As I noted recently, unfortunately, this blog is being hit by a lot of comment spam (which, fortunately, is never ever displayed with the help of blojsom's comment moderation plugin). But, even more fortunately, I thought of a fun way to put that comment spam to work for me.

So, I get comment spams all over my blog. And, I have some automated scripts which delete the spams (which are all blocked by blojsom anyway), but also generate a list of which entries are being hit with spam.

And, actually, the comment spam has become mostly a mechanism of pleasantly reminding me of many of my older blog posts. So, I thought it would be fun to expose this view to everyone.

I'm pleased to announce the release of my Spammers' Choice view of the iCite net development blog. As blog posts receive comment spam, they get listed in this view until my automated script deletes the spam altogether.

Spammers' Choice is meant to suggest that, if spammers like these posts on my blog, maybe you will too! It's a kind of social network thing where you, the legitimate readers of my blog, can match up your own interests with those of the spammers who vandalize my blog.

So, if you check the view periodically, you'll see that the list ranges from being a large list (I'm getting as many as 200 comment spams a day) to an empty list (right after the clean-up scripts have run).

Anyway, I think this is funny in that it counter-acts my interest in keeping things as clean as possible—it basically turns the mess of comment spams into a positive feature of the blog.

Technically, I've implemented this as a blojsom flavor. If there is enough interest, I might turn it into a blojsom plugin, which would make it easier to, for example, support both HTML and RSS/Atom views of the spammers' choice list. (So, would you like an RSS/Atom feed of spammers' choice? Let me know.)

Here is the basic code I use in my template (which is a Velocity template):

#foreach ($entry in $BLOJSOM_ENTRIES)
  #set ($commentSpammed = false)
  #foreach ($entryComment in $entry.getComments())
    #if (!$!entryComment.getMetaData().
      get("BLOJSOM_COMMENT_MODERATION_PLUGIN_APPROVED").
      equals("true")
      && $!entryComment.getMetaData().
      get("BLOJSOM_COMMENT_PLUGIN_METADATA_IP"))
      
      #set ($commentSpammed = true)			
    #end			
  #end
  #if ($commentSpammed)
    ## Display the title, link, etc.
  #end
#end

I'm sure something like this could be implemented in any blog software that supports moderated comments.

Enjoy!