Aaron--
I'm wondering whether there was a recent software upgrade on the articles side which left a security hole or whether the security hole was there and someone just found it, or whether our settings got changed somehow. The last few days there has been a significant upsurge in Spam comments on the Articles side--twenty-one that I deleted this afternoon after having deleted at least ten on Friday and more on Thursday, if I recall correctly. It looks like someone has figured out how to get past the Spam filters. (Of course, it could be nothing more than that the software has suddenly been recognized as in popular use and so is being targeted by more Spammers; I'm not sure how many such posts have been blocked, because I don't usually note that.)
Anyway, it's a bit of extra work but not overly burdensome, and I thought I'd call attention to it in case there's been a change that can be fixed.
--M. J. Young
Not sure. Maybe it's related to the same problem that was causing those spam filter error messages we were seeing a little while back. The filter is hosted by a third party, which checks each new comment against a central database, so something might've gone screwy on their end.
I did check comments last night and earlier this morning and didn't notice any new (uncaught) spam, so it's likely it fixed itself.
The flood does appear to have receded. Thanks for checking.
--M. J. Young