Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win?
(Online Journalism Review)
Winer: "I think a blog is a publication, and publications have proven that letters to the editor are useful. But blogs with comments are not letters to the editor. Letters to the editor are edited, they're selected, and that selection process is a very important aspect of it."

(In full agreement here. While I do think that thoughtful comments can enhance a particular blog post/article/story, or whatever you call it, I think it's an incredibly rare occurence when unsolicited comments add to a weblog. Create your own blog -- you can still set one up for free in many, many places. On the other hand, spam, in all its forms, isn't going away, unless the general population of Net users becomes incredibly more discriminating, which is probably not likely. To be successful, spam, like any "marketing" pitch, only needs to hit its mark a tiny fraction of the time. Spam is a cancer tailor-made for Internet: it's a medium that enhances anonymity, which begets a lack of accountability, which, apparently, creates the perfect breeding ground for scam artists... and their victims: people looking for "deals" and easy answers. )

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