Meta: Housecleaning
1) Even with my handy-dandy math plugin, I'm still getting a *ton* of spam. Fortunately Akismet has been catching it all, but with close to 300 spams a day, I can no longer sift through it all, looking for false positives. So if you post a comment and it disappears, you'll probably want to either re-post it to appear less spammy or drop me a line and I'll see if I can dredge it up. Sorry kids, it's why we can't have nice things. (If you've never posted before, your post is automatically held for moderation. I try to get to those pretty quickly, so don't worry if it doesn't show up right away.)
2) In a couple weeks I'm going to start going through my links and clearing out any that seem to be dead or abandoned. So if you're linked here, haven't posted to your blog in months, and would still like to be linked here, either post something (fer chrissakes!) or drop me a line and say purty-please. 
3) New policy: Attention blog trolls. If you send me hate mail that's really really funny in a sub-human mouth-breathing sort of way, you're on notice that I may post it on the blog without asking your permission. I may also forward it to your mom. Or George Takei.
§
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:34 am
I don’t know what it’s worth, but here, try this. It’s an anti-spam thing. Never used it before, but I hear good things about it. Might be of use.
Incidentally, if I were to blurt out streams of text in my messages regarding Viagra, porn, and breast enlargements, am I more likely to get my messages deleted because they’re mistaken for spam, or just out of principle?
Although, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Hmm.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:16 am
“Fortunately Akismet has been catching it all, but with close to 300 spams a day, I can no longer sift through it all, looking for false positives.”
Yeah, Akismet is a life saver, but the moderation process needs to be rethought. There’s really no point in it, as we can’t pick out the false positives from the volume of nasty porn spam. Legitimate commenters would be better served by definitive rejection, with a multi-step appeals process involving captchas, math, validated e-mail addresses, and questions about Voltron.
February 22nd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
That George Takei video is the best response ever!
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I suppose the spam filter would be more likely to catch you, but in general I rarely delete comments. OTOH, if you were deliberately trying to poison my spam filter, that would make me sad.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Perhaps with all those buzz words in the comments, you will get more traffice from people looking for those things. For real. They might even stay after the let down of not reaching a site with old men cranking it out with newly minted large breasted women.
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Haha… that link was priceless.
Thanks Amber
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:40 am
300 spams per day? Hah! Newb!
What boggles my mind is trying to think of the spam that Scott Jennings or Raph Koster get per day. That’s gotta be pain.
Anyway, most of my spam seems to have a fairly distinct visual patterns, so I can (usually) pick out the false positives by quickly scrolling through the list. But, if someone just posts a link or does something else that makes the post look like spam from a quick glance it’s lost to the ages.
The curse of popularity, I guess.
February 27th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Mmmmm, gin!