Dealing with FundySpam

” . . .my Fundy commentators and readers are generally the worst behaved people on the internet – interupting discussions, trying to steal readership, and other internet sins that my pagan friends would not stoop to. So, I dont want an immediate crossover between this blog and my others because I dont want FundyFear to intimidate my conversation and i dont want to live like a haemophiliac in a razor factory. (no offence intended to haemophiliacs)

Me, in a comment on why I dont link all my sites Link

Comment spam on our blogs always comes at the worst time – when we are traveling or blogfasting and have gone a few days without internet access. When you finally get online, there is all kinds of nasty stuff in the comments section of your blog. An enemy has done this, and it happened while you were sleeping, away and vulnerable. Happened to me last week. . .

Read on to hear about: FundySpammers, (and PornoSpammers, MarketSpammers, FlamerSpammers, ReligiousSpammers) and what to do about them.

Times like that, I always appreciate my faithful readers who see a problem and deal with it. Like The Barefoot Girl last week who responded to a FundySpammer on a post.

“If you’re “very disappointed in what [you’re] seeing”… well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but it may be because you simply haven’t looked for very long. If you really want better understanding on the people behind the blogs you’ve hit recently, I’d encourage you to come on in, pull up a chair, have a pint with us and stay awhile. You’re welcome anytime you’re interested in listening to the entirety of a matter before you offer an answer to it (Proverbs 18:13).

cheers

the barefoot girl

PS- I’ve not listed my blog because, to be frank, I haven’t any interest in having you post on it just yet. Feel free to email me, though.

Isn’t that nice!!!!

Notice how she is smart enough NOT to leave a link to her blog. I was just asked why I don’t put links to my other blogs and websites on tallskinnykiwi. My main reason is that I dont trust my fundamentalist friends to enter into conversation with my pagan friends. If they misbehave on my personal site, in the presence of mature Jesus followers, and get their Scolfields in a twist because of the most incidental of secondary matters, then how can i trust them to participate in a deep conversation on spirituality with people of a radically different belief system? I understand her lack of trust.

I also like her desire for more discussion.

As for spammers. there are many kinds that pop up in my comments and i deal with them all differently:



1. PornoSpammers. I generally delete the PornoSpam comments when they come. They are easy to spot and I delete them for fear of my readers clicking on their links.

“Great post. Keep it up!”

Babe at hotsluts.nu

Yeah . . . right!

2. MarketingSpammers sometimes stay in my comments if they only post one or two comments. If there is a wave of 60 comments all leading to buyNow.phones.pl then I will delete them all.

3. ReligiousSpammers, who are always named Elizabeth, live in Nigeria, have just lost their wealthy husbands and hold Swiss bank accounts, are more offensive to me than the PornoSpammers. I posted something called “To All Of God’s Beautiful Spammers” that spoke out to them.

4. FlamerSpammers One person last week called me a F . . (cant say it). These people are the vandals of the internet but I don’t usually delete their comments, since they actually have their place and some of these rude comments should stay there for posterity’s sake – The grafitti on walls of ancient tombs tell us much about history – and one day people will learn things from these spams.

5.FundySpammers are a new breed. They have only really discovered the blogosphere in the past year and often lack an ethical system of the intenet (nethics). They have been known to violate group emails by selling their books, attempting to hijack readers like Absalom who stood at the gate, putting down David and scoring voters for himself (see 3 Internet Offenders).

What to do with FundySpammers?

1. I just leave their comments there. Jesus had an entourage of Pharisees who muttered at the back to each other while he was preaching, and he did not forbid them to do so. Maybe they have their place.

2. I do not talk about them much, or by name, because I don’t want them to get popular on Google. This is why, when i mention their websites, I do not leave a hypertext link to them – simply because i don’t want people reading anything destructive. And linking to their sites will increase their Google rating and actually increase their readership.

3. I encourage more dialogue and discussion, if that is possible.

4. I let other readers respond to them – sometimes that is more productive than responding myself, or responding too soon.

5. I try to respond to their questions, because as members of the Body of Christ, they offer an accountability mechanism that sometimes may be a healthy tool of self-correction.

6. I try to win them as friends. Better to see their heart and give them the benefit of the doubt. “Love believes all things . . ”

7. If I was smarter, i would put them to work. They are great at seeing faults in articles and they can find cracks in your significant blog posts – you may want to build a team of Fundies and send them advance copies of your thoughts for them to attack BEFORE you post them to the world. Some of my harshest FundyCommentators have kindly offered to read over my stuff before I post it . . . now thats a great idea.

What to do when you are HOUNDED and BEATEN UP by FundySpammers on their own sites?

You can check on who is saying what by going to Technorati and doing a word search on yourself or your blog. Create a feed for yourself and then you can track the conversation . . . but don’t get paranoid!!!! And don’t fight back with the same worldly weapons – be like Jesus and blog like Jesus would blog. And I try to remember that not all fundamentalists are rude and obnoxious (some of my favorite mentors) so i try not to make generalities.