Beside all the freakin' e-mails I had in my inbox this evening I did have a couple great ones.  One was an invite to try WordPress.com, the hosted WordPress service Matt Mullenweg announced at BBS05-SF.  So, I have the blog set up, my first post written—ProBlogging How to » Welcome to my WordPress.com blog—and I'm going to start filling it with content.  As you can tell, it's not going to be just a goofing around blog.  I'm going to seriously use it as a How to blog for being a ProBlogger.  Take a wander over.  Or, if you'd rather, here's the feed url.

 

So, yes, this does mean I have an invite.  No, I'm not going to sell it on eBay.  Yes, I do accept gifts ;-).

 

Technorati Tags : blogging, WordPress, professional+blogging

 

Wow.  So it's about 2 AM Pacific time.  I finished clearing out all the comment spam from about 5-6 blogs.  I noticed getting a ton of e-mail notices of comments from other Blogware blogs tonight as well.  The one thing that just nailed me was that, for testing, receive post and comment notices 3x from my blog and 2x from the Qumana blog.  That's how my unread mail topped out at 1950+ before I shut off anonymous comments on the Qumana blog and my blog.  It seems that a coordinated effort was applied to put a comment on every single post on the blog.  Remember how I have over 1,000 posts?  Yeah.  Exactly.  Ouch.

 

What's the take-away here?  Okay.  First I am more than a tad miffed at Blogware right now.  Yes, they sponsor my blog.  Yes, I like the platform.  No, I'm not too keen on the way comments and trackbacks are handled.  I think we should be e-mailed when trackbacks come in and have mass delete and block for comments.  We also need to be able to have comment moderation.  If moderation were in place I wouldn't be up until 2 AM deleting really, really vile pornographic comment spam (incest, rape, violence, kiddie porn).  We also need a much better way for people to submit comments.  The Blogware ID system is super when you have a bunch of Blogware blogs (Typepad has a similar system), but really bites for comment control.  The process of getting a Blogware ID just to say "hey great post ..." is a tad much.  Personally I like the model I've seen recently that uses the required name, e-mail, optional site plus a little graphic or math equation (Dave Taylor has this) that provides "you are human, right?" check.

 

Second, I think this should be a wake up call for both Blogware and other providers.  Tonight's little fun and games strikes me as a very coordinated assault on a flaw in the Blogware model.  Which means to me that other platforms need to be checking for loopholes too.  Personally, I lost hours of potential work time tonight, worse, I lost hours of time with my kids.  I wanted to get that garbage off my sites so fast, just to make sure that no kid stumbled on them.

 

Let's hope that this is the only wake up call the hosts need.

 

And, finally, if you received one of these comment update e-mails from one of the blogs I am affiliated with, I am very sorry.  I know some of you might have been offended by then content.  Believe me, if I had been at my machine as it was happening I would have stemmed the tide as fast as possible.  I've also tried to make sure all of the comment spam is gone.  I'll be doing spot checks over the next little while.

 

Technorati Tags : blogs, Blogware, comment+spam