I saw a bunch of blackberries ready for harvest, but since they were on Puget Power land, I couldn't be certain they weren't sprayed. Funny but you saw what my blackberries looked like. Not sure if it's the slightly less sun mine get than the ones in an open field, but I was jealous. hehe
While I was on the hike I got mad though. It seems someone stole my blog address, probably from Freedomgardens.org, and has passed it around to all their spammer friends. In the last week I've averaged a dozen random comments a day, each with random words and gibberish in the body, with sites I've never heard of looking for some free advertizing. I'd email the senders but they're randomly generated on hosts I've never heard of. If I didn't enjoy the spontaneous comments from lurkers so much, I'd stop allowing non-registered folks to comment. It may come to that if I go a week or two without a single valid un-registered comment. How annoying. I can't even block the posters because they'll just come at me from a different place. I don't blame Freedomgardens.org, just some unethical person on the site. /grrrr
Sometime this week I've got a ton of gardening to do. But for now I'm just letting my garden get the much needed rain it deserves.
I'll end on a bright note. Some more tomatoes are ready for harvest, as well as some cukes. I'm going to eat them, I swear. And report back.
Enjoy your garden!
Sorry for the problem you are going through with the comment spam. I really sympathize -- having many sites, my constant battle is against spam. No matter what you do, spammers will find you.
ReplyDeleteI spend my time cleaning out 2-4,000 spam messages a day. And, the spammers are so good, they often send me spam from my own email / domain names.
I can say, almost for certain, that the spammers DID NOT come from our FreedomGardens.org site. Members are regularly browsed and the site is highly moderated for harvesters, scammers, spammers, and trolls.
True, an unethical person can visit the site and spend time collecting addresses, but it's unlikely.
What most likely happened (and this is my experience from many years in website work), your site probably jumped in traffic (?) bringing it to the attention of spammers. Your site is now prime real estate. Little dinky sites get little spam. Big sites get tons of spam.
Consider it an honor - you've made it to the big time. :-) Welcome to the league of spam fighters.
So, I just wanted you to know and let your readers know that Freedom Gardens is a safe site.
Oh... and check out some of the plugins for wordpress - there are a lot that help you control spam (like captchas)
I wouldn't necessarily blame freedomgardens.org. Your site's url may have been collected from gardenweb or anyplace else you posted a link to it. It's kind of unavoidable. We have the same problem with the Home Orchard Society's forum site. Constantly getting spam posted under various inappropriate or misleading topics. These spamming morons will do anything to get their rubbish in front of as many eyeballs as possible.
ReplyDeleteNow that is a typical west cost tree, it is amazing how large trees can get.
ReplyDeleteTis the season for tomatoes, they are so good right off the vine. I also like cold tomatoes even thought apparently the fridge is suppose to kill the taste. They seem just as flavorful to me after being chilled.
I am going to make a tomato relish called Raw Sauce this year when a few more tomatoes ripen. It is really good on hamburgers. I will post the recipe on my blog once I get to doing it.
Jordanne, what an honor to have you comment on my blog. You have millions more important things to do with your scant 24 hours a day than bother with little old me. Thank you. I love your sites and everything your family does for yourselves and the world at large. Thank you! And no, I don't blame Freedomgardens.org, I just figured it was someone mining as you said, and yes, it could happen to anyone at any time. My membership to the awesome Freedomgardens.org was the only new variable and that's when the spam started in force. It's not hard to fix, just annoying. And I hope to get updated and plugged in to more from Wordpress when Judy's DD goes back to school, hehe. Oh, and thanks for the compliment on the traffic on this site. Unfortunately I'm still hovering between 100 and 200 hits a day. I'm happy with it, but that's definitely not the big leagues, hehe.
ReplyDeleteTim, I certainly know that. I had problems a while back but they stopped for a while. These spammers are new though. They post with real names, like Joanne Peck and Lenny Buckley. Then they post urls from seemingly normal sites rather than typical spam junk. These seem to be sites that just want more traffic and paid someone to get them the eyeballs. I'm definitely never going to these sites if this is the tactics they use.
Dan, Sure enough, but this one was one of the more interesting ones, thus the picture. I also saw a tree growing up out of a huge rotting stump. The roots were growing down the stump and into it. It looked like spider legs. It was cool. My phone was acting up or I would have taken a picture. As for the tomatoes, I hope to eat some for lunch! They sure are good.
I've been getting spammed in my comments whenever I post to my fave yahoo groups - its a double edged sword, my traffic always goes up and so does the spam.
ReplyDeleteIt is defiantly a special tree, is it a redwood?. That would have been an interesting photo of the tree growing out a the stump. It reminds me of a trip canoeing in Algonquin Park. I saw a huge tree stump that had a young 5 foot spruce tree growing out of it. That was back in the film days without vibration reduction so the photo was blurry from the canoe moving. Hmm, maybe another trip should be in the works to re-take it.
ReplyDelete