A few points on blog commenting
1. “Intelligent” comment spam
The classic, automated, blog spamming seems like is living it’s last days. This is basically the result of two factors:
- Stronger and better spam filters (read Akismet)
- Better informed blog owners
Because of those two factors a new spamming industry is on the rise and I think that’s here to stay. Human comment spam. This consists of companies that deliver medium quality comments in niche blogs for those interested in getting quick links. Lately, with no activity on this blog, I got a lot of those. My choice? Let it be. They provide unique content for the posts and might encourage genuine readers to interact. In the future? No ideea
2. The nofollow scare
Latest Google PR update has hit pretty bad on some of the SEO industry ego’s. What really surprised me were the denial reactions and later the cowardness. Search Engine Journal, if my memory is good, was one of the first and only SEO sites that removed the nofollow tag from their comments. A pretty brave and intelligent step, not because they were against Google’s rules but because they figured out the way to get more people interacting. Today, to my total dissapointment, I saw that they have added it again. I have no ideea when that happened but I bet that this came after they were downgraded by Google. I just hope that DaveN won’t do the same under Google’s pressure.
Note: I have removed the nofollow tag from this blog a while ago
3. Comment spamming protection fee
If I said previously that automated blog commenting is dying, for the Mafia it might not be true. Just look at the following (non-) spam comment I got:
hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,
I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it , its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq 454528835 or write me tedirectory(at)yahoo.com , i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you
This was beyond hilarious and this dickhead qualifies for sure for the Idiot of the Year Award.
P.S. It seems like the “Mafia” is pretty busy, a simple search for the idiot’d ICQ number returning 10.900 results. Or for the black hats 10.900 blogs with comment moderation turned off 
Hey,
Spam can be easily identified by servers now a days. just provide a text box and a image contains letters. Spam can only read text but not the images, so get use of it, and ask users to type the text in the image.. Anyway spam is not going to type the text correctly…………..
cooooooooool good idea right
So, see above, I guess this post is about me. So, as one, I think my comment is relative. This is a fun job, all day I run through pages and pages of peoples outlooks on comics, technical application, home life, amatuer sports, literature, music and even sometimes film. This doesn’t hurt the forums at all and even helps em out. Every day I get a massive input of peoples opinions and I get to put in my 2 cents. To me, this is important. When people are discussing online, they seem to have more passion than they would when you are at a party, or at work and you can dedicate more thought to it. I throughly enjoy the readings I get day to day and appreciate the fact that I can comment on stuff I find important in my life. Also, as a “spam blogger” my name is constantly changing. My anonymity is kept sacred. I find this especially appealing because though I want to share my opinions with the world and get its feedback, I myself do not want to dictate my thoughts on my own blog. And to note, I do not flame, curse or abuse the anonymous route. Its a matter of ethics and standards. Thanks for your time.
Tommy