Developers Dries Buytaert and Benjamin Schrauwen have announced the release of an all new anti-comment spam system called Mollom. Since Dries is the mastermind behind the community-building CMS Drupal, Mollom seems to have a wider remit than you might find with comparable systems like Akismet.

They’re not just going after the usual automated comment spam that most anti-spam focuses on. Mollom allows you to look at the entire spectrum of user contributed content and analyse it against a number of factors: spam, offensive/inflammatory content, aggressive content, etc.

I’ve installed the Mollom module on my personal Drupal website and I’m thinking seriously about installing it on a couple of other Drupal sites that I’m working on that are getting hit heavily with user account spam*. There’s an option in the config page for Mollom that indicates it can watch out for spam user accounts, which will be a godsend for anyone who runs an open community.

What Does Mollom Protect?

Well, looking at the configuration page (in Drupal 6), you can protect all your contact and comment forms, user registration and password request forms and input forms for any node type, such as blogs, pages, polls and stories. That’s pretty cool and covers all the possible ways a user (or a spam-bot) might try to enter spam on your site.

Effectiveness?

It’s too early to say. Give it a couple of days and we’ll see. My personal blog isn’t very heavily trafficked, so I may install it on another community site I’m working on to see how it handles user account and content spam.

Mollom works on three classifications: good content, bad content and content it is unsure of. When it’s unable to make a classification, Mollom will present a CAPTCHA box to the user to verify their input.

Getting Started With Mollom

There’s a fairly comprehensive post about Mollom over on Dries Buytaert’s blog that should get you up and running in no time. Unlike Akismet, which allows you to use the same key across multiple websites, Mollom requires you to create a key set for each website you plan to run it on.

It only takes a moment or two to get up and running, so visit the Mollom website for more information.

* User accounts that are created by software for the purposes of spamming.