Don't worry. I'm not going to list the reasons we shouldn't say nasty things about other people/books/ideas/etc., on our blogs. We all know that's not cool. I want to talk about the blogs themselves and When Blogs Attack!
Sounds like a prime time special, doesn't it?
Here are a couple ways blog decisions have come back to bite me. If you haven't encountered them, GREAT! Maybe you'll be able to learn from my mistakes. Are there more? Probably, so share away!
1. Email address.
I started blogging in January, and as I was swept further and further into the blogosphere (wow, haven't pulled that one out for a while), I started typing my full email address in comment boxes and all over the Cheetah. I figured, people need to know how to contact me, right?
Then Blogs Attacked...with SPAM.
Yes, spam. An internet nightmare. It's like mailed credit card offers, but much worse. No, Mr. Chinese Businessman, I don't believe I just won a billion dollars, so no, I won't be clicking on that link. I don't think so, Mr. Natural Male Enhancement, I'm not really interested in your product. And I'm so very sorry, Miss Six-Year-Old-with-Flesh-Eating-Virus, I feel awful, but I won't be sending you my credit card information.
Then I learned the trick. Spam bots (or whatever they're called) roam the internet to find suckers like me, snatch up my email, and sell, sell, sell. So, I joined the modified-email club with name (at) nolongerasucker (dot) com, and I've been spam-free. Yay!
2. Text Verification
I was a proud participant of the A to Z Challenge last April, and so many of you found the Cheetah through it. HI! To make comments quicker and easier, since, you know, there were over 1,200 participants trying to hop around to all those blogs, I disabled the text verification at the end of each comment.
Then Blogs Attacked...with ANONYMOUS COMMENTS
Advertisements mostly. A lot of iPad, shoes, and the occasional gaming system ads, but also some long narratives, interesting compliments (bad, not good, interesting), and some foreign language diatribes. Thank you, Blogger, for filtering them out. But I've reached my Level of Tolerance for these fun posts. I'm reinstituting the text verification. Maybe I'll take it down for next year's A to Z, but I enjoy your comments and hate being disappointed by Anonymous Spam Bot's jibberish.
So, what are your When Blogs Attack stories? Let's all help each other have the best blogging experience we possibly can. :)
-Marie
3 comments:
Why not just block the anonymous? That's what I did.
I found you through A-Z and I'm sorry it took so long to get back.
I think I have anonymous commenters blocked, too. That helps with the spam.
I LOL'd when I read about Miss Six-year-Old-With-Flesh-Eating-Virus. I think she's begged me for $$$, too!!! Hahaha. Along with Mr. Your-Dead-Relative-Left-You-Money-So-Please-Send-Me-Your-Bank-Account-Info-and-Social-Security#-So-I-Can-Send-It-To-You.....ugh.
I'm not a fan of word verification. Can't tell you how many times I've written a comment on someone's blog, only to realize later that it was never posted because I just closed the screen out after I commented without realizing I needed to do a word verify. It's so annoying.
Evidently, blogger recently had some sort of issue that caused some people to have a spike in their traffic even when there was no actual traffic. It was highly disappointing to find out that my traffic hadn't actually doubled in June. It was just blogger lying to me. :(
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