The patterns of spam that gets through the filter into the Paksworld moderation box is…interesting.\u00a0 Recently, it’s become clear that search bots are picking up on the two posts with “plumbing” in their titles…there’s been a rush (pun intended) of spams from plumbing contractors, plumbing supply houses,\u00a0 hardware supply houses, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 Quite a ways back, with a post on horses,\u00a0 suddenly veterinary suppliers, horse feed suppliers, tack, and other equestrian spammers showed up.\u00a0 I haven’t yet had any knitting-related spam, although the online yarn suppliers I’ve used show up on the sidebars of more commercial websites.<\/p>\n
I mark the spam “comments” as spam, and they go away–and those particular spammers don’t get in again–but the whole “scour the internet for any possible keyword that might be a customer” thing means there’s always more.\u00a0\u00a0 Commercial spam that makes sense (sort of) like this is one thing.\u00a0\u00a0 Then there’s the troll-spam.<\/p>\n
Trolls run around looking for someone to bash, or at least put down, or to instigate a flamewar.\u00a0\u00a0 I weeded out a lot of them early on–I doubt they ever bother to read anyone’s commenting rules, but they do go away if blocked often enough.\u00a0 But it’s a big world with a lot of people in it, and some of those people wander around in their spare time (of which they seem to have a lot) looking for likely targets.\u00a0\u00a0 Certain topics draw them out.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mostly, I just mark them as spam, and they’re whisked away by Akismet.\u00a0\u00a0 If they seem earnest but a bit socially unskilled (as any of us may seem, on a bad day)\u00a0 I earnestly explain to them the rules of the place and the error of their ways,\u00a0 and then simply remove the offending “comment”.<\/p>\n
After all, sometimes a troll is just a person with\u00a0 headache,\u00a0 a bad patch in their LifeStuff, some other stressor that’s lowered their ability to self-regulate, and all they need is a reminder that this isn’t the place to treat someone else’s blog as a whackamole game.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A few come back, more moderately.\u00a0\u00a0 I have a lot of respect for someone who can do that.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But sometimes a troll is just a troll.\u00a0 Most disappear, presumably riding their Huff off to more fertile lands for trollery.\u00a0\u00a0 A few try to argue with me in email.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another few may hang around for awhile, reading but not commenting.\u00a0 And if they do, they might learn something.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is why, after a particularly egregious blast of trollery, I sometimes take the occasion to remind everyone of the rules.<\/p>\n
Coping with the spam for cheap drugs, handbags, shoes, watches, sex aids, plumbing supplies, horse tack, etc. is easy…mark it spam, forget it.\u00a0 Coping with the troll-spam isn’t always.\u00a0 I have to read it, decide if it’s a person being intentionally “bad” (for my definitions thereof) or someone who’s in need of some guidance but is goodhearted under the rough surface.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes the distinction is clear; often it’s not, and even someone I end up relegating to the spam category deserves the consideration of a careful reading.\u00a0\u00a0 Luckily, there’s not a lot of troll-spam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The patterns of spam that gets through the filter into the Paksworld moderation box is…interesting.\u00a0 Recently, it’s become clear that search bots are picking up on the two posts with “plumbing” in their titles…there’s been a rush (pun intended) of spams from plumbing contractors, plumbing supply houses,\u00a0 hardware supply houses, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 Quite a ways back, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[112],"class_list":["post-2203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2204,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions\/2204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}