Comments on: Comment Spam - Are You Guilty?

By: billseaver

billseaver — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:09:22 +0000

Keith, I guess we’ll have to just agree we have different perspectives on this. There’s certainly a lot of gray area here and I just lean toward adding value to the conversation without a link in most cases. Thanks again for you thoughts on this topic.

By: Keith Jefferies

Keith Jefferies — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:55:27 +0000

PPS. So I went further, dug(g) deeper, in fact, and looked around digg. The point there seems to have been that, when you post, the digg site automatically creates a link to your profile page and people can go there and *then* find links to your other sites and stuff. So there’s no point doing an e-signature with links to your sites on a comment. In which case, okay, I can see how that might be seen as spamming; irrelevant and superfluous link/s aren’t needed if the site is already creating a link which people can follow to establish a poster’s reputation.

By: Keith Jefferies

Keith Jefferies — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:36:52 +0000

Don’t get me wrong. I hate comment spam. I hate spam. It’s a ridiculous automated waste of the bandwidth and people’s time on the web. But it’s the fact of it being automated. I think if someone has read the original post and has a solution to a problem posed by that post, then a link is fine. “Hello, I am a nice girl who is bored today…”, “We have cheapest pills…” and “I’d like to get funds out of my foreign bank…” are totally different than “You make films? Maybe you would like our film community over here” kind of thing. Just sayin’.

Incidentally, I went and had a look at that Digg story you referenced. I’m sorry, but all those people who flamed the original comment are timewasting idiots who really should have been given a warning and then thrown off the Digg site. Flaming is poor netiquette. Posting a reference to a personal profile or information of some kind has been pretty standard practice for quite some time now. It establishes the reputation of the poster, for good or bad. Isn’t that important? Without that, the spammers and scammers are truly hard to spot.

By: billseaver

billseaver — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:00:20 +0000

Whoa…Keith…let’s back up a minute here. I agree that “indiscriminate” and “bulk” are important when we’re talking about automated blog spam or even email spam. What my point is in this post is that the rules are changing and anytime you promote yourself in a blog post it can come off as a bit spamish.

The point of this post is that a few years ago linking to yourself in a comment or discussion board would likely have been no big deal but today people want you to add value to the conversation and not simply look like you posted a comment for the promotional opportunity. I think that’s the test…was the comment to really add value to the post or to just promote the commenter.

It’s a really fine line because sometimes I’ve had something legitimate to add to a post that I talked about on my blog but I feel like if I post a link to it I could be viewed as a spammy comment. In those cases I usually just recap my thoughts in the comment and don’t post the link.

By the way, thanks for the comment. It was most certainly not spam and added value to the post. I love the dialogue here and appreciate your feedback.

By: Keith Jefferies

Keith Jefferies — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:24:21 +0000

The web is social. You’re not writing a book or a newspaper column here. You post a blog and someone responds with a comment that contains a link to a product or service, that’s not unreasonable if they read your post! Wikipedia has a better definition of spam than your over-broad generalization: “Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.” The “indiscriminate” and “bulk” are important.

If you don’t want comments, fine, switch them off and simply don’t interact. If you do want comments, but don’t want the auto-generated, non-social spammers sending stuff, you have to use filters. If an individual reads your blog and posts a comment with a link to a related product or service, how is that indiscriminate? Or do you just want to restrict your blogging to everyone except people with products or services to sell?

By: Chris Thomas

Chris Thomas — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:04:00 +0000

I’m guilty from time to time. Oh yeah, and hey, I gave some iPods away. Did you hear? Cehck it out! http://pourout.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/and-the-winner-of-the-ipod-is/

By: Bill Seaver

Bill Seaver — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:01:00 +0000

Thanks Nathan. I don’t know what the solution is and right now I really believe many people do this and don’t even realize it can be considered spam. Once we’ve reached the tipping point of awareness I think we’ll see it change by the accidental spammers.

What I can’t get past, however, is that this new rule of spam may actually prevent some helpful comments. If, for instance, someone actually had a website that truly benefited and supplemented a blog post I’m all for it getting added to the blog comments. The problem is that everyone’s going to think their site/blog is helpful or beneficial whether it is or not and therein lies the problem. Either the good gets included with the bad or the good gets thrown out with the bad…and unfortunately it seems like the good loses in this case.

By: Nathan Moore

Nathan Moore — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 13:03:00 +0000

Yeah. I completely agree. I wrote a response to this post over at my blog… Check it o… er… nevermind.

I think if there is a way for people to self-promote, they will do it, and it has found its way into new media, but what is the solution?

Could this also not be paralleled in the real world to giving someone you just met a business card?