when it decided that maybe they should reward the people that made MT functional enough to be able to charge a lot of money for MT instead of giving it away for a $20 donation. Which was cool. Eventually, MT got around to offering Jay a job. Also as it should be, since droves of people would've abandoned MT long ago if not for Jay's plugin.
Jay took the job, which involved a move from Budapest, Hungary to San Francisco, CA. Hence, no blacklist updates. I was surprised at this, since I assumed it was all automated, but I guess it has to be moderated for some reason. I don't speak CGI, so I don't know what the deal is.
I tried to find out when blacklist updating will resume, but to no avail. I hope it's soon. It's a service I would subscribe to for the MT installations that I am not planning on moving to pMachine or ExpressionEngine (I am migrating neurotwitch to pMachine one of these days, just as soon as I have a few spare hours to work on the design. And all the new blogs I've built since June have been on the pMachine/EE platform).
At any rate, since I needed an updated blacklist, I created one based on two blogs I tend (this one and westportnow.com) and merged them, cleaned up extraneous stuff, and have a list updated as of today. You can download my list here. It has 3,036 entries as of today. (Egad that's a depressing statistic -- all those slimy spammers, particularly that bob idiot ... )
And if anyone finds out when MT-Blacklist updates will resume, please let me know. (Or even if it's not going to resume ... which is what I fear.)
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