As for the spam, Akismet sometimes goes wrong as well. Regardless of that every one comment I approve there are no less than 20 spams these days sad but true. Unfortunately I have to scan through the spam as well just in case one got caught there by mistake.

WP exploits are very common but not as bad as those PHPNuke site hacking etc. I have suffered many times in the past with my old website.

As for the generic comments, even when I comment on a blog to become Top Commentator there or to get a follow back, I make it a point to read the article completely and make my point in no less than 50 words. I write short comments only when I had commented there before and want to follow up (or in worst case, tit for tat – that’s if somebody continuously write short comments for my posts I would do the same for them as well )

Moreover, unethical practices will continue against your sites, the onus is on you to be one step ahead of the online “terrorists”. Everybody knows that every version of WordPress before 2.7 is exploitable, and failing to upgrade and patch your installation is an open invitation to hackers. As I speak now, thousands of kids with time on their hands would be sitting away designing exploits for WP 2.7 and munching down cold pizza

Generic comments are also a problem. “Thank you for the tip”, “great post” and similar are often marked as spam in many forums and the same should be for blogs too. While you should be not that strict to establish a military dictatorship on your blog, generic comments by the same commentator on several posts is a definite sign of intention to spam or gain back link favors. No wonder, many bloggers are moving away from do-follow to no-follow attributes on their blogs.

Great Article overall, Ajith. Many know these ‘unethical ways”, but none had bothered to blog about them and create a public awareness. Thumbs up on your initiative to do so

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Btw, your green blog rocks and I liked its theme!

@Nihar, thanks for your feedback… I really appreciate it

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@Shirley, I know how frustrating it can be to see your content republished by somebody else… I have gone through it as well Btw, I guess reader passivity (mainly by information junkies) is still okay compared to the two or three word comments…

And I visited your blog. I liked your SEO tips.

@Dennis, er… we have an imposter in the room Oops I mean, you have been on the receiving end right?

@Mitch, we have talked about content stealing in another contest, right? What to do, we can’t help it. Though there’s a dummy copyright message on almost every blog, that doesn’t hold much value As for the hacking thing… it still happens on many blogs. People hack with SQL injection etc. And these days, I have started suspecting plugins as well. That’s the biggest threat to WordPress blogs, I believe.

@Barbara, I understand… nobody has patience may be. Because they have to finish commenting on 30 or 40 blogs every day to get back links and reference visitors. Reading seems to be the last thing on their minds.

Thanks again, all of you

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I think I get most annoyed with the republishing of content. I’ve had some of my articles republished verbatim, with no link back to my website.

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@Kurt, Thanks for the detailed views on spamming and imposter posting. Yep, I checked out the post that you mentioned and now the commenters have made it even more spammy I guess I should have seen your post before writing on this topic as I would have got some more points

@Kim, I agree that taking out ‘Nofollow’ only for those who have commented on a certain number of times is a great idea I guess I should do that as well.

Imposters are around all over… Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to trace down the culprits.

As for #5, yes it happens and unfortunate thing is that Google sometimes does not easily revert to your PR status even when you remove all the paid links

@Ramesh, #9 for me is still unethical – I mean without reading a single thing if somebody commments and that too in two or three words, for me it’s highly unethical. Hmm, I should try some “nice post” or “thanks for the tips, buddy” type of comments on your blog

@Sova, in fact it was quite a funny incident as there could not have been a better target for a pair of shoes

Thank you all for your participation!

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#9 Commenting for the sake of commenting
#10 Reader Passivity (You’ve already mentioned this is not unethical)

For blogs that has very active users participation (like yours), #9 may be treated unethical. For my blog, where users are not very actively commenting, I’ll be glad to take any comment on the posted subject, as long as they are not spam.

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And I’ve had #6 happen to me – by someone that I thought was a friend. I have so wanted to make the incident public but I haven’t. I do not deal with that individual anymore though.

I can’t believe someone would do #5 – let google do their own work.

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