When comments go bad

So.  I read this bit about automatic spam detection on Circumlocution For Dummies.  That got me to thinking:  I've set up a few spinoff blogs over the years that I've been pretty much ignoring.  The idea was that they would just repost selected blog entries on specific topics - gardening, computers, astronomy - and I would get very specifically targeted Google Ads to appear on them.  But after setting them up with a few initial posts, I sort of forgot about them for...a while.

After I started getting spammed relentlessly by a psychotic racist during the 2008 presidential campaign I set up comment moderation on Another Monkey and left it on.  I've also got my other blogs set to automatically email me comments for review.  I think.  I've caught a few spammy ones on one of them recently, of the sort that say something meaningless like "Nice post, visit my online gaming casino site" with a link back to their site.  But I got to wondering if I'd done this with all of my other blogs.

Obviously not.  The first post I checked on one of those long-neglected blogs had 110 comments.  The first one - and probably many of the others that followed - was from the psychotic racist.  From back in 2008.

I've got some work to do.  Time to take out the trash.  And change some settings on those blogs.