If you haven't noticed, this isn't the Grand Central Station of the Web (or Victoria Station, in either London or Bombay, or Tokyo Station; neither does it resemble the grand rail terminals of Paris, Barcelona, or Istanbul). Nevertheless, folks do show up here from time to time, and some even leave comments. Probably because of its out-of-the-way status, the site has only rarely drawn comment spammers. In the past, most of the spam comments that showed up were robotic and dumb–consisting, for instance, of a couple dozen identical links to a "Meet Former Hot Hot Soviet Ladies" site in Belarus. Those are easy to spot.
More recently, they've gotten sneakier and show up with more frequency, perhaps containing comments that you might be fooled into thinking for a second or two are related to the posts to which they're attached (though just as often the remarks seem to be crafted by slow-witted Third World telemarketers trying out freshly acquired English skills: "your blog brings a lot to work I'm doing now in the post
Univesidad I want to thank for that information which is provided here.
I also thank the people who contribute their comments on this blog.
great job").
In the past few days, notes have appeared from "House of Troy Piano Lamps," "generic propecia," and from "commenters" with sexually explicit names. It's a relatively minor nuisance, and I mark each and every one as spam and hope that the Typepad regulators can corral the offenders (not holding my breath for that). I'm also enabling comment moderation, meaning that I'll look at each comment before it's posted instead of trying to clean up after the fact).
That is all. We know you have the choice of other blogs, and we appreciated your continued patronage. Enjoy the rest of your trip.
Last week, I had a spate of spam email, which I almost forgot existed. It is still a minor ongoing problem but configuring defenses against it doesn’t consume me any more like it once did.