MainSleaze

Readers may notice that certain spam report blogs of mine are now appearing with the prefix (Resolved Issue): instead of the spamming company name. If you check inside these blogs, they have a notice at the top indicating that the issue is resolved, and a tag that also says “Resolved”. The blogs are still there, and still contain the same information. All the comments are preserved as well. The only changes are to the title, an additional paragraph at top, and an additional tag.

This is to prevent people who search Google or other search engines for information about a company from simply seeing the blog title, assuming that the company is a spammer, and not bothering to read the blog. We all know people who habitually jump to conclusions based on incomplete or unprocessed information. <wry grin> In a number of cases, the companies and ESPs who are mentioned on this blog are commenting on the blogs, interacting with me and others, and fixing the spam problems. I feel that people who learn from mistakes deserve credit for that, not to be punished because some nitwit can’t be bothered to read the whole blog and find out what really happened. :/

At the same time, the information in the blog (and often especially the comments) can be valuable to others who might have a similar spam problem and need to know how to deal with it. Blogs are by nature persistent, at least until you archive old information. On today’s internet, archived copies of a deleted blog are also available in Google and a number of Internet archives. So I believe that updating a blog with information showing that it has been resolved is actually likely to be more helpful to the company that has resolved a spam issue than simply removing it.

So that is what I am doing when an issue is resolved. The other bloggers will handle their blogs as they see fit, of course. But here’s one idea. 🙂