Dealing with Spamdoo: Guestbooks

Recently some internetmarketingguruwannabees have promoted signing guestbooks with your links as a very nice way to promote your lens. This guru was evidently totally unaware of the hideous problem such activities have caused the blogging community and the enormous uproar all over the web over such practices. When asked, one of the 'gurus' said: "well, I didn't tell anyone to spam!"

Yes, our guestbooks have been getting heavily spammed. Frequently I check my guestbooks for spam, and have been getting so much, from irrelevant comments to huge pictures left to suck up space.

We already have a lot to do to properly maintain our lenses, and this new task was another time consuming waste.

Gil has added some functions to the guestbook modules to help us, and I hope you will use them! This will eventually reduce the spamming we see, until these people find another way.

You will now see a 'ban' function, which means you can ban any lensmaster that leaves a spamdoo in your guestbook. In the group version of 'ban lensmaster' that person is banned from every group a groupmaster may have (I have 41). I don't know if you ban a lensmaster from leaving guestbook comments that they will also be banned from leaving comments on every one of your lenses or not.

Your guestbook still has the other options: you can have only signed in squidoo members to leave comments; or anyone can comment; you can disallow ANY html in your comments, or you can still allow links.

When you visit other lenses, which I strongly recommend that you do, don't be afraid to leave a comment and, if allowed, a link to a lens. However, I do recommend this:

1. READ THE PAGE! If you read the page you will be able to leave a relevant comment. Lensmasters LOVE that.

2. Find something (not a headline or title) that you liked and mention it in your comment. This proves you were actually interested in the page and aren't spamming.

3. If you can and do leave a link, try to leave one that is relevant in some way to the page you are on. Many of us have LOTS of lenses, and one of them may actually be relevant.

Remember that it isn't necessary to always link to a page of your own, because when you leave a comment, your entire lensmaster roster is automatically linked.

This isn't rocket science, and our lensmasters are terrific and gracious people. Let's set a high standard and example for others as we make our rounds and visit each other.