I get a lot of comments on this blog, and all but one or two of them are obviously spam.  Apparently there are people who spend all their time coming up with ways to trick web sites into posting ads and links, and the blog software therefore has to have spam filters, and it’s quite an arms race.  It’s refreshing to see that sometimes the spammers really are idiots.  For instance, one spam comment that recently came into this blog had the following title:

Author : You {can|could} {definitely|certainly} see your {enthusiasm|expertise|skills} {in the|within the} {paintings|work} you write. {The arena|The world|The sector} hopes for {more|even more} passionate writers {like you|such as you} who {aren’t|are not} afraid

Apparently, there’s spam manufacturing software out there that takes a template like this and creates every possible variation of the message: pick one option in each {…|…|…}, and you get a huge number of non-identical messages.  They program their computer to send one of those along with a link to your site and hope that you will fall for it and post their link.   And spam filters can’t just watch for one known bit of text to block out this spammer.  However, {it would seem that|apparently} someone didn’t {read|check|paint} the {instructions|manual|masterpiece} and the template {processor|expander|generator} was not run {correctly|properly|effectively}….  Furthermore, filter software can be easily improved to match these patterns.

Mostly, all this does is waste a bit of my time: Every so often, I sign in to the blog, run the spam filter on all the comments, and delete any remaining ones that aren’t legit.  But after seeing these now for a couple of years, I just thought the above slip was kind of funny.