Now that I’m going to have to approve my own comment, I’ll take the opportunity to mention some of the broader spam categories that will trip the FA spam moderation: gambling, loans, insurance, drugs, cigarettes, hotels, flowers (yes, flowers), cell phones, and of course, enlarging or shrinking parts of the body. Many of the words that trigger moderation are related to those topics.

Every so often, a new spam favorite-of-the-month happens (anyone remember the fishing one a year or two ago?) and so those related keywords get added to the filter, and then after the particular attacks stop (and/or a lot of people start talking about that topic and start complaining about Fanny), then I’ll remove the word. I know moderation is tedious but unfortunately it’s a necessary measure that really does help cut out spam. I do try to approve comments when I can, so although they might not appear right away, they usually will appear at some point.

All that said, we seem to be doing better with spam since I installed a new spam killer a few weeks ago, and it’s made sifting through the moderated comments and captured spam much easier. So far it’s blocked 3,064 accesses in just the past seven days.