Today was a day for Gus to be nice to Julie and lick his head which is always sweet
for as long as it lasts. Most of the time it ends with a big bite, but since Gus is running low on teeth these days I suppose it isn’t that bad. And to be fair, he gives a special meow from across the room when he decides to do this, so Julie could bolt if he really cared to. In fact some times Julie even comes on his own and ducks his head for him.
While this is sweet and all, the blog itself seems to be under attack by spammers. WordPress finds them all, but it still is annoying to blast a few hundred each day. Plus I was taking unwarranted pride in having more real comments than spam, but no longer.
The other ominous turn is that these spam messages have a little mean streak in them:
I drop a comment each time I especially enjoy a article on a site or if I have something to add to the discussion. It is caused by the passion communicated in the article I read. And after this post Julie Returns | ThreeCatYard. I was actually excited enough to post a comment
I actually do have a few questions for you if it’s okay. Could it be simply me or do some of the comments come across like they are written by brain dead people?
That’s sort of uncalled for, especially from a mess of people from Poland with assumed names who have nothing to do but send the same email to this blog.
I believe what you said made a lot of sense. But, what about this? what if you added a little information? I ain’t suggesting your information is not good, but suppose you added something that grabbed a person’s attention? I mean Julie Goes Forth | ThreeCatYard is kinda plain. You ought to glance at Yahoo’s home page and note how they write news titles to grab viewers to open the links.
Oh, it’s ON now. Let’s look at this great Yahoo title science:
California governor unveils ambitious water plan
Wow, this title really pulls you in. I imagine this plan is much like all other California water plans. Step 1: Find someone with water. Step 2: Steal it and bring it to California.
Note that I was too polite to mention that the capitalization of the title is totally wrong, English wise. Consider yourself refuted, Polish Spammer.
ThreeCatYard 
They annoy me too – I have had loads with the same meaningless content. What’s sad is that somewhere there are blogs that are allowing them through!
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Al least they get trapped before anyone sees them but me. So there are no side effects like the Blogger solution has where I often just can’t comment on a site because the verification of those goofy words rejects even the correct answer.
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You’re half right.
It is like all other California water plans: steal water from Northern California and ship it so houses in Southern California can have pools and landscaping.
So Julie is humoring Gus with the licking and biting. That’s nice of him.
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Julie is a pretty amiable cat on the whole.
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I’m lucky to not get very much spam on my WP blog. And Askimet catches it all. But my other site, which is devoted solely to my writing & proofreading business, (kimkiminy.com) gets LOTS of spam. Some are hilariously critical, some are glowing praise, some have advice for my SEO admin. Which is hilarious because I actually do SEO for one of my online clients. Some are LONG manifestos in Cyrillic peppered with plenty of links.
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I’ve gotten a drizzle of those too before the last week or so, which at least have the virtue of trying to get on my good side. I don’t recall seeing another critical one before this blast, and the volume is up.
But Askimet catches them all, and lets through the real folks. I think I’ve only reversed two or three decisions ever.
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I’d be a little happier about the whole thing if I got a site hit for my trouble.
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Blogger catches all my spammers, once in a while I’ll go in and delete them, but yeah, I get a few critical ones and then the long long ones with tons of links. I can’t imagine who would click on those. Then again, I don’t know why anyone believes those nigerian scams either..
Julie and Gus.. that is so sweet! That last picture, Julie looks like he’s telling you “This doesnt concern you, back off..”
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Except for the little bit of squinting from the flash, that’s pretty much the ‘help me Gus is biting me on the side’ he gets when Gus bites him on the side.
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hiya, Savannah’s Mom here…I get very few spam comments, and those I do get are ALWAYS caught in the WP spam file??? Not sure why you are having such problems??? I have a paid blog site, is yours free? If yes, then maybe WP is less ‘spam protective’ on free blogs??? I am so sorry.
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Mine are all caught in the spam file too, I just have gotten about 1500 or so in the trap in the last week or so. Pretty much all of two varieties.
Before that, it was maybe a couple a day.
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We’ve been pretty lucky with blogger catching most of our spam.
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Nobody seemed to notice Gus’ Tail-bun in picture 2!
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I got the one about brain-dead. And much more volume lately — not as much as yours, but eeNUFF!! Akismet does seem to work well except that Layla’s posts always end up spam. What’s she done to offend the WP gods? Post on the odd platform she uses, is my guess.
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One of the few times that a good comment got grabbed by Askimet was when it was from a blogger running a business blog and commenting using that name. Maybe that’s Layla’s issue.
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Makes sense!
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