this blog is girtby.net

am-i-spam-or-not.com

Once again I get some comment on this blog and spend a portion of my life trying to work out if it’s spam or not. I came to the conclusion that this time it actually wasn’t spam. Anyway judge for yourself.

What tipped me off was the usual “you may be interested to check out…” opener which has been the hallmark of the last zillion or so comment spam that has made it through to moderation by my filter.

So the hypothesis is that my new friend Sudarshan has a copy of whatever script it is that the comment spammers [fx: spit] use and he’s using it to promote his blog. However, he has restricted it use on my blog to the one post that is relevant to his chosen topic (GPS). Checking out the links his blog seems mostly legit (if slighlty off-the-wall) so this lets him off the hook as a spammer.

My other hypothesis is that Sudarshan is working his way through the google hits on obvious keywords, looking for blogs to post to using spam scripts. I don’t have any evidence for this though.

Lastly a bit of linkpimpin’. In the course of going through the pages of google hits on “GPS” looking for girtby.net to validate the above theory, I came across this which, combined with the blogging opportunity, made this one piece of almost-spam worthwhile.

You really need to register that domain name…

This made my day:

> Rather than become an over-protective parent , I decided to try forget-me-not panties™.

You must admit, the number of exclamation marks alone screams out spam. But then, without someone reviewing your blog content for sanity, you’ll never know that three bangs in a heading is too many (see for example how Penny Arcade say it). I mean, who’s heard of a moderated blog? (Getting someone to review the content ahead of time may reduce the incidence of spelling errors, grammar gaffs and total f ups… Maybe there’s something to this ‘reviewing’ thing)