I saw this post from Mark this morning—Mark Evans -- Blog Spam- the new curse!—and it got me to thinking about how much time I'm spending nearly everyday clearing out both comment and trackback spam. Blogware, being a hosted system, doesn't have as good support for 
dealing with scourge as I'd like (you can delete and block trackback spam, but you aren't e-mailed when a trackback comes it, you can delete comments and get e-mail when they come in, but can't auto-blacklist the IP#) [Disclosure: My personal blog is sponsored by Blogware].
The problem of slogs (spam blogs) is more insidious, though. When Arieanna and I were looking for content for a client's blog, we were gobsmacked at the number of spam blogs on certain topics (home repair and improvement was the worst). Slogs, make it look like blogging is all about spam. Not to mention the fact that they distract people from the real content and give all blogs a bad name. Blogger, unfortunately, is the worst problem. I think they need to take serious steps to prevent these slogs from getting created. The blog creation process is too easy, too "bot-able".
All these together concerns me. Slogs could reduce the overall value of blogs, too much chaff vs wheat, and comment and trackback spam could discourage people from keeping their blogs going. This isn't a new problem. But as the new school year is beginning, and more and more students should start blogging, we have to get a handle on this. Is there an easy solution? I doubt it. How can we all help? We're doing our part already by keeping on top of comment and trackback spam. Delete them mercilessly. Keep working with blog platform vendors for better and better tools to automate and block this pernicious plague. Finally, let's all get on Blogger's case to rein in slogs. Of course we can't stop real humans from creating a blog and making it a link farm, but Blogger can work to block bots from doing that. Anything that makes it harder for spammers to create blogs automatically cuts into their profits.
To the larger question, will this slow blogging's growth? I think it's too soon to tell. Blogs are just hitting the mainstream in a big way. There is a lot of inertia there, but the next 3-6 months are critical. Let's see what happens before IceRocket, and others, block all Blogger blogs from their indices.
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