If you are part of the blogosphere, whether you are a blogebrity or (like me) toil away in blogscurity, you are probably aware of the First Universal Truth of Blogging: Comment spam is a royal pain in the blogterior. ¹I don’t know that this is actually the First Universal Truth of Blogging, but writing about the Second (or worse, Thirty-Fifth) Universal Truth of Blogging isn’t quite as relevant or … Continue reading

Fortunately, plugins like Akismet have proven (at least in the case of this particular blog) to be very effective at dulling the pain to a large degree. Akismet has caught more than 155,000 spam comments and trackbacks since I installed it, ²I know this because of the friendly message on my comment administration page that says, “Akismet has caught x spam for you since you installed it.” Where x is currently 155,632 but will … Continue reading and that means 155,000+ comments about bizarre (and often illegal) sex practices, bizarre (and often illegal) sources for prescription drugs, and bizarre (and often illegal) quotes for car insurance that you never see. Akismet isn’t perfect; it occasionally captures a legitimate comment, which means I have to monitor my spam queue just to make sure there’s not a comment from Dave in there. ³No, the other Dave. Akismet also lets a handful of spam comments through to my moderation queue every week, but on the whole I’d say it’s got a better than 90% accuracy rate at catching obvious spam.

The obvious spam that Akismet misses are easily spotted and dealt with accordingly; they usually contain dozens of links to sites of dubious nature. It’s the clever spam, the stuff that makes at least a minimal effort to be relevant to the original post, that sometimes throws me for a loop. Here’s a sample that I moderated today, posted on my review of the movie Transformers:

From: Ford Lover [Okay, there’s the first tip that this isn’t entirely legit, but maybe it’s just a guy who really likes Fords. I’ve known a few of those in my thirty-five years.]
Comment: I wasn’t as thrilled about this movie. I would like to see a Ford transform and beat some Chevy’s! [Hmm, that’s actually kind of germane to the discussion. There are no links to obnoxious websites in the comment, which is good. And, hey, there’s a punctuation error! How human! Maybe I should let this one through…]

Except that Ford Lover’s website (which his/her name would link to, should the comment be approved) isn’t a blog, personal page or even a MySpace/Facebook profile, it’s a car dealership ⁴Sorry, Ford Lover, I’m not going to say which one. with a streaming video ad that automatically plays when the page is loaded.

I’ve seen this type of comment creeping in for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve been on the fence as to whether or not to allow them simply because, at first glance, they do appear to be relevant to what passes for the conversation around here. I’ve even been tempted to strip out the annoying link and approve the comment, but that would open the door to a barrage of spam from the same individual/IP address. ⁵In theory, once I’ve approved a comment from an e-mail or IP address, future comments from the same address won’t be held for moderation or marked as spam. Which doesn’t explain why … Continue reading

Plus, there’s nothing in the actual content of the comments of this nature that really compels me to respond to them. I suppose I could start a big GM-versus-Ford back and forth with “Ford Lover”, but for the most part I just don’t see the comment adding much, despite its initial apparent relevance.

So, here’s the deal: If you’re trying to sell something, go away. If you link to a site that isn’t your blog or other personal page (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster ⁶Just kidding. or the like.) or a page that isn’t immediately relevant to the content of your comment (e.g., citing a source, linking to a Wikipedia entry or an article on SciFi.com or a page on IMDb) I’m going to dump your comment into my spam queue and you won’t have an opportunity to establish a dialog with me and the readers of this site. Do you work for or own a car dealership? Too bad. Don’t link to it. I work for an insurance company, but you will never see a link to a site trying to sell you insurance here. Not going to happen.

Sadly, the spammers aren’t going to abide by this rule; I’ll keep seeing the same type of garbage day after day, ⁷Bring it home, baby, make it soon. but now I won’t hesitate for even a second before I dump it into my spam queue. I’ve established a rule, and that feels good.

EDIT: This comment from “Seamus Burns” appeared in my spam queue only a few hours after I wrote the post. I didn’t immediately notice that the commentor’s website is a rate-comparison site for hotels in Singapore until after I had read through the comment twice trying to parse it:

It was cool to compare the comment and start to just hang out. Ford Lover was the First Universal Truth. Anyway, as I write this at links next morning, I still have no links in my pack – we weren’t able to dry it overnight.

EDIT: (21 August 2008) Dammit, here’s another one, this time commenting on my post-Christmas 2007 entry:

Christmas was great… my son actually jumped with glee a few times. And, you know its a good year when someone tells you that hearing from you was the best present of the day. I think I actually felt my grinch exterior sloughing off… I may even hang a wreath or something next year

Just found your blog and etsy shop – and I’m a fellow etsian. I agree – the word of mouth and how things move around are very interesting and it’s great to hook up with other’s to spread the word. Your markers are great – different and not the everyday that you find out there

Ooooo, if only I need new something like same … I’ll check yours out some time again. thank you.

First off, I don’t have an “etsy shop”. I’m not against Etsy, ⁸Frequent commentor Nycteris has an Etsy shop where she sells handmade jewelry and some seriously awesome clay sculptures of little dragons and other beasties. I don’t feel at all hypocritical … Continue reading but this commentor and I aren’t fellow anything. Second, it’s August. Christmas 2008 is four months away. Yet this commentor talks about putting up a wreath “next year”. That bugs me for some reason.