Thursday, January 25, 2018

blogging, moderating comments and comment spam

Image from "On blog commenting"
There's a lot of spam on on the internet: email, social media, bulletin boards, and other comments posted online.  blog comment spam. You haven't seen it here and you won't ever because I moderate all comments to make no spam gets on. The spammers keep trying though. Here I am hardly blogging anymore but still spending time moderating comments because if I did not send comments to the spam folder, there would be even more of them. That would be bad blog management and annoy readers. All spam ~ but it doesn't have anything to do with ESL or English, so why am I blogging about it?

1) To send a message to comment spammers, assuming any look at the blogs they spam.

2) Because spam and the moderation time it consumes annoy me.

3) Since I have to spend on the blog because of it, I might as well be blogging about why and thereby turn this into a lesson about being a responsible internet user -- a good internet citizensor "netizen" posts real comments that contribute to online conversation.

What is a good good blog comment? According to "On blog commenting" ...
Commenting instructions specifically state that comments are to be original, avoid comment cliches (such as "great post," "keep up the good work" etc) and not copy/paste recycled comments across multiple posts. There is also no specifically stated requirement for person blogging the post to reply to comments, standard blogging etiquette.
Spam anywhere on the internet is a bad internet practice that interferes with both learning and the real conversations we could be having. Both the internet and blogging are relevant to learning ESL. Today's lesson is about blogging (which is writing online) and being a good netizen or internet citizen.  Spammers are neither interested in learning nor are the good netizens.

What is spam? According to the dictionary, the noun spam refers to "irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the Internet, typically to a large number of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc." Email spam is annoying too but a digital literacy topic for another. Internet spam got its name from this kind of spam, "a trademarked, tinned meat product made mainly from ham." Can you see the connection? What an expressive metaphor.


Links: Comment Spam


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1 comment:

  1. Vanessa Vaile10:57 AM

    update on spam comments: apparently, comment spam do not read the posts they comment on because they have been posting spam comments on the post. I delete them all and will continue to...

    I also share and link this post when appropriate and invite readers to do the same.

    ReplyDelete

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