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Spam Interdiction Sucks, But Less Than Not Having It

I've been writing about spam, and about Blogger blogs, for many years.

In 2006, I started attacking spam in Blogger Help Forum. As I use this blog, to attack spammers, I have taken a few hits from spammers - including one from the referer spam producers, in 2011.

Besides the hits from spammers, I get an occasional unhappy non spammer, confusing my occasional remarks about spam, with evidence of my general lack of civility towards non spammers, falsely accused of spamming.

And some non spammers seem to see this blog as a forum where they may air their gripes about Blogger, and about the Blogger spam classification policy in general.

Unfortunately, some complaints, offered here as comments, seem to ignore my published Comment Moderation Policy.

As I educate and entertain a wide variety of readers, and as I try periodically to clean up my act in public (yes, I really do try), I try to make my various blogs echo my self improvement attempts.

I moderate aggressively, and will not publish comments which
  • Contain foul language.
  • Link to controversial blogs, web pages, and web sites.
  • Link to spammy blogs, web pages, and web sites.

As I am not a fan of spam, or of spammers, I am also not a fan of spammers trying to use this blog as their forum for complaining about the Blogger spam mitigation policy. Nor am I a fan of non spammers, complaining about the Blogger spam mitigation policy.

The spam classification policy is what it is, and we have to learn to live with it. The policy was borne of necessity, long ago.

I know full well what it is like being a victim of spurious spam classification. This blog has been offline, for varying periods of time, at least half a dozen times since I started it in early 2006, for various spam classification issues.

Some of the outages were at least partially, my fault.

I also know why the various spam mitigation efforts, employed by Blogger / Google, are absolutely essential to our future, as publishers of Blogger blogs.
  • All Blogger blogs are damaged, by unrestrained spam.
  • Spam classification has to be automated.
  • Spam classification has to be fuzzy.
Considering those points, we must acknowledge that the Blogger anti spam process - though it be annoying (to some), and disastrous (to a few) - is still a righteous necessity.

The reason for spam classification is spam, being published in the Blogger Internet space. Anybody with a problem accepting the Blogger spam classification policy, and its side effects, needs to address their concerns to the nearest spammer.

As an alternative, I do have a forum which supplements Blogger Help, where I attempt to permit all reasonable discourse (there too, if you are a self aware spammer, you should expect to receive no mercy).

If you consider your blog to be spuriously classified as a spam host, and you are willing to publish an objective and polite report in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, I - and the other helpers there - will do our absolute best to help you, and your review, as professionally as possible.







http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/05/spam-interdiction-sucks-but-not-having.html Spam Interdiction Sucks - But Not Having Spam Interdiction Sucks A Lot More

Comments

Cra1 said…
Isn't there a way to eliminate the term "spam" from the online terminology dictionary, or at least supersede this commercial food product that has absolutely no intelligent application to the traffic it purports to give title to?

I mean, if "Spam" was suddenly found missing in the online terminology of everyone, what would be missing?

Nothing. And, that's exactly my point.

"spam," in Internet lingo, applies to anything at all! To one person, it means anything found anywhere that is disagreeable, in any measure. To another, unwanted ads, while ads for "acceptable" items, whether commercial or not, is "Friendly" information.

To yet other individuals, it means that their eMail gets uninvited messages of any kind. To another individual, "spam" connotates anything unwanted found anywhere, from eMail to visited pages, to comments, to content on any web page!

So, the commercial product named spam has not a whit of any measure of similtude to the "spam" term used synonymously with unwanted anything to anyone at any given moment of any online session on any given day, which can be unilaterally changed by anyone at any time to apply to anything different!

So, PLEASE! let's knock off with the useless term, "SPAM!":-))
Nitecruzr said…
Claude,

In theory, you're right.

But - -

Have you ever had a headache, and take an Aspirin for relief ("Bayer AG")?

Have you ever enjoyed a cold beverage, from a Thermos ("Thermos GmbH")?

Have you ever relieved yourself standing, by opening your Zipper ("B.F. Goodrich")?

And here's a good one!

There are lots of abusers of a popular poppy derivative narcotic, who are unaware of another name, also owned by Bayer AG.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks

My guess is right now, more people think of "Spam" as undesirable Internet activity or content, then of a nasty canned meat substitute.

So, dream on. 8-P
Lynn Crain said…
Yes, I do agree that something must be done. My only issue with the whole thing is the way it's done. To totally shut off a legitimate blog does some harm to the blogger and Blogger/Google as they will be seen as non-responsive.

Am I sorry it happened? Yes, whereas I do believe a simple email would have taken care of the problem without a lot of angst and total dislike for how the process was done.

I also understand they need to make it hard because a lot of spammers use bots, but I never did feel I had a person just automated systems and that's what they want to avoid. I think it's weird for bots patrolling bots because that's what it is...kinda BSG for me.

Lynn Crain

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