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…
I am very interested in robot love and countermeasures. 😉
John,
The thing that bugs me are people who only add a comment to direct you to their blog/site. Something like “nice post, check out my site http://www.abcd.com“.
It is Extremely difficult for Extremely Tight Budgeted Developers – especially in some less afluent foreign countries to promote their Creative Ideas and Betas – this and forums are the only cost effective avenue for some of the very “less money’ed” Geeks…
One never knows what genius idea is floating around in Cyberspace only limited by finances.. . and to a lesser degree (through no fault of their own) language barriers that hinder compelling marketing and promotion….
Even though it is technically unethical –
as long as it is done with Politeness and an attempt at relevance – perhaps there could be some empathy, perspective, and indulgence… – can anyone truly say, they wouldhave been completely immune to such free-form acts if the fate-tables were turned????
This is in an ironic sense, a charitable contribution to the world-wide cyber-family by allowing these mild deviations – as long as they stay within bounds.
Shouldn’t this be how you moderate comments anyways?
While total censorship is quite stupid, I think one would and should moderate comments so that when people come to the site they aren’t finding a bunch of crap. Essentially, destroy the noise and leave only signal. Spam or not, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Yes! I am very interested in robot.
Check this out John:
http://www.supersonicfeet.com/2005/11/16/have-a-hug/
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