Just a little blogging-related rant

I want to talk about spam. Not the lunchmeat, but comment spam. I’m sure if you have a blog, you already know how hard it is to fight it off, to try and stop it. If you read them, you’ve probably already seen a senseless stupid indecipherable comment here or there.

I’m happy to report I haven’t had any comment spam in *ages*, although spammers were still trying to get into my MovableType setup which doesn’t exist anymore. Anyway, this leads me to today’s little rant.

I’ve been to at least two blogs recently that were chock-full of comment spam. And I mean *full*, as in 63 comments per entry and all of it spam. Seeing this answers the question “Why do spammers continue to do this?” Well, this is why.

Because irresponsible, lazy, bored, disenchanted – whatEVER your excuse is I don’t care- former blog owners are too caught up in something else to bother deleting it. If the blog is dead, then toast the blog. If you can’t bring yourself to delete it, at least have the decency to close off the comments and nuke the spam to spare the rest of us (and possibly yourself again in the future) pain.
It’s not hard – a quick google search will give you exactly what you need to go right into the database and close off comments and/or delete the spams. Ten minutes work, tops. I’ll even help you.

This is why they do it, folks. There’s millions of blogs out there, and if only a handful leave the spam up, then to the spammers it’s worth it. Don’t enable them.

(And I swear, if I come across another one, I am firing off a nastygram email to the site owner.)