Lorelle launches a ‘wordpress treasure hunt’ so that all her adoring fans will link to her will provide us with a directory of wondrous WP articles to rival Codex in their scope and informativeness. Hurray!
[scrolls down unfeasibly long list]
What have we here at #39?
Hmm, I am unfamiliar with this topic. How am I to ‘describe, answer, and provide a solution’ to it? Or, rather, find somebody else who has? I know! Google is my friend!
Well, whaddaya know. Five hits, and four of them are Lorelle. Guess I don’t have too much choice here.
But wait! What is this I see at the bottom of the page?
Well, no. Lorelle sent me in search of ‘jaquinth’. If she meant Mark Jaquith she’d have said so. The guy’s in her blogroll, after all:
And — whaddaya know — there’s a distinct shortage of Lorelle in that set of results.
As has been pointed out here before, misspellings are a very good way of getting hits from people who cannot spell. And if you can provide them with the misspelling rather than trust to their ignorance, so much the better.
Why does this matter? It doesn’t, really, of course. It’s mildly disheartening to see such practices on a blog that’s syndicated across the dashboard of everyone who hasn’t figured out how to switch it off yet; especially when one of the ‘rules’ of this little contest is that other bloggers aren’t allowed to use it to pimp their own articles. It’s also mildly disturbing that she wants articles describing, answering, and providing a solution to such luminaries as ‘boren’, ‘donncha’ and ‘matt’. I wasn’t aware that they were problems. (Well, ok, we do get the occasional malcontent around here who thinks ‘matt’ is a problem, but they generally stop short of advocating solutions.) And no ‘podz’? Even though he’s an Automattic employee and has how-to guides coming out of his ears? That wouldn’t be political at all, would it?
Fortunately, it seems nobody else has scrolled down as far as #39 yet; and if they have, they very sensibly appear to have better things to do than pursue the matter; since, as pointed out in the comments, doing this ‘challenge’ halfway thoroughly would take at least seventeen hours. Not even I have that sort of time.
Nonetheless, if you do, you may consider this post as describing, answering and providing a solution to ’39. jaquinth’, and tick it off your list. If the Google gods are merciful, I may even steal the number one slot.
wordpress™ wank 
skippy said
Aw phooie — Lorelle’s updated the list with the correct spelling of Mark’s last name.
that girl again said
Yup, had a feeling that might happen. Why else would I have made all those screenshots? 😉
Some sources you can just point people at, others you can’t trust not to tinker with the evidence. For example, I never expect any of my comments or pingbacks to appear on Lorelle’s blog. If they do I assume it’s an oversight and she just hasn’t seen it yet 🙂
Lorelle VanFossen said
Hate to tell you, but I did change the spelling before someone told me about your article a few minutes ago. I had a childhood friend named Jaquinth (and a friend in my adult years named Jaquintha) and I was one of the few who spelled it right for years. So I battle with this constantly.
But I did think that I had caught the other misspellings of Mark’s name, so thanks for pointing to those.
And thanks again for sending all the traffic my way. You continue to be one of my best referrers. It’s much appreciated.
As for a trackback, I’ve gotten them from you before, but I didn’t see one this time. It might not have come in, or it might have gotten caught in the major onslaught of comment spam. I just deleted over 300.
shorty114 said
I think Lorelle’s trying to be snarky [is that the right word?]…
Maybe a nofollow could do the job. Do those even work?
that girl again said
Yes, and it’s a decent enough effort, but I am self-proclaimed mistress of snark on wp.com and will fight tooth and nail to retain my title. 🙂
Nofollow kills Google pagerank, it doesn’t stop people following the link. If I didn’t want to send traffic Lorelle’s way, this would be best accomplished by the simple expedient of not linking to her. But I’ve never really understood this thing some people have about not linking to, or slapping nofollows on, blogs they think are unworthy of their precious googlejuice or secondhand visitors. It’s a good approach to have to splogs — nobody wants to help them out — but applied to individuals it’s a bit petty. If someone else gets a referral from you, that’s not hurting you at all; unless you thought that all your readers were going to stay on your site and frolic amongst your archives forever. This may be a valid concern for Lorelle, but I don’t have her volume of material.
timethief said
Yes, and it’s a decent enough effort, but I am self-proclaimed mistress of snark on wp.com and will fight tooth and nail to retain my title. 🙂
*rolflmao* 😀
Ja said
Clearly an oversight, but I believe you left out the word “redundant” in there somewhere.
As an aside, it’s too late to avoid the whole search engine disaster (ie. they’ve become useless and frustrating) and failure of nofollow, but just out of curiousity wtf does a WP blog about WP blogging need Page Rank for exactly anyway? Bragging rights? That’s a small thought from a much bigger issue that someday I’ll write a book about. Maybe tomorrow.
Jā
Mark Jaquith said
And here I saw a post title bearing a close resemblance to my last name and thought that I had finally done something deserving of a snarky WordPress Wank post. Oh well… rain check?
Glad to see the integrity of my last name being so valiantly defended! Now all you have to do is get people to pronounce it correctly. JAY-kwith. Not Juh-KWEETH. Not Juh-KOOTH. And certainly not JACK-with. I’ll leave to your imagination how that particular pronunciation was misused in my Little League days by annoying teammates who thought themselves clever.
vkaryl said
wank…. you continue to provide value for “money”. Thanks. Best laugh I’ve had in I don’t even know how long….
Mark, the “JACK-with” comment was so funny I nearly…. well anyway….
Thanks to both of you for some relief from real life idiocies.
britgirl said
“I think Lorelle’s trying to be snarky”
“Yes, and it’s a decent enough effort, but I am self-proclaimed mistress of snark on wp.com and will fight tooth and nail to retain my title”.
ROTFL! How on earth did I miss this one??