Most blogs get hit by spammers aiming to get their URLs posted in the comments section. Like most wordpress based blogs, I use the default Akismet antispam plugin. I don’t like it, I don’t like the fact that it is shipped by default, I don’t like the fact that it is increasingly becoming non-free (as in beer), I don’t like the way my blog has to call home to Akismet servers. I particularly don’t like the way that all comments (including the genuine ones) are thus passed to Akismet servers, giving them the IP and email addresses of my commenters (which is another good reason for you to lie to me and use an anonymising service to mask your IP address. But Akismet has the one huge redeeming factor that it works. It stops a vast amount of crud from reaching my blog.
However, some still gets through and hits my moderation queue (I will never allow unfettered commentary on trivia). Most of the stuff that does get through has fooled the Akismet filters by using vaguely plausible (if usually ungrammatical) phrasing. Typical comments are bland, generic staments along the lines of “Nice blog, interesting discussion I have bookmarked this for later and will tell all my friends about you”. That comment will then have a URL somewhere which points to a site flogging knock-off chinese imitations of western luxury goods (or porn, though this is becoming less frequent).
I was therefore delighted to find the following in my queue a couple of days ago:
“The next time I read a weblog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my option to read, but I in fact thought youd have some thing fascinating to say. All I hear is really a bunch of whining about some thing that you could fix when you werent too busy seeking for attention.”
Way to go. Having managed to get through a spam filter and hit my moderation queue, the poster then shoots him or herself in the foot by insulting me.
No way will I post that……