Comment spammers win one
The comment spammers have at least partly won. If they can change your behavior and your attitudes, they’ve won, or at least you’ve lost. If too much email spam makes you stop using an email account, or the threat of comment spam keeps you from allowing comments on your blog, then even though it’s a battle they didn’t realize they were fighting, they’ve still won. With me, the comment spammers have won by making me look at every comment on every weblog with a jaundiced eye.
There are a number of possible innocent reasons why someone would comment on Sam Ruby’s blog browser format entry with a comment that happens to look just like the last round of spam comments I saw, with the added feature of linking to a site which, despite having the keywords in the domain name, the page title, and the page body, still isn’t Google’s number one resource, being beat out by Sam’s entry. Mr. Blog Browser could have actually meant that comment, could have some reason for not using a real name, and could have left off any sort of identifying information or signup instructions on the domain he linked to because it’s not ready yet. Could have. However, from now on my personal comment spam filter is going to automatically go to 80% any time I see something other than an actual personal name for a commenter, and at the very least I’ll be deleting either the keywords or the link, or both, or the whole comment if it’s not on-topic enough to suit my heightened sensitivity. So the comment spammers have won that battle, without knowing it was happening and without actually wanting to win it (after all, when you throw the baby out with the bathwater, the bathwater’s going out either way).
Some info on Mr Blog Browser.
Heh. Scripting News, November 17th:
whois blogbrowser.com:
Dave’s gonna be crushed: it took Mr. Galluccio three days to decide that the idea of a Blog Browser was really worthwhile.
Or Dave could file a $245 trademark, use the three-day difference to support a ”first use” date, and take the domain away just to get back at this guy. *grin* Too bad Dave is too nice a guy and has much better things to do with his time. ;-)
What a closed minded group. It seems to be spam if you don’t like the post.
Having an app that just parses xml / rss files is a useless idea and it seem that I have posted to the wrong set of people.
as in my orginal post, a blog / instant messenger merge is at least a try at a different type of product.
Orginal post to intertwingly.net:
”I think the concept should be a more dynamic use like a blog / instant messenger merge.”
It seem that you want to target the poster vs. the comment.
– –
response as postet to intertwingly.net
Phil,
”vaguely seemed in context without actually having any meaning”
I stand by my comment, it seems that you want to create useless products that can be done by a simple html page.
I work for a trading firm and speed of information is valued and think a blog / instant messenger merge would be useful. It would also introduce blogCircles.
It could be for business:
Project teams / biz units that publish blogs that would all feed into the blog browser so other units can provide instant comments on development. In the case of traders, they often work in sub groups to trick the markets or risk mgmt. and currently use 2 programs (news feeds + IM). Anytime tech developers can cut down the ”swivel chair effect”, it is always of interest to the group.
It could be for consumers:
Kids would set up blogCircles, groups of bloggers or blog topics to watch. The key is that they can respond to the originating blog or break off into individual conversations at any time but all have access to the original topic.
I am working in project/interface builder on a beta that will be up by the end of the week.
Cheers and Merry Christmas.
”it took Mr. Galluccio three days to decide that the idea of a Blog Browser was really worthwhile.”
Save your hate speech for someone else.
Brent Simmons’ s posts a vision (the 24th) of what a blog browser would be like and you think that’s great, I post an idea and I am a bad person.
I guess I don’t fit into your master race of product ”thinkers”
IMHO, ”Blog Browser” may have just gotten off on the wrong foot here. Yeah, the first post was iffy, but later posts seem more like a real person, so it’s a tough call.
”Blog Browser”, I think you’d go a long ways towards deflecting the criticism if you posted with your real name. Posting as a program or a domain name is going to look suspicious, esp. as Phil’s point about the ’blog world having been sensitized to spam is entirely true, independent of the particulars of this exact situation. The community standards in these parts are to use your real name unless you have a really good reason not to. (Not speaking to this ’blog directly, where Phil can decide what he does and does not want; I speak of the part of the larger weblog community Phil’s blog seems to fit into by my estimation.)
Posting with your real name, acknowleging that the original could have seemed like spam but wasn’t, and yes, posting the mentioned ”beta” program without obvious and spammy attempts to immediately monetize the product would probably end the criticism immediately. (Not that you can’t monetize, it just shouldn’t look like the main focus for a ”beta” release.) Don’t expect anyone else to do it; it’s Sam’s and Phil’s space and they are entitled to hold and share whatever opinions of you they want to hold, based on their perceptions.
Not to be rude, but pouting isn’t going to change a thing. It’s your responsibility to decide whether you want to worry about their opinion of you, then to give or not give them better perceptions of you then the ones they (well, to be honest, me too right now so make that a ”we”) have of you.
It’s entirely possible that when you finally explain or demonstrate your idea I’ll like it. However, it doesn’t in any way depend on having people not make their archives available in RSS, or on them not running little apps that take advantage of the metadata in archives stored in RSS. So the only reason you needed to comment on Sam’s thread was to siphon off PageRank, which makes you a spammer. Looks like he’s more generous than I am, since he’s willing to leave your spam link there.
On my way through the old spam posts I stopped here, and checked whether it has been spam or not. At the first glance I also have been convinced that blogbrowser had spammed, but now, with some month distance, and after some backlink research it seems as if he has been really harmless. No suspicous blog entries. Really nothing in relation to mr. zipcode ;-)