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A little “inside baseball” now that I’m such an established blogger (ha!). Early on in this grand enterprise, I was so grateful for any comments that I never bothered to set up moderating: If you commented, your pearls of wisdom were instantly appended to my own sparkling missive. Naturally I ended up getting a lot of spam that made this Latin blog the home for lots of not-so-veiled ads touting the latest catapotium ad pondus minuendum or picturae Veneries.

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So I did what every experienced blogger on the planet does: found the nearest free spam filter to catch most of the worst offenders before they even hit my inbox, and started moderating comments to fend off the rest. Still, every few months or so a new line of attack–a more-carefully worded message designed to circumvent the automated filter–will make its may to my comment queue. That is soon followed in short order by several other similarly-worded posts, prompting me update the spam filter with the latest counter-measures and sit tight for another month or so. All in all an annoying but simple process of escalating detente.

But lately I’ve seen a new wrinkle. Take a look at the following comments, all from a single spammer, submitted against scattered posts on this website over the past three weeks:

“A great article indeed and a very detailed, realistic and superb analysis of the current and past scenarios. I would like to thank the author of this article for contributing such a lovely and mind-opening article.”

“Nice post. I really liked it.. Don’t forget to update it regularly. I am looking for new updates dying to read more stuff from you.”

“It’s a great post Man, you really are a good writer! I’m so glad someone like you have the time, efforts and dedication writing, for this kind of article… Helpful, Useful, and Charitable.. Very nice post!”

“These posts keep getting better and better!This is an excellent resource! Thanks for sharing here”

“I’m so glad someone like you have the time, efforts and dedication writing, for this kind of article… Helpful, Useful, and Charitable.. Very nice post!”

“This is cool .. I would love to make a post on my blog on this and a link back to your blog of course. . .”

These are quite an upgrade from the usual “Lose weight fast!” and “Thought you might be interested in this:” posts. They highlight small blogger’s vanity to be heard (I have no illusions about the limited readership around here, especially with the recent lack of posting), and a less discriminating editor might miss the spam URL hidden in the comment header (they all had different user names and legitimate-looking email addresses). And I don’t think there’s a comment filter around which would find the above content objectionable (i.e. without flagging the specific URL).

Needless to say, although I admire the psychological ingenuity, I’m not giving these clowns a free link. Still, part of me is hoping this spammer (or his attack software) is shameless enough to add another “great post Man” in the comments section to this post…