Reporting Spam and Plagiarism on Blogs
While looking at recently published blogs on WordPress.com, I ran across one that talked about the wonders of Craigslist — published just two days before, but the information was two years old. A quick search found it was an exact copy of an article PC World had written two years before, as were two other posts from the same blog. I reported the blog as spam to WordPress.com, included the original URLs, and emailed PCWorld as well. The blog was removed within 24 hours, as was the case with a spam blog/splog that I reported.
Unfortunately, it is easy to miss where to report spam on WordPress.com, as it is hidden under “Blog Info” and only visible if you are logged in to a WordPress.com account. You would think to use that link as an “about me” type of link rather than a place to report spam or a mature blog. WordPress.com would likely better serve its users (and the users of other online media with content being plagiarized) by changing the interface to something like Blogger uses — a very easy to understand way to report spam or questionable content — presuming the splog does not find a way around the displaying of the flag. However, this is just a flag, with no place to write an explanation, and it does not request the removal of copyrighted materials. Google requires this form to be filled out to request removal of copyrighted material.
My post is a commentary on the UI, with side kudos to WordPress,com for their quick action regarding the two blogs I reported. For help on identifying and report splogs, I recommend reading:
How to Spot a Splog and What Do You Do when Someone Steals Your Content, by Lorelle on WordPress.
How to Complain and Report Spam Blogs (for Blogger blogs), and reporting the splogs to Google Adsense and the major search engines. By Quick Online Tips.
Updated 12 April 2007 to include additional reporting information for the two services.
I think you should only report as spam on other people site if you find the articles belong to you. Mind only your own business!!!
March 18th, 2007 | #
I agree with Azraiman. You should only report on your articles being copied by other bloggers without your permission. Don’t forget, sometimes there are free articles where bloggers can copy as long as they are permitted to do so.
March 18th, 2007 | #
And I feel that two posts that come in within four minutes of each other from the same IP on a blog that is months old is suspicious.
PC World is certainly not in the business of writing articles that are free to be republished, nor are professional bloggers.
The source for each one of those posts was copyrighted, and it stated so on the page. There was not copying permitted.
And neither permitted is Azraiman’s copying of my post. I am minding my own business as I report you to WordPress. Thank you for your comment and bringing this to my attention.
March 18th, 2007 | #
Wow, what stupid responses.
Identifying splogs is everyone’s business. It’s a community response to a vile technique, one that is also illegal. Kudos for you to bring this up.
It’s long bothered me that only WordPress.com bloggers can report on WordPress.com splogs, but it’s a step in the right direction as the community is policing itself.
If you are not a member of WordPress.com, you can report splogs via the Contact Support form.
Unfortunately, there is no WordPress official representative to deal with full version WordPress run splogs except through the normal splog reporting methods for all splogs, no matter what service they are running.
Thanks for bringing this information up. We have to work together to stop splogs and spams.
April 12th, 2007 | #
Sounds like crusading for the sake of it.
As this was not your information and therefore not actually affecting you at all (other than providing you with information I assume you were looking for, otherwise you wouldn’t have been there) - would it not have been more sensible, and perhaps more respectful, to simply contact the owner of the original article (in this case, PC World) and leave it at that?
I admit that you were probably right and it most likely was a splog, but you don’t actually know that do you? The article may have been reproduced with PC worlds permission. Or maybe even posted on the personal blog of the employee who wrote the article originally. A genuine blogger could now have their blog suspended until PC Worlds slow, slow customer response team gets round to reading your email and correcting the situation.
Things aren’t always how they look, and I know as someone who’s been banned from a website for use of “multiple IP addresses” - without bothering to ask me so I could point out that I access the site from home and multiple PC’s at work. Although, again, I admit that in this situation you may well have been right, I would still prefer to see a more tactful approach in reporting blog spam.
June 11th, 2007 | #