Apparently I really have won the war. After only 48 hours of having comments turned off, I got the following message in my inbox:
About this
http://communityguy.wpengine.com/index.cfm/id/Lost_the_battle_won_t_lose_th
We are remove your domain from our spambase. You can switch comments
on. Our guys will not spam you anymore.
Sorry for inconvenience
Sincerely yours, [removed Russian name]
I have to say that I’m impressed. First time a spammer has contacted me and apologized. I even followed up to ask him if he’d be willing to come onto our podcast (I was curious to talk about Transparency – this month’s theme). Unfortunately he (very politely) declined.
While I’m happy with the result, and am taking the optimistic position that it’s for real, I’m still extremely troubled by the larger issue. Globalization and cheaper labor costs are creating many, many new opportunities for both parties involved. Some of these models are fantastic, some not so much. Cool user generated content sites, for instance, would be far fewer if content moderators weren’t outsourced. But when it’s possible to pay nearly nothing to have real humans creating quasi-relevant spam, it becomes even more important for companies to act responsibly and honestly.
