Comment spam

What do people do about comment spam, and comments in general?

I did once delete some comments that contained vulgarities. I do delete comments that are spam, normally linking to advertisement sites. Or the occasional empty comment (‘This is really interesting!’ plus a link to a translator’s website. I haven’t got round to adding a file with my opinions on comments and privacy.

Recently, a long poem in Spanish was put under my entry on the Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch. It came from a Hotmail address. I consulted some Spanish-speaking translators and they told me it was badly written and had wrong accents in it (‘Yeah: because it’s “A ti,” not “A tí,” and “grabada,” not “gravada,” and “Ese viento,” not “Ése viento,” and “es el único animal,” not “es único animal”; and because it’s lame), so I deleted it. Now it has appeared again (comments spam often does appear constantly on the same page, after being removed, time after time). I think I’ll leave it for the time being so as not to provoke multiple reposting. I recognize the word Yggdrasil in there, but I still have my doubts as to its relevance to the gold hats. Incidentally, Google revealed the poem also appeared at the Poetry Café, by Luis Tejeiro – Google throws up a couple more hits for that.

9 thoughts on “Comment spam

  1. Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’ve read about that. And people do come back (and come back, surprisingly, to the same entry – in this case the spammer may have seen some link between the pictures and the poem, but it’s difficult to find links between most advertising spam and the entries they’re attached to). Will try it out shortly.

  2. Interested to see how it goes. I’m being stalked by an English schoolboy with a loathing for Tony Blair and have just banned the array of IPs allocated to his school, so he’s going to have to go to a web caff now. (You can waste an immense amount of time doing IP Whois requests at http://www.samspade.org/)

  3. @Trev: maybe we should exchange spammers. Surely some bad Castilian poetry would be well placed to receive scorn on your blog! Yes, I have spent time at samspade in the past, must remember it now.

    @Jez: I installed the plugin but I don’t understand it. It concentrates on spam URLs, e.g. the pharmaceutical seller the spammer is advertising – not the case with my Spanish ‘poem’. I loaded a standard blacklist, but don’t know if I have been spammed by those people. I have deleted the poem again. It may be that if Luis tries to post again, the plugin will give me the chance to add his text to my blacklist.

  4. I’ve been using MT Blacklist for a couple of months or so now, and it’s cut down on the comment spam. It’s rather easy to install and maintain. Alas, no poetry good or bad on mine, just body part growing ads and quacksalvers.

  5. Ah, body part growing ads – that’s the PC way of saying it – yes, that’s what I mainly get (I was advised my Massachusetts header yesterday was too frank for my safety).
    I don’t suppose this poetaster will do me the favour of posting a third time so I can see if I can ban him via MT Blacklist too.

  6. hei… wait a second!
    first of all i’m not spanish!
    i am portuguese…

    second of all!
    i didn’t do no spam mail or nothing… i have an honest, beautifull site, with lots of good people visiting it… so please don’t speak bad things about my blog PLEASE!

    THANX

  7. @d.quixote: I didn’t say anything bad about your blog. I saw it was Portuguese (but not that it was a blog). I just said that my spammer, who was writing Spanish, had posted in two places: on your site, and here. Here is some of it – you don’t say it’s Portuguese, do you?:

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