After applying a generous helping of IP blacklisting, I found that the spam had slowed to a crawl. The site is getting, like, one per day so far, and that’s easily slow enough for me to keep the comments in manually approve/disapprove mode. So commenting on all posts has been re-enabled.
I’d like to share one of the spam posts though, because I find it so out of context that it’s sort of funny. Here goes.
um actually, I’m adopted. my mother was a pregnant teen and adopted me out to an American family. granted, I don’t particularly like America, but there’s no way she would have known that then. she cared about me enough to let another family raise me and try to give me everything. that’s rude to say parents who give children away don’t care. some definitely do. I probably wouldn’t have grown up to be an engineer if I had stayed in that life, and I really appreciate her giving me the chance to be.
This was to be posted on strip #200 and had a link to some sex webcam site. Exactly what a spam post like this is meant to accomplish is still something that perplexes me.
One other thing. I wrote a review for a set from that stupid LEGO Friends line. I may be considered just the tiniest bit NSFW in your boss is a 60-year-old tightass suffering from a serious case of malignant intelligence-cancer. But you can read it here. I’m going to make a page for reviews for things and tutorials for stuff, but right now I’m still going through the archives.
You should never try to figure out the spammer’s intent, that’s not the true purpose of their goofy ramblings. The intent is to get published, and since this spammer isn’t getting published, because you’ve got approvals enabled, it means that sooner or later they’re simply going to have to quit or bother someone else. That leads to another point, never publish the spammer’s ramblings, no matter how ridiculous or funny they may seem, it only encourages them to keep trying.
This is assuming they’re being posted by a human being, with some kind od logic or reasoning behind doing so. (regardless of how fucked up that logic might be) If the spam is being generated by bots, then it doesn’t make a difference.
That’s as may be, but there’s always someone behind the bots, and they’re probably finding this quite fun right now. They shouldn’t get any airtime, that just leads to more dumped in spam comments that’ll never see the light of day. Most site admins don’t bother publishing anything except a brief note about spammers anyway, their primary concern is containing the rogue bots. Dump their spam in the recycle bin (or whatever equivalent for the system you’re using) and move on.
I just read your Friends review. Hilarious! I actually got that set (for similar reasons), and really don’t mind the “girly-ness” of it, I got over that after a long debate on the subject over at EB. The mini-dolls are atrocious, but the hair is very useful, especially for brick comicers, IMO. There’s such a limited number of non-fleshie female heads, and gender-specific clothing options are rather limited as well, hair is the easiest way to make a masculine character feminine. (Try it out with a few generic smiley figs.) However, female hairstyles are relatively limited as well, especially since some can come off as masculine (i.e. as a mullet). The Friends hair, at least, allows for a few more female characters. *shrugs*
Also, if you’re willing to put up with more pink, the fashion studio has a nice ruler, MP3 player, and a laptop with a blank screen. The MP3 may be too pink to use in the comic, but stuff like the ruler (and the blackboard you already have) can be modified in Photoshop/GIMP fairly easily. ;-)
So, how is the comic coming along? Anything us fans can do to help?
Just adding in my voice of people eagerly waiting for the comic to return!
I found the site few days ago and read through the archives and I am now a eagerly awaiting The Return. Two Thumbs Up!