Comment spam: Spammers vs morons
This post is a bit of a rant.
On this particular blog, all of my commenters are quite intelligent. You all provide good content and I try my best to respond to most of the comments. The times I don't is because the connection screws up and times out and my comments don't get posted (this is very annoying to me). I then forget to go back and later repost my response to your response. Because my readership is not very large, I would say I attract a user base that contains very few morons. There will be more on the definition of that in a moment.
From time to time, spammers break through my antispam comment filtering and I get email feedback containing piles of spam. In fact, the vast majority of my comments are spam but the software does a reasonable job of blocking it in the comments. It does a less good job when they break into my email feedback mechanism, but it only breaks once in a while. All in all, I can summarize this blog thusly: I get intelligent comments from posters and for the most part, the software blocks most of the spam.
The problem is that on other websites that get far more traffic, they invariably attract many more morons. You know the type; go to Youtube and look at some of the clever videos. Morons are the people who leave stupid comments like insults, poor grammar, or one-word nonsense remarks. I can't believe how many morons leave comments on Youtube videos.
The dilemma is that technically these people aren't spammers but they add nothing of value. I have a few videos up on Youtube and I've gotten morons commenting on them. They aren't bots and their comments are not anymore unsolicited than friends who post positive comments. However, as soon as I see their comments I delete them because there's no point in keeping them around. If you're going to post something, make it useful.
Statistically, the wider the user base then the greater the likelihood of morons coming across stuff you (or I) have done. Maybe sites like these should have another option. In addition to "Report Spam" there should be a "Report Moron" button.
