Way back in the early days of this site, when its pagerank crossed 5 or so and traffic started to pick up, I got hit by some pretty hardcore comment spammers. This was not hand rolled stuff, this was robot love, and lots of it. It brought the CPU to its knees, hitting my site with multiple sessions and scores of links in each comment.
Of course, we all know why folks comment spam – to gain search juice. My fearless sysadmin and I fought back with all manners of countermeasures, and we ultimately found a solution which pretty much defeated the robots – a neat little hack that pretty much ensures robots cannot get in. Humans, however, can still get in, in particular if they obey some simple rules – no more than two embedded URLs in the comment, and no previous record of bad behavior.
Well, I’m sad to say it seems that a new form of comment spam has sprung up – the human comment spammer. I’ve been somewhat bipolar about these guys – I mean, they have to earn a living, and sometimes their attempts at feigning relevance are hilarious – but it’s time to draw the line. More often than not, they leave relatively inane comments, like the one in the title of this post, and are nearly always hopelessly polite. They usually have no more than one link, often to some random site in Germany or Bulgaria looking for search wuffie.
I’m tired of it, and so I’m declaring here, and now, that I’m going to get cruel with my comment culling. If the comment doesn’t add value, I’m going to bong it. If you’re a normal person who isn’t a comment spammer, and you are getting bonged, by all means email me and tell me what a d*ck I’ve been, and I’ll restore your comment. But a great site is all about a great conversation, and it’s my job as the den mother to lay down some rules from time to time.
OK. I feel better already.
PS – This is NOT a note about my frequent or even sometimes commentators, I LOVE your thoughts, and pray you keep them coming…