clean and tidy

August 29, 2004

I feel so much better with blog comments once again swept clean. Many thanks to Jay Allen’s MT Blacklist. The new release addresses the latest comment spammer scheme that was frustrating me. The installation was ridiculously easy and I was so pleased that I’ve sent him a PayPal donation.

I had heard that people use blog spam to raise their Google ranking — I can’t imagine that they get many click thrus. I had the opportunity earlier this year to hear Peter Norvig speak from Google. After the talk I asked him whether Google had a response to comment spammers. He said that Google had just implemented something to make it so that urls in blog comments did not contribute to rank. I had hoped that over time comment spam would diminish, but it seems to have increased. Adam Kalsey writes about a new comment spam technique. I suppose its a perpetual battle between the people who create systems and those who seek to abuse them.

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