Every so often, I enjoy blogging on the topic of blogging. As a journalist writing on plastic surgery topics, I stand on the outside looking in, in a sense — I don’t identify well with a plastic surgeon who publishes a blog about his or her trade. Rather, I am interested in what the plastic surgeon writes about. It takes a special kind of slightly obsessive surgeon/writer to publish a blog that is kept up-to-date. So, I was amused and could easily identify with the problems of John DiSaia, MD, one of the more prolific plastic surgeon bloggers out there, when he writes about the time spent dealing with blog comments. Dealing with crazy or illiterate blog comments — the ones that include, say, 50 links to sex toy Web sites; or comments that were written using freetranslation.com — is part of the blogger’s trade.
Plastic Surgery Blogging…an Experience:
Once your blog achieves a Google Page Rank of 3 or more, the spam starts flowing along after it. It would be nice if some of the spammers could write better English. Moderating illiterate spam is particularly annoying. The SPAM to which I am treated tends to be written on behalf of cosmetic surgery practices or outfits that seem to be able to spell their URLS correctly but very little else. These comments are rapidly tossed into the trash in my WordPress and then I move on with my day.
He goes on to note the types of robot-generated comments or comments generated by people who can’t quite get a handle on the language.