TheAgitator.com
Comments awaiting moderation
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011Given my new status as guest blogger and to save Radley a huge buildup of comments when he gets back, I am going to screen a bunch of comments that are awaiting moderation and let them through. I see there are also a bunch that look like spam, so if you posted something and it doesn’t show up today, I may have accidentally sent it to the spam folder. Most of these comments are under the “He won” article.
One more thing: I will not approve any posts meant for other guest bloggers unless they wish me to. Also, I don’t plan to approve any ping backs. I’ll let Radley deal with those.
[Posted by Dave Krueger]
And remember, folks: You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!
Too spammy?
I don’t get these people that leave ‘spam’ messages on blogs. I started a blog a couple months ago, and just now figured out that a lot of my ‘comments’ are just people trying to leave a link to whatever.
What is wrong with these people?
But Dave, it’s got what plants crave!
WordPress does have some spam filters that will screen out bot generated posts, but I always had to screen a bunch of them manually anyway. I find it a bit depressing that people would put so much effort into bypassing your screening process. It’s no wonder a lot of peopl esee capitalism as deceptive and crooked. Everyone has to contend with spam in some form or other (including telemarketing and junk postal mail) and it’s easy to see it as a natural extension of the free market.
Of course, our enthusiastic support for thr free market doesn’t mean we believe its practitioners are saints. Hell, there are just as many sleazy crooks in business as there are in government. The difference is that you can always choose to avoid a crooked business which is something you cannot do with government.
Those aren’t people, Bob. That’s why some blogs (e.g. on blogspot) require a Captcha to comment, to filter out the robots.
Dave,
Yeah, the spam filter nails the clear ones, a post full of that latin filler used as placeholder text is obvious even to me. I’ll have to ratchet up the anti-spam on WordPress a notch.
The ones that got to me were the ones that, in hindsight, are really cleverly designed, if not cold and heartless trojans. Like “Love the blog! I really like your writing style!” just to leave a name with a link to some site. That’s just mean.
What possible ROI could these people be getting? They can’t possibly be getting paid to put these comments on my site.
I know these comments shouldn’t bother me, as I should not derive feelings of self worth from the random comments of others, but I gotta say, when I realized what was going on the other day, I felt a bit deflated.
Matt,
Yeah, I get that these are bots, but someone set up the script, someone must be getting paid to post messages like that just to put a name with a link.
I just find it incomprehensible that there is enough of a ROI to make this not the biggest waste of time ever.
Clearly, there is more money in internet advertising than I’m aware of.
As annoying as spam is, it works a tiny, tiny fraction of the time. Occasionally, someone clicks the link and buys something or exposes their computer to something malicious. And that tiny, tiny fraction, multiplied by thousands, tens of thousands, and maybe even hundreds of thousands of people generates lots of income.
A little work, a lot of aggravation for most of us, and a lot of profit for a few.
Oh. I nearly forgot.
Timex … takes a licking, and keeps on ticking!
“Hell, there are just as many sleazy crooks in business as there are in government.”
Maybe that used to be true, but I think the increase in government power over the past few years (decades?) has caused a corresponding migration of sleaze toward the centers of power. If they’re not directly involved in government, they’re either lobbying it or currying favor with it.
BTW, I’ve never had a comment delayed before it posted; I wasn’t aware that Radley moderated these deals.
I think part of the motivation of site owners to use bots and pay people to cruse blogs and forms leaving comments is to Google bomb their sites, to increase the site’s page ranking in search results.
CharlesWT,
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. In addition to the generic “Great blog, I love you, you’re so great!” type of pandering spam, I also got a lot of attempts at generic “Carrot and stick” comments designed to look like the thoughtful commentary of someone who actually read the article.
The intent, it seems, is to create a higher grade of spam that gets past the filter and persists in order to fuel the google beast.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that this is what is actually behind many of the “Work at home” scams you see advertised.
Brandon,
Dig it. The rules on this site are pretty lax, but you can get the “Held for moderation” message if you put in too many links.
The amount of spam Radley gets must be absolutely Biblical.
WordPress has selectable rules (and pluggins) that allow different levels of intervention for comments. I haven’t looked at how Radley has his set, but my blog automatically permits subsequent comments from a given visitor once I’ve approved his first one. It also can depend on whether and how many links you include in a comment. Even if you’re an approved commenter, posting multiple links in a comment might send it to moderation.
Bob wrote:
“In addition to the generic ‘Great blog, I love you, you’re so great!’ type of pandering spam, I also got a lot of attempts at generic ‘Carrot and stick’ comments designed to look like the thoughtful commentary of someone who actually read the article.”
I see a LOT of the latter over at StoptheDrugWar.
I’ve seen my comments moderated on this blog in two cases:
1) More than one link in the comment
2) I change my name and leave the email address the same as always. I think one time my name was “Fake Barack Obama (Omar)” – while I was not trying to conceal my identity, WordPress thought I was. I suppose this is to keep people from pretending to be someone else.
I’ve have several comment delayed by moderation because I had links in them. I add links for lots of reasons, usually to clarify which article in one of Radley’s “Morning/Afternoon/Evening Links” links I was commenting on, but also often to mention a related article or to cite a reference for some fact or figure I mention.
I certainly understand the value of screening posts with links to Make Money Fast At Home! or Bigger Boobs Now! links. But, I wish the software was smart enough to use a local whitelist of the URLs Radley has linked to in his blog post and maybe a more general whitelist of sites that he generally feels confident won’t be spam links, like wikipedia, NYT, reason.com, etc. That way, people could post clearer, more informative comments without making extra work for Radley.