I'm writing today to note a mildly noxious form of spam that's cropped up a couple of times on this blog, and that popped up again tonight. My last post about the Massachusetts Little Red Book/DHS hoax got a comment that was only marginally on-topic, and frankly struck me as a total non sequitur. It was evident that the post's satirical content, for example, completely sailed over the commenter's head. Or, more likely, the commenter simply hadn't read my post at all, since the comment consisted solely of two links to his own blog posts about the Little Red Book hoax. Hence, the comment seemed like some kind of self-promoting spam. So I deleted the comment, of course, but I also got annoyed enough to fire up Sitemeter and go a-hunting. The comment was posted at about 8:40 p.m. PST, and bingo, here we go:
The IP address is located in Wisconsin, and the blog in question states prominently that the author's located at Marquette University, so this is probably our man. Note that this guy spent a grand total of 15 seconds reading my post before composing his perfunctory, self-promoting comment. Gee, either he's a speed reader, or... hey, let's look at that referer --- it's cut off in the picture, but he came from the Technorati search for "student mao massachusetts". I wonder if this person's spammed his comment onto other blogs on this search?
Hey, that comment looks kind of familiar... (I'd go on, but I think I've proven my point.)
Therefore, "John McAdams", I christen thee spammer, sad sack of dittohead wingnuttery that thou art, so desperate for traffic that thou goest commenting onto random Technorati blogs for attention.
And let that be a warning to other would-be Technorati spammers out there: this blog's not a platform for you to misdirect traffic towards your own site. If you're not here to have a conversation, then crawl off and spread your ant droppings somewhere else. Or better yet, use comments as they were meant to be used, and don't try to promote yourself that way at all.
I got John McAdams, too. Thanks for the note on this.
ReplyDeleteAs you already saw! Hah!
ReplyDeleteno john mcadams, but several reciprocal link-peeps of mine were spammed by another such wingnut (a religious one whose undeserving name shall not be repeated here). and on evoution blogs! hello??
ReplyDeleteGrrlScientist
What's the best way to have a conversation in blog comments, since you brought that up? I tend to have in excess of 10 tabs open at a time, and sometimes I open up about 8 blogs that appear on my rolls, or in my StatCounter, and post a comment to something that interests me. If that person doesn't happen to visit my site so that I see their site again later in my StatCounter, I might never happen to return to their site.
ReplyDeleteHow best do you keep track of where your comments go, and thus check for responses? I think some people even seek out the commenter's blog, and have to end up replying on a random current post to get the attention of the original commenter, which isn't great netiquette too some would think.