Comments on: Akismet Woes http://ascending.wordpress.com/2007/05/12/akismet-woes/                                              birds came flying from the underground Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:24:14 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Constantin http://ascending.wordpress.com/2007/05/12/akismet-woes/#comment-1241 Constantin Sun, 13 May 2007 08:55:59 +0000 http://ascending.wordpress.com/2007/05/12/akismet-woes/#comment-1241 Sorry about the ul/li tags. I've no idea why they don't work. I'm going to ask the support staff... As I was searching the forum for list-related issues, I found <a href="http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=10571" rel="nofollow">this</a>. Looks like I'm not the only one with this spam issue :( Sorry about the ul/li tags. I’ve no idea why they don’t work. I’m going to ask the support staff…
As I was searching the forum for list-related issues, I found this. Looks like I’m not the only one with this spam issue :(

]]> By: Alex http://ascending.wordpress.com/2007/05/12/akismet-woes/#comment-1215 Alex Sat, 12 May 2007 19:02:15 +0000 http://ascending.wordpress.com/2007/05/12/akismet-woes/#comment-1215 This is just a lame social engineering trick aimed at inexperienced people, especially the non SEO-aware. I am very familiar with "wow, nice site!" or "great post" comments, followed by a list of links. The logic of the spammer: the victim will be flattered by "nice site" and ignore the links the victim doesn't know that links are a way to increase the relevance of a page in the database of a search engine the victim may honestly think that leaving a link to a site is a good thing, because they help the community; I mean, someone needs that product, they'll find it easier if there is a link to it One way to counter comment-spam is to either prohibit HTML in comments <em>(bad idea, since people use it to make the text more readable)</em>, or to prohibit the A-tag. Hmm, I don't know if you remember, but you asked once why links are not allowed on my site; well, there you go (-: This is just a lame social engineering trick aimed at inexperienced people, especially the non SEO-aware.

I am very familiar with “wow, nice site!” or “great post” comments, followed by a list of links.

The logic of the spammer:

the victim will be flattered by “nice site” and ignore the links
the victim doesn’t know that links are a way to increase the relevance of a page in the database of a search engine
the victim may honestly think that leaving a link to a site is a good thing, because they help the community; I mean, someone needs that product, they’ll find it easier if there is a link to it

One way to counter comment-spam is to either prohibit HTML in comments (bad idea, since people use it to make the text more readable), or to prohibit the A-tag. Hmm, I don’t know if you remember, but you asked once why links are not allowed on my site; well, there you go (-:

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