![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/shoelf.gif\")
Once
\n in a long while, a precious few times in this cold hard life, we find
\n ourselves in the midst of a fairy tale. These
\n magical moments are invariably ended by a sobering dash of reality,
\n but while they last they are worth savoring and sharing.<\/p>\n
For the past week or so the Dowbrigade News has been To what end? As we understand it, each comment was counted as an incoming link to whatever page the spammer is pushing, making it rank higher in search engine results. It was driving us nuts, and we finally resorted to disabling comments Other than kvetching The other, at the suggestion of a member of the former, Well, we absolutely felt like the shoemaker from the Grimm Surely there is some mundane, human explanation and Once in a long while, a precious few times in this cold hard life, we find ourselves in the midst of a fairy tale. These magical moments are invariably ended by a sobering dash of reality, but while they last they … Continue reading
\n suffering from an infestation of comment spam. Unscrupulous evildoers
\n were using scripts or robots or something to send inane one line comments,
\n including a link to some site we never looked at, to virtually every
\n one of the 6,424 postings in the accumulated annals of the Dowbrigade.
\n These comments, which sometimes came in at the rate of several a minutes,
\n completely pushed legitimate comments (we don’t get many, but those we
\n get are choice<\/em>) and the postings hit counts off our discussions
\n page.<\/p>\n
\n altogether.<\/p>\n
\n on the blog,<\/a> we pleaded in pathetic
\n emails to two higher powers. One was the Thursday
\n Night Berkman<\/a> mailing
\n list, which includes most of the smartest people we know, some of whom
\n have shown surprising patience with a cyber ignoramus and dilettante
\n analogista like the Dowbrigade.<\/p>\n
\n was to the newbies
\n help list at Manila<\/a>. Although we can’t program our
\n VCR (yes, we still have a VCR), we are pretty good at following directions,
\n and had faith that if there was a fix to this problem we could perform
\n the necessary exorcism, given expert guidance and detailed instructions.<\/p>\n
\n Fairy Tale<\/a> when we went to our blog this afternoon to see who was
\n spamming our comments today. Unbelievably, they were all gone! Not only
\n were there no new spam comments, but all of the nasty older ones, over
\n a thousand, had disappeared like magic! Elves or fairies (not to cast
\n aspersions) had gotten into the guts of the Dowbrigade and done the work
\n we dreaded and didn’t know how to attack anyway.<\/p>\n
\n at some point some well-intentioned realist will burst our little bubble,
\n but in the mean time we are overjoyed with the result and prefer to ascribe
\n it to duendes. Now, let’s see if we can remember how to turn our comments
\n back on again. Gracias, muchas gracias.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"