So you have been smited, eh?
Yes, yes, we know… the correct term is ‘smote’ or ‘smitten’, not smited, but we say ‘smited’ because it makes us laugh and we are easily amused.
Chances are the reason you are here is when you posted a comment to Samizdata, you saw this appear…
Standby for Smite Control
Oyez, oyez:
Your comment has been held for approval by Samizdata’s editorial pantheon and if you are not some odious spammer, loony toon conspiracy theorist, raving racist buffoon or worthless troll, chances are your remarks will appear in due course.
Puzzled? Confused? Look here and all will be explained
So…
What does this mean? It means your comment has been chosen for moderation by the smitebot. Now smitebot is not a person, he is just a bot. A piece of code.
So please do not take it personally that smitebot has smited you because smitebot has no idea who you are. All it does, in its simple minded but quite effective way, is look at all the comments and try to figure out if they are spam or something else we do not want. And being a bot of little brain, sometimes it makes mistakes.
Is this smiting thing really necessary though?
The answer is yes.
The alternative is wading through three viagra adverts, mobile phone adverts, Russian kiddie porn site links & xxxBigTits site links, for every legitimate comment.. and we really hate spammers.
The fact is we have to put up with a number of false positives or comments will not be viable.
That is the down side of this blog being so popular, alas… Samizdata is a spam magnet in ways sites with lower readership and technorati rankings do not have to worry about. It sucks but there you have it.
97% of the spam gets intercepted by the smitebot and you never even see it, but it is there, trust us on that. Of the 3% that gets through, we delete it manually as quickly as possible and you probably never see it. False positives run maybe 1-5% per day of posted comments (some days are worse than others). It is annoying as hell to get smited, we know, but having smitebot around is unavoidable.
So now you know.
And so to cheer you up after the indignity of getting ‘smited’, we have posted some stupid cat pictures for your edification (we did tell you we are easily amused)…
