SOMEWHAT FRANK

Fighting Splog Blog Joins Splog Battle

  Another blogger has joined the anti-splog crusade by launching the Fighting Splog blog which lists cases of splog abuse. This blogger like I did, "got so fed up with spamming in blogs" and took action. I applaud. Check out the blog if you get a chance and remember to report splog to Splog Reporter.

Splog Reporter Improves Functionality With New Look

The recent release of Splog Reporter was met with much enthusiasm. I received many suggestions and appreciated all of your feedback. The splog URLs have been flying in via the website. However, it did not take long to realize there was new functionality that needed to be added. So version two of Splog Reporter has been released with the assistance of my new counterpart, Jeff Johns, an extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable developer and resource.

The new Splog Reporter adds functionality that should improve overall usability by making reporting splog as simple as a two-click process. Splog Reporter has added a bookmarklet which can be placed on a user’s web browser’s toolbar or favorites. This feature should make it easier for users to report splog while viewing a splog website, though Splog Reporter is still offered in the previously released user-keyed method. Another new feature is the ability for users to enter a user name that will be associated to their email address. This change enabled us to create a point system for ranking splog reporter by the number of confirmed, reported splogs. I challenge you help clean up the blogosphere and see how many points you can accumulate. Furthermore, you can join the good-willed blogger movement by adding a splog reporter link to your blog as I did in my right rail. To get one for your site go here. Also you can check out this post by Jeff Johns on version two.

Blogger Adds Anti-Splog Measure

Blogger just released a new feature that could be helpful in the battle against splog and other objectionable content. They launched a "Flag?" link on the top rail of Blogger. This allows others to send feedback to Blogger on blogs that they find to be offensive. I think this is an excellent move in the right direction towards protecting our blogosphere from splog.

To read more on the new feature check out the Blogger Buzz post here. Also visit this post by Mark Wilson, he was the first to point the update out to me since I do not use Blogger.

Spam + Blog = Splog : How Is It Affecting The Blogosphere?

I just read a post by Mark Cuban that explained it simply as spam in the form of a blog. What is splog?

Spam + Blog = Splog

Clever naming convention I know, but splog is creating an astrericks next to the validity of blogging numbers in the blogsphere as decreasing the quality of blog search engine search results.  Mark believes and I agree Google's blogger.com and other free blogging services it make it too easy start a bogus blog or splog. Though I find that offering free blogs is a wonderful thing for the good willed blogger it offers a free tool for nasty sploggers to unleash their garbage. These splogs are clogging the blogsphere and need to be handled in some way. IceRocket hinted at plans to stop indexing free blog offerings to help clean up their search results. I think this is a great idea but unfortunately will hurt the "good willed" blogger thus taking away some of the blogospheres freedom. This lose of freedom is the unfortunate part as these sploggers are really acting as blogosphere terrorists and need to be stopped.

Mark Cuban in closing offered this thought and I am going to take it as a call to arms:

"The intellectual property that is available in the blogosphere is an amazing source of ideas, facts and imagination. Now is the time to do something before the splog overwhelms it and make it difficult to discover new and exciting blogs."

I have a suggestion for Mark and IceRocket and any other blog search engine that will take it and run with it, I think you need a splogger patrol. Ad a link to your search results that allows the "good willed" bloggers of the blogosphere to report any blogs they find to be splogs in nature. Call it splog reporting or the splog patrol. I recently launched beta for a simple website called SplogReporter.com where "good willed" bloggers can report sploggers. Verification will then be made on which submitted items are truly splogs. So please bookmark the Splog Reporter site and report any splogs you come across. The goal is to create a master directory of splog URLs to have removed from the search engines. So "good willed" bloggers of the blogosphere, this is your call to arms to rid the blogosphere of splogs.

Does anyone have any other suggestions on what can be done to take action against splog without having to eliminate free blog offerings from blog search engine results?