A special phrase now appears on some of the rogue comments placed at Salut! by computers masquerading as people. Read on and you'll see, from this version of a similar posting at Salut! Sunderland, what I mean ...
As reported here recently, Salut! - and its sister sites Salut! Sunderland , Salut! Live and Salut! North - have been infested by an ugly, virulent pest called the website parasite.
The aim of the people posting comments which appear at first glance
to be genuine, but can quickly be seen to be bogus and probably
generated by computers, is to produce artificially inflated stats for
visits to their own, usually unrelated sites or promote Viagra,
medicines or whatever else they are trying to flog.
Many readers will recall my recent posting on how someone or something calling him/itself Andrew A Sailer added
such a comment to Pete Sixsmith’s excellent and moving tribute at Salut! Sunderland to Stephen “Squinny” Wilson, the Sunderland fan murdered outside a County Durham pub.
I have not the time to go through the many bogus comments that have already been posted at my sites, but I do aim to deal with these vermin-like creatures whenever I come across them from now on.
Accordingly, in you see a comment on a current or archived article that starts with the statement NB: I am a cretinous web parasite, and which may have had a link deleted, you will know that I have been beneath the Salut! bonnet and done a bit of tinkering.
If anyone else has ideas on how to block these peoples or things, without also making it harder for genuine readers to leave their welcome comments, please let me know at [email protected] or in a comment below. Natural justice: Andrew A Sailer’s pernicious bit of self promotion can only now be seen if you opt in to reading it, since so many of you clicked the thumbs down icon that it now has the automatic note “hidden due to low comment rating” attached.
And if you’d like a reminder of how Pete recorded poor Squinny’s unjust and premature death, go to
http://salutsunderland.footballunited.com/2009/08/stephen-wilson-rip/
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