Over the last few days, I’ve noticed a sudden increase in the amount of what I call “organic spam.” These are comments that are targeted to specific subjects that I write about, and obviously written by a human being who digested and comprehended the material on my site. It has none of the hallmarks of traditional auto-bot-spam, with the disjointed “Mad Libs” approach of dropping in keywords:
Hey. I was searching the internet for definitions ofChocolate Covered Cockroachesand I found your article. Funny stuff! I’ll be sure to come back often!
Fortunately, these nuisance comments and pingbacks tend to be easy to swat away. I use Akismet and Bad Behavior, and that’s been a great one-two punch. Until now.
One of my recent entries, Delegation, drew the following comment today from Chayah Masters:
Exactly what I tell my clients when they hire a part-time assistant from my company Gittel on the Go. It’s amazing how people want to be helped but have a difficult time letting go. I guess it is silent commentary on the state of our society. Work ethic is not what it used to be. That’s why my clients are overjoyed when they hire a “Gittel” from GittelontheGo.com. No micromanagement is needed and my clients are elated at the results they get merely from making a clear request.
That’s an 88-word response, to an entry that had 18 words. (Brevity is the soul of wit, after all.)
Not Just Blogs
I’ve seen this happening recently on a journalism forum I moderate. Human beings signing up for accounts, leaving one or two fairly innocuous comments, then pumping an obvious pitch to their website and service. In the case of the forum, we had to run them out of there, because they were directly competing with paid advertisers with their linking.
So — that lends us to the question, What is Spam anyway?
- Unwanted advertising?
- Gaming search engines for links?
- Shameless self-promotion?
We all bring our own flavor to the definition. And I’m going to spend some time trying to draft a policy that more clearly enunciates what I consider “spam” to be.
Before the arrival of Akismet and the other tools, blog engines like WordPress used to add a “nofollow” attribute to comment links. That way, even if a spammer got through, it wouldn’t get any link-credit from Google and Yahoo. However, this got in the way of legitimate links and promotion of a sense of community.
My Response
I had switched some code on Occam’s RazR to allow for the links to count, but that policy is changing. I’ve now gone to a system that will give my commenters credit for their links, but only once they’ve left three comments here. For those of you on WordPress, the plugin is called Nofollow-Free. It allows you to configure the number of comments, and which sorts of links get the treatment.
I’m not the only one noticing this, by the way… Lee Lefever over at Common Craft has seen the same trend of human spam.
What’s your definition of spam, and how are you going to deal with this new twist?
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, spam, blogging, communication[/tags]
Ike,
While Chayah’s comment does seem more spam than contributing to the post, it’s a good effort!
For the ones you and I Twittered about this week (Julie/Jen), I’m going to let them slide, unless they start to increase.
If the comment actually contributes to the discussion, I’ll give ’em some link love. If it doesn’t in my humble judgement, it’s gone. It’s random and subjective, but that’s my policy.
Mike
This is a very timely post. I’ve been thinking to myself lately that I should at least leave a short comment after reading blog posts to let the writer know that I was here and interested in what they had to say.
Where I start having doubts is if that’s useful without having something to contribute to the topic.
I’m not looking to add spam to anyone’s site, just let them know that I appreciate their take. I hope that the difference can be seen in my sincerity vs. the examples Lee gave of commenters who, while positive, may not really have cared about the content.
I dunno. Maybe commenters who spam but leave somewhat thoughtful comments are really nice people — simply “with a job to do.”
😉
-Mike, MikesPoints.com blog
John, you do raise an interesting issue. It’s not so much the quantum of value added, as the vector of the intent.
For instance, you tracked over here from Twitter. You already interact with me on a number of platforms and levels.
Dropping in to say “Thanks!” doesn’t trip any alarms for me, because you didn’t seek me out based on just that content.
In the example I give above, we’re talking about someone that most likely never would have come to Occam’s RazR until I used a keyword that fit their business profile. (A post that – including the title – only had 19 words.) That’s not natural traffic, and it’s most likely not someone who would hang around beyond leaving the egg to hatch.
Ike,
So, intent is more important than the outcome or result (forgetting about the link love/search engines results for the human spammers for a moment)?
— Mike
No, intent is not more important, but it does become a factor.
Had Chayah just made a comment about the importance of delegating work, or how underrated a skill it truly was, there wouldn’t be much of an issue. But looking at the comment, and the rather blatant use of the url, and the almost-but-not-quite ad copy inserted — it makes you wonder.
Big yeah for transparency. But it’s clear she was seeking more value from me than she was giving to the rest of you.
I freely and happily kill any comment that looks like spam… but I send a note to the commenter: “I appreciate your comment. Unfortunately, the link you gave seems to be a spam/scraper/whatever site (I fill in the blank). If I am wrong, just respost the comment with a link to your own site (or no link at all, if you don’t have one).
I’ve done that about 50 times in the last couple of months and have NEVER had anyone follow up.
Allan
Thanks for posting about this issue. It’s been on my mind, and I haven’t known how to deal with it. I’m heading over to the WordPress site to get the plugin and to learn a little more about spam control for my blog.