Bad Behavior
One of the great things about owning your own comments section is the wonderful interaction with peoples from all over the world. Especially those from countries that don’t speak the language similar to the one in which the blog in question is written. Especially when the interaction is in a language that no human could understand.
Whilst going through the normal maintenance of a the greatest kitsch video-posting site on the interwebs, you’ll need to update plugins, delete spam, and keep the thing running smoothly. As you gain in size (and archives), you’ll start to see more and more bad behavior. That is why there are WordPress plugins dedicated to elimination of nefarious deeds. The blog software even ships with Akismet standard.
As far as legitimate comments go, I’ve found I am running a good 77 to 1 ratio of bot to human. Makes me feel good that somebody is putting that much effort into making something that will never see the light of day. That somebody out there is keeping it real. That they are doing their part to make sure that the Akismet people have jobs. And, presumably, the people who they pay $2 US dollars a day to post thousands of spam comments.
There’s a missed opportunity for a slogan for the second Bush administration. “Russian blog-comment spammers: doing the work that Americans just won’t do. Because they’re too busy playing Farmville. And trying to figure out what to do with Twitter. And watching Jersey Shore.”
Yeah, that would’ve been a pretty long slogan. And not all Americans are watching Jersey Shore. Just the ones that need to be sent to Russia. With the Russian blog-comment spammers.
Did I mention that Akismet keeps spam from appearing on Cluebus!? Because it does. It stops spam from showing up. Just thought I’d let that piece of information get out there in case somebody of the blog-comment spam community read this blog (that has no comments).