Green Party spamming blogs
Posted January 16th, 2006 in GeneralLast night it seems that Stephen Eli Harris (the Green Party candidate for St. John’s East in the coming federal election) toured around any Newfoundland blogs he could find (including this one), leaving comments and links to his own political blog. We’ve checked the logs for a few of our interconnected sites and it seems he’s visited them all, but only left comments on sites that explicitly state that the owner lives in Newfoundland.
I can only assume that this was an attempt to drive traffic to his site, and maybe to increase his ranking on some of the search engines. (Not going to work on here, Wordpress is smart enough to put rel="nofollow" on all links in comments, so the robots ignore them–I’m doing the same thing on his link in this post.)
Now, as a rule, I’m not a political person. I don’t generally talk politics with people, mostly because I’m not that interested–unless something happens that catches my interest. I’m going to make an exception here and state that I don’t approve of Mr. Harris’ actions, and unless I hear otherwise, I’m permanently making the connection between the Green Party and spam in my head.
You can read more about Mr. Harris’ tactics on Brian’s post ‘Spammed by the Green Party’.
(This post is going without a song quote, because spammers don’t deserve one.)
January 16th, 2006 at 12:55 am
I just left a post on Brian’s blog abtout this, provided he accepts the post as he has it moderated now. I guess that’s because he thought I was spamming him.
Speaking of which, that was not my intention… and even if it was, it would have been no different than leaving a flyer at your door. Having said that, my intention was merely to build contact, as a new blogger, with other Newfoundland and Labrador bloggers. I wanted to create a huge list and support my fellow provincial online folk.
Spam would have including me talking about the Green Party or telling you to check out the site. I talked about your site in fact and merely left a link where to find me in my signature. That’s what people do online, isn’t it?
Anyway, sorry for the misunderstanding. I still look forward to your future updates.
January 17th, 2006 at 1:14 am
BWAAAA!!!
anyway geoff.. i wouldnt go so far as to write off the whole green party (the world’s only worldwide party!) thanks to this one douche..
not that i’d vote for them this year or anything… if i had sent my request for an absentee ballot in time, that is.
shoot.
stephen, maybe i can dig up an old version of this site from my browser’s cache if you really wanna see it. cos that’s what people do online.. people help each other out~!
January 17th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Matt, I know I shouldn’t take offense to such name calling but, I gotta say, it’s pretty disrespectful to call one a “douch” or anything for that matter. I did nothing wrong in posting to Geoff’s blog. It’s what people do when the visit a Blog. It’s what Blog owners want; peple to post on their blog. That’s what I did.
You’re right on the Green Party however; it’s not something that should be written off. It’s a great option for our Country and I’m spending 15 hours a day trying to get people open to the idea. Yes, that includes much online activity however, if my sole intention in coming here was to promote the Green Party, I would have talked about the Green Party in my post.
February 2nd, 2006 at 7:45 pm
Hi Geoff,
We don’t know each other, but I am currently involved in a rather childish argument on my own blog with Stephen Eli Harris. To prove my point I have linked a few sites on my latest entry that agree with me about his spamming. I didn’t ask for your permission before mentioning your site, and if that is a problem then I will remove it promptly.
February 7th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
actually i got the link to this site from Stephen Eli Harris.otherwise i might never had come across it.