← "China's non-revaluation: Lost in translation" | Return to Main Page | "Hong Kong's property market" →

May 12, 2005

You are on the invidual archive page of Fighting Poker Comment Spam. Click Simon World weblog for the main page.
Fighting Poker Comment Spam

This post has little to do with Asia, but a lot to do with blogs. I apologize for this diversion from your normal blog reading. If you own or manage a blog, this post may be important for you.

Above the fold, a list of hyperlinks

Read more to find out why

This morning I was responding to a post on a South Dakota, USA blog, when I saw my comment didn't turn up right away.

The blog's owner later emailed me. He said that posts with hyperlinks have to be approved by hand, because of all the comment spam from poker sites -- more than a hundred a day! Unethical businessmen make comments on blogs that are nothing more than ads for their online casinos.

One reason the casinos do this it to increase their position in search engines. Most people click on the #1 search engine link, so being the top spot in Google or Yahoo for gambling searches can add up to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in revenue. Plus many of these sites will also try to install spyware, causing millions in lost productivity and computer repairs.

So far webmasters have been defensive -- creating "blacklists" that ban certain posters and approving some comments by hand. It is time for bloggers to be aggressive.

My solution is to link to reputable results for these searches on my blog. I chose to hyperlink to articles on Wikipedia, which is a community-based encyclopedia. But you can also reference Encarta, the Encylopaedia Britannica, New York Times articles on the subject -- anything!

Thus the hyperlinks.

We can win this. You can help.

 posted by Dan tdaxp on 05.12.05 at 11:31 PM in the Blogging category.




Trackbacks:

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/80636

Send a manual trackback ping to this post.


Comments:

Great idea, Dan. If we can't hunt them, this is the least we could do.

 posted by: Simon on 05.13.05 at 12:05 AM [permalink]

I have long ago solved the comments issue by using a first time commenter email confirm - I don't have to do anything and all non confirmed comments get removed afrer five days.

My big problem is trackback spam. I use filters but it still gets through. I tried checking the page for the link but of course movable type/Typepad being a published system rather than databazse driven, the page does not exist until after the trackback is sent so it fails the test.

I am thinking of just removing trackback because I am struggling to come up with a solution for it.

 posted by: Phil on 05.13.05 at 02:57 PM [permalink]

The solution for trackbacks is what I have for comments: close them after (say) 15 days. It's easy for comments but doesn't appear possible (in MT, at least) for trackbacks. That would make life far more manageable.

 posted by: Simon on 05.13.05 at 05:44 PM [permalink]




Post a Comment:

Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember your info?







Disclaimer
All content, including comments, on this site operates under a Creative Commons Licence. The content except for quotes reflect my personal opinions and not those of my employer, family, co-workers, fellow Sydney Swans supporters or anyone else. The comments section is open but if you write it, you stand by it. I take no responsibility for comments. I may, at my sole discretion, moderate, alter or remove comments. I reserve the right to unashamedly change the rules as I go along. All emails are publishable unless otherwise marked. If you don't like it, use the little x in the top right of your browser.