Due to a huge number of spammy sites trying to sign up for this blog ring, I have decided to put the use of Ringsurf on hold and using the blog as the main sign up point. So, would you all mind terribly if I ask you to change the code on your blogs to the alternative (with the nifty button designed by Joss) you can find that here. It's a plain text file, and you simply need to copy the contents and paste them into your blog.
I'm sorry to be a nuisance, but the number of spammy applications has become a real problem - I have just returned from holiday to find dozens of them - obviously I can't assume all are dodgy and must examine each one which takes time. If we only accept sign ups via the blog, the number of bots, spammers etc can be kept to a minimum.
Thank you :-)
ps: some of the spammy applications are easy to weed out, for example the person who gave their name as 'Sofa Covers' I don't know, maybe there is a Mr and Mrs Covers who thought it was a good idea to call their offspring Sofa, but I doubt it LOL
3 comments:
Bit of a bugger is that Kate. It just seems the bloody spammers are everywhere. I have been fighting the technorati spammers and have to say I gave up and removed the Kramer/technorati plugin from my blog for the time being.
Just an aside on the new link code. If people want to host the Yorkshire blog button on their own site they could do so. it would save on such a long URL.
It is a bugger - I liked the idea of having the automated sign up process, and the code that people could use to browse through blogs, but if it means wading through a ton of spam everyday it really isn't practical. Grr, they do annoy me.
I'm pretty sure that these weren't anonymous bot applications, and even more so, because since I put a notice on the ringsurf page saying no more sign ups were being accepted there, the spam has stopped. To me that suggests the page is being read by a real person.
At the moment I haven't had many problems with spam on WP - Akismet and SK2 seem to catch it all - the gits who send it are being more devious though so I'm not going to get blaze and think it won't happen.
Good idea about downloading the button BTW - photobucket does produce looong urls. Ideally I would host it on my server, but I have disabled hot linking so it wouldn't show up. Once again that is because of dodgy types - in that case folk who use the url for images and nick my bandwidth.
You know it would be very easy to become cynical about some of the people who use the internet LOL If it's not spammers, it's bandwidth or content thieves (that's happened to me recently too) I wonder if they behave like that IRL.
I'm not from Yorkshire so I wouldn't have joined up anyway.
However, I do have a fictional cousin, Violet. She has always preferred to be known as Vi. And last year she married a Mr Agra and moved to Harrogate. (Obviously, she is a bit posh!)
Apparently, she has tried to join the Yorkshire blog ring but keeps getting rejected. Any reason for this?
(BTW, if you're having a problem with long URLs, you could try the (free)tinyurl.com service. It's just a suggestion; hope it helps.)
PPS - Had to disable Javascript in order to leave my comment. Don't tell me Blogspot's having technical issues again...
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