Comment Spam
My blog has recently had a number of spam comments. These comments consisted of URLs to various useless advertising sites, and were clearly not part of any discussion. Even though I have endeavored to keep my site clean, my current schedule does not allow me spend much time. Thus, I have installed Jay Allen's wonderful MT-Blacklist plugin, to automatically discard comment spam. If you believe that you have been incorrectly blocked, please email me. I apologize if your precious attention was wasted on any spam on my site, and I hope that these steps will prevent it from happening again.
It would be interesting, from a scientific perspective, to examine the mind of someone who sends out spam. (Spam can be in the form of emails, or, as I have been finding out, in the form of blog comment spam.) Clearly, the spammers have some technical abilities, as they understand the internet well enough to automate their work. It is their chosen career, and where they spend their time. I would guess, then, that they must like it or at least appreciate it, on some level. Why, then, do they seek to damage the bonds of trust that are necessary to keep it open? Okay, they may be paid to do it, but there are people that will pay you to do all kinds of interesting things, and surely something would be better than to work to destroy something good. To seek to destroy something good is surely the mark of immorality.
The unscientific counterpart to my scientific query: Rot in hell, assholes.