more from our new spam overlords
OK, who decided that spamming multiple threads with the same chunk of ungrammatical copy/pasted text was a good way for Sphere to handle the fallout on this latest messy little linkbuilding scam?
Was it the same person who thought it would be best if Matt didn’t disclose his affiliation with the company in the announcement post (though he seemed to think it necessary when announcing their acquisition by AOL), and kept quiet about the fact that they have at least one staff member in common?
Also, has anyone seen a Sphere logo on the ‘possibly related links’? Like global tag icons, it may be something I need to add to my skins in the interests of clarity.
eta: and here is Sphere guy promising to ‘B MOR KAREFUL’ with his grammar. I’d never have pulled him up on it if I’d realised he was an idiot. Once more I have violated my policy of not poking fun at the genuinely stupid. Along with my policy of only unleashing my Sword of Pedantry on those who mock the spelling of others. Woe.
ロバート said,
April 30, 2008 @ 10:59 am
Ah, well you let him have a way to distract from his spamming, by giving him a way to turn it into being about grammar.
I went the .org route but am saddened and amazed at the arrogance on wordpress.com
They’re squandering goodwill by being overly aggressive and not giving proper opt-ins / opt-outs.
(I wandered over here from Lorelle’s. I like the tone of this blog!)
Robert Synnott said,
April 30, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
They surely have to realise that if they deploy horrible features of this sort as opt-outs, without telling people in advance, then people will leave?
that girl again said,
April 30, 2008 @ 2:08 pm
They are relying rather heavily on Blogspot sucking
If Google are smart, they will be working on import tools for Blogger as we speak. There are a couple of third-party tools and workarounds, but they’re a bit obscure for your average disillusioned .com user. Tumblr is probably the only free alternative that lets you import all your posts right now.
At livejournal you find that a lot of people complain but don’t leave because it’s where their friends are. I don’t think wordpress.com has managed that kind of lock-in effect (partly because they wanted to make it possible for people to graduate to running wordpress.org) though they may get closer to it if BuddyPress succeeds in making the site more of a social network. At the moment they are still probably gaining more new users than they are losing, so I don’t think they care if people leave. The accounts are still there swelling the numbers, it’s just that they’re relieved of the burden of hosting any actual content on them.
Richard said,
April 30, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
Yes, but I can has mug at WurdPrez!
Dr. Mike Wendell said,
April 30, 2008 @ 3:29 pm
But the mug isn’t open sourced though. You can’t modify the process to change the color.
that girl again said,
April 30, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
embarrassing spills over ones keyboard? ONE’S, people! How can you expect us to entrust our credit card details to you when you haven’t even mastered the apostophe?
[puts Sword of Pedantry away, again]
Richard said,
April 30, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
Screw up the software and then offer them the opportunity to buy shiny bits as a distraction. I do however need an alternative to the paper targets I use when I go target practicing. I could film it and put it on Youtube.
Dr. Mike Wendell said,
April 30, 2008 @ 4:58 pm
Don’t give me any ideas. I have to do my monthly hundred shots to stay current later this week.
Matt said,
April 30, 2008 @ 8:08 pm
Not to mention that it would read better as YOUR, if we’re looking at making it match the rest of the page.
[gives back Sword of Pedantry, whispering to TGA that she misspelled 'apostrophe'.]
options said,
April 30, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
Google are very smart (well, almost as much as Matt is) guys, but, no, they are not interested in the switching .com userbase to Blogger. they much more need their UGC on technically* splogless .com
moreover they don’t seem to be interested in Blogger anymore at all. otherwise they’d got around some attractive themes** — as per Matt a #1 dealbreaker for a Snow Lover (and that’s where he can be trusted wholly).
—
*) due to the inablilty to provide the JS/embeds/iframe and such; also ‘Types of Blogs’.
**) instead of that total fugliness they have now. or, at least, then they would have promoted (yet just a little bit) plenty of successful themes (mostly of WP\GPL) which are already got ported to Blogger by someone else.
ish said,
May 3, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
Hi, I’m sorry for posting this at the wrong place but I’m using your “Picnic” stylesheet on my WordPress.com account. And the top navigation for the pages gets hidden by the WordPress.com topbar. Is there anything that can be done about it?
ish said,
May 3, 2008 @ 7:42 pm
Okay nevermind. I managed to fix it. Great theme by the way, totally love it!