We are not here to promote your Web site
By Gina Spadafori
January 17, 2009
Look, I know it’s nasty out there. My part-time “day job” is as a writer-editor with a wonderful customer-owned utility. If you want to know how the economy is doing, don’t ask the dean of the local university’s business school — ask the folks who know who’s paying their electric bill and who’s not. (Hint: Foreclosed houses and bankrupt small businesses don’t use a lot of power.)
The recessiondepression has our finance folks turning grayer, every day. And they’re certainly not alone. Sacramento has a lot of, uh, “challenges” now, more than many other places, perhaps. The sub-prime “correction” has been rough for the former booming housing market here (my house “appreciated” $130K in 15 months, and then “depreciated” $150K in 10 months), and we sure haven’t nailed the landing yet. (Hello, Captain Sully? Help to ditch this bird? We have a river. And a spare river.) And then there’s the state government, melting down before our eyes and ready to issue IOUs, never a good thing in a “company town” like Sacramento. But I digress, as my very funny boss is fond of saying (and doing).
Because of all this, I’m highly sympathetic to the folks out there who are being “paid to blog” by writing comments that are somewhat on-topic yet include an “unprompted” endorsement and link to a retail site.
But … we not letting these through, so go find some other blogs to clutter. Ain’t happening here.
First-time posters are always moderated, as are any posts with more than one link (that’s why some of the regulars’ comments get delayed from time to time). In the last two weeks, I have deleted great many of these “pay to blog” promotion posts, a huge increase, in fact. A few I’ve let go through after deleting the pitch and link because the person who posted had something helpful to say before putting in the “unprompted endorsement.”
We welcome comments. In fact, I have to say that even though I’m one of the “experts” here, I know I have learned as much as I’ve shared, if not more.
Join the discussion if you’re new here, but we can tell the difference between “pay to blog” comments and real ones. Save yourself the time if you’re coming here for the former. They’re not going through.
(Image shamelessly ripped off from Terrierman.)
Telemarketers, spam, pay to blog. I really would not like to calculate how many minutes/hours of our finite lives are taken up deleting/dismissing these things.
Comment by Jenniferj — January 17, 2009 @ 10:48 am
I’ve been deleting a ton here, but also on my own blog… I usually just delete the URL and email address from the user info, because they usually don’t have a commercial message in the text itself. It’s the kind of thing I bet a lot of sites miss, because they’re counting on readers clicking on their name to get to their website.
It really pisses me off.
Comment by Christie Keith — January 17, 2009 @ 11:39 am
I’ve been looking for a second job for supplemental income, and it’s incredible how many of these ads I have to slog through in the part-time job listings. I was initially a bit confused about what in the heck they were talking about in the descriptions (these listings are typically pretty vague - intentional, I’m sure) but once I figured it out, I now skim past them just as I do for the ads looking for telemarketers, “rebate processors”, etc.
I can see how - if you are having trouble finding something for long enough - these ads for “easy money” get increasingly tempting. But I’m mostly disgusted by the segment of society that thinks that infringing on others to make a profit is an acceptable thing to do.
It just makes everything harder for everyone.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — January 17, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
I’ve seen a number of these lately on some of my favorite blogs. Some of them are nonsense and some are clearly humans as opposed to bots. In addition to being incredibly annoying, I don’t understand how this could possibly be a beneficial use of anyone’s time. How could this possibly work out for anyone financially? Seems like disconnecting one’s internet would save about as much money as anyone could make from being a human spambot.
Too bad captcha’s don’t measure and capture for ill intent.
Comment by Amy — January 17, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
Oh— and it may not be appropriate for this blog, but one of the message boards I used to frequent freely edits and replaces words to make the posts something fun as opposed to annoying. As in, every time the word “bargain” is used, the board settings automatically replace it with “tea kettle” or some other unrelated thing. It made spam kind of fun.
Comment by Amy — January 17, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Hey, now there’s an idea. Or we could just leave all the ‘get free money,’ ‘increase your _____,’ and other venal promises in place but change their urls to point to websites where clicks go to feed stray dogs.
Spam for strays!
Comment by SmartDogs — January 17, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
I’ve been getting ones that start out “Nice article!!!” What a blow to the ego to figure out the bot didn’t even really read my article. ; )
Comment by slt — January 17, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
Just a thought, but maybe it would help to remove the option to give a website URL for people leaving comments?
Comment by Becky — January 17, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
I thought of that, but … we have people who really do write for or run sites worth visiting. Why punish them or other readers by share their links?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 17, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
hmmm… I guess I am guilty of adding links to things that I think may be of interest to the conversation, but I can assure you, there is no “blog-for-pay” associated with it. (I’m not organized enough to figure out how to do that, haha.)
I did notice that one link I tried to include to something the other day was removed — I can’t remember exactly what it was for, but I’m going to assume it did have to do with the conversation, because I rarely go to the trouble to find and include something unless I feel it is appropriate.
I did try to add a link to a fine photo of an old-fashioned Pekingese (from the early 1900s) yesterday, bit I forgot the post in which the conversation took place, so I finally gave up on that.
So, if I am an offender, I do apologize. I guess I made the big mistake of just joining in without introducing myself here, but I was just glad to come across a blog that appears to be fair and moderate and intelligent. After working in an animal shelter for as long as I have and having spent the past month dealing with “ZooToo” — a real slice of hell, if you’ve not experienced it — I really needed some sanity. And I really do enjoy this blog and most of the related blogs I’ve visited.
Anyway, my real name is Jewel. I was involved in Greyhounds and Afghan Hounds when I used to live in Northern California (now going on 24 years ago… yeeps!), and I now have my first show-quality Miniature Xolo. I’ve included a link to my flickr stream if anyone wants to know more about me. I’m actually pretty harmless.
:o)
Comment by stellaluna — January 17, 2009 @ 4:00 pm
I’ve been getting a lot of those comments as well. I use a couple of plug-ins (I use word press) to filter. I also moderate every comment…although my readers do not comment as much as yours…not the same volume.
In some cases I remove the link if they contribute but most of the time they don’t and it is bye-bye in one click.
If you find another way to deal with the issue—let me know!
Comment by Ark Lady — January 17, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
Jewel … it wasn’t you. Sometimes for reasons unknown to us the spam filter grabs things and we don’t even see them.
If a comment doesn’t show up in a couple hours, drop us a note (petconnection@gmail.com) and we’ll look in the spam filter.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 17, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
Stellaluna, I posted the link to the Pekingese image. It was on Google images about 8 or 9 pages in.
Comment by Susan Fox — January 17, 2009 @ 6:05 pm
Paid to comment? Woo hoo! Is it by the word? I’d make a mint!
Seriously though, I’ve had a couple of those weirdly worded blurbots way out in the cybersticks where I reside, so it must be pretty widespread.
Comment by Selma — January 17, 2009 @ 8:05 pm
Oh, no, Susan — I meant I couldn’t remember what the specific entry was on here, that’s where I was going to add the link to the photos I found.
They are a few really good old Peke photos on Flickr, from the Library of Congress. They are from between 1910-1915. If you want to see them, go to Flickr and search for “Tanis Guinness” — that should bring up a couple of them, and the others are nearby in that same group of photos.
Comment by stellaluna — January 17, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
I laughed when you admitted to stealing your image from terrierman - because just the other day I used your PETA comments on my site. I did give you credit and a link though. I hope it is okay. I’m a fairly new reader to this site (and the whole blogging thing) and am enjoying it immensely.
Thanks for the words,
Doug
Comment by Doug — January 18, 2009 @ 6:11 am
oh here’s a to my blog.
http://hawkingharrisblog.blogs.....d-for.html
Doug
Comment by Doug — January 18, 2009 @ 6:12 am
I call it comment spam. And yes it is very annoying. I went to moderated comments awhile ago because I had a bit of an online stalker beng rude to me but it also helps keep away the spam.
I don’t know how anyone makes money blogging anyhow. At least for the majority of bloggers these days. It seems most of us are just sharing stuff we like. In my case it is a place to talk dog without annoying my poor over dogged family members. (they didn’t chose my field after all)
I like surfing real comments for links to websites and to find other blogs I might enjoy. So moderated is better than blocking them all or not including links to the comment poster directly. I’ll take what I can get. :-)
Comment by Marie — January 18, 2009 @ 9:57 am
With my blog, if you want to put in a link, you have to do a bit of work, so it cuts down on bots.
Every now and then I disable html to keep readers safe from possibly malicious links.
I accept no trackbacks.
I don’t moderate comments. I just (rarely) delete any that are inane (spam), libelous or threaten an identifiable person with violence. If I get tired of flying monkeys, I just shut comments down at some point.
Mockery directed at public figures and journalists are always welcome!
Comment by Selma — January 18, 2009 @ 11:03 am
Mockery directed at public figures and journalists are always welcome!
Comment by Selma — January 18, 2009
Journalists? I represent that remark! :)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 18, 2009 @ 11:28 am
No! No! No!
You RESEMBLE that remark!
Sheesh! {vbg}
Comment by The OTHER Pat — January 18, 2009 @ 12:27 pm
The majority of comment spammers are bots, and the best way to “relieve” yourself of that prob is by enabling a bhot varification before comment is posted. I think there is a word press plug in for that.
Comment by Dogs — January 18, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
Our spam filters do indeed catch most of the botspam —- two-three thousand every day. These are pay-to-comment people I’m talking about.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 18, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
I had to go to moderated comments last month, because I experienced a ‘flooding’ attack — almost 500 comments, in the space of a day. Luckily for me, wordpress has a fail safe built in, and it automatically shut off my comments as soon as it happened.
I’m baffled by the trackback/ping spam. The comments, I can understand — they use your site to embed their stupid links (lucky me, mine are almost all porn, likely since I use the words “beetch” and “breeeding” so often (misspelled intentionally here).
But what is the point of the trackback/ping spam? What do people get out of posting little nonsensical snippets of our blog posts onto other, completely non related blogs? Beats me, but we’re getting approximately 200 of them a day right now, on top of the comment spam.
I guess that’s one way of knowing you’re popular…
Comment by FrogDogz — January 18, 2009 @ 7:40 pm