Comment-Spam Policy

27 February, 2006. 307 words.

I deleted an obvious spam comment today. Oddly enough, it linked to what appeared to be a free fundamentalist Christian book. I wonder if Jesus would consider spam an appropriate evangelical tool?

Anyway, just so there’s no confusion, from now on, anything that even remotely looks like comment spam, especially of the automated, search-rank boosting variety, will be deleted as soon as possible. As soon as I figure out how, I will also report spammers to whatever appropriate authorities there are. Yes, even Christian spammers.

My definition of comment spam, in case it’s not obvious, is any comment that contains a link to another site, along with an obvious list of search keywords. Such a comment has no purpose other than boosting the spammer site’s search ranking. More heinous variations of the comment spamming crime include comments without any substance, links to commercial endeavors (particularly endeavors that I don’t want to succeed), and not adding a reciprocating link back to my blog.

For comparison, I don’t consider Victoria Marinelli’s comment on Bears Pay For Parental Negligence to be comment spam. It’s relevent, and she was kind enough to put a link to my article on her site. That’s perfectly fine, as far as I’m concerned. Ya’ll can do that as much as you want. :)

Here’s a comment spam example:

Thank you for your thoughts. I look forward to following your interesting blog. Are you interested in topics about the apocalypse, end times, the end of the world, eschatology, last days, the horsemen of the apocalypse, the beast, prophesy, prophesies, revelation, 666, bible prophesy, prophets, Canaan, Canaan’s land, Land of Canaan, or the Christian future? If so you may enjoy reading “**BOOK TITLE DELETED WITH GREAT JOY**” This is a free online book. The Link is **LINK DELETED WITH GREAT JOY** Let me know what you think.

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