Which brings me to this extraneous birthday post, solely to make an appeal to select commenter's. Anyone is welcome to post their thoughts on whatever stories or subjects I feature in the Catacombs, but over the last week, I've been peppered with more than a dozen random comments - under a variety of names - and over a wide field of previous Catacombs postings. Despite this, all of these comments have included an attached link for a range of goods, products or services. If for a single minute, I felt like these comments were truly genuine, I would allow them, but given the unusual degree of advertising to which this sudden influx of comments seems to be affiliated with, I have no intention of approving them to be seen on my blog. Please refrain from commenting on my posts if your thoughts, feelings or criticisms are accompanied by advertising links or product placement attachments. I'm not interested in helping perpetuate Internet sales. If you just want to share your personal appreciation for something you find enjoyable here in the Catacombs, then those types of comments will be more than welcome. Please kill the spamming!
6 comments:
First, Chuck: Happiest Birthday! (I won't tell you of the dark and terrible things that follow upon one's 50th birthday, as you'd not yet believe me. *shudder*)
Second: Unfortunately, the commercial advertisements are typically posted by automation, using URLs that were harvested by automation, and often running on hijacked machines. And the people ultimately behind it all are well aware that most 'bloggers don't want such comments.
Happy birthday - mine's the 12th - same as Lincoln - but I'm 15 years older than you are. And I'm not trying to sell you or anyone else anything. Love the site - love the comics and all the random girls. Keep up the good works.
Happy birthday, Chuck!
Is it possible the spamming is coming from internet bots? Years back, administrating a gaming forum, we would often get hit with spamming bots. They looked like posts coming from new members, but were annoying links to adverts on the web.
Chuck, Good for you for sticking to your guns (and going into your 51st year).
I have been getting many of these numnut comments all week. It's a pain to delete but if they see that they won't make any money off me or my followers then maybe they will leave me along.
BTW - happy fiftieth. It's quite an accomplishment to reach while living in the jungle we all try to survive in.
Cal—
The cost of automated spamming is so low that there is no check by the spammers to see which 'blogs let the comments through moderation and abide. I have been filtering for the life of my 'blog, no spam comments have been allowed out of moderation, but the number made is often well over 100 in a day.
There's little hope of a sufficient share of 'bloggers filtering appropriately, so that the cost-to-benefit ratio shifted against the spammers. And it seems that, into the indefinite future, a large share of computer users will continue to allow their machines to be hijacked.
What medium-term hope remains is in administrators of intermediate machines spotting hijacked computers and cutting them off from the 'Net.
(Meanwhile, BTW, Blogger.com treats all my comments as spam, and most of them are never fished-out of quarantine by respective 'bloggers.)
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