The Paradoxical Spam Classification Process

Many blog owners, and would be blog owners, have no idea how the Blogger spam classification and review process works. We see frequent complaints in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

Blogger is deleting many blogs, and refusing to restore them!

and

Once your blog is classified, you'll probably not get it back. The process is broken, and thousands of innocent blog owners are being abused!

These complaints totally ignore the fuzzy nature of spam classification, the unfortunate reality that not all spam blogs will ever be classified during the same day (or probably, even the same week), and the irritation that not all spam blogs will be immediately, or consistently, obvious.

The spam classification and review process returns paradoxical feelings, to those of us who participate in it. Please remember that the folks who deliver the news are human.

• During some weeks, we must return the sad news

  Sorry, your blog will not be restored. It was confirmed as spam. Blogger suggests that you read the TOS.

  to many hopeful blog owners, and feel the disappointment when they reply. We go to bed feeling like jerks (yes, we do).
• During other weeks, we have a few messages of hope for some lucky blog owners

  Thanks for your patience. Your blog was restored.

  And we later go to bed, feeling like heroes, having had a part in the restoration of a genuine blog.

Do you sense a paradox there?

• In the first case, we feel bad because many blogs involved in the spam classification process will not be returned to their rightful owners.

  They killed Kenny! You bastards!

  Yet these blogs classified and confirmed as spam hosts are built from our efforts as genuine bloggers - and were in effect stealing from our efforts, as they built their reader populations.
• In the second case, we feel good because some blogs were returned to their owners.

  Job well done!

  Looking closer, we discover that this is not necessarily the case. While those blogs were unrighteously classified as spam, they were losing out on owner publishing, and on reader access. That translates to lost reputation, and lost revenue, for the owners of those blogs.

Unfortunately, to catch a few thousand spam blog publishers, there will always be a few dozen innocent victims.

If we give up in despair, the bad guys win. So, we push forward, even as we are periodically being pushed backwards. Maybe, we can reduce the paradoxical dilemma, by encouraging more blog owners to properly request and appeal a review.

>> Top