http://www.geeknewscentral.com/2008/10/30/a-new-kind-of-comment-spam/ Geek News Central is the technical weblog for Geeks. We Spin tech for the common man. With a twice weekly tech podcast Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:20:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.geeknewscentral.com/2008/10/30/a-new-kind-of-comment-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-4272 Brian in Poland Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:15:04 +0000 http://www.geeknewscentral.com/2008/10/30/a-new-kind-of-comment-spam/#comment-4272 Firstly, killing external links I feel is really throwing the baby out with the bath water. <span class="mt-export2wp"></span> Many people seem to take spam as a personal affront and react to it with a knee jerk reaction. However we have to remember that the real problem with spam is simply that it usually degrades the user experience by cluttering up good content with irrelevant and off topic noise. <span class="mt-export2wp"></span> If you kill other peoples abilities to add the best content they can, which often includes references to other information and tools on the web, then you are degrading the user experience. <span class="mt-export2wp"></span> I think that the solution lies in meta-moderation by website members. <span class="mt-export2wp"></span> I am a little bit confused by your post. You say you saw examples of spammers trying to "hide a hyperlink in a period". You mean they put a hyperlink on just the period? What would be the point of this? For page rank? I assume you have "rel=nofollow" tags on any external links from comments. If not, then that seems the most reasonable solution. Firstly, killing external links I feel is really throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Many people seem to take spam as a personal affront and react to it with a knee jerk reaction. However we have to remember that the real problem with spam is simply that it usually degrades the user experience by cluttering up good content with irrelevant and off topic noise.

If you kill other peoples abilities to add the best content they can, which often includes references to other information and tools on the web, then you are degrading the user experience.

I think that the solution lies in meta-moderation by website members.

I am a little bit confused by your post. You say you saw examples of spammers trying to “hide a hyperlink in a period”. You mean they put a hyperlink on just the period? What would be the point of this? For page rank? I assume you have “rel=nofollow” tags on any external links from comments. If not, then that seems the most reasonable solution.

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