It’s good advice for citizen journalists, too.

Hey guys, sorry for being offtopic but what theme do you use? I’ve always loved the theme here.

Doesn’t sound out of line. A reader wants to know what theme you site uses. So here is the problem: It’s spam. This same message or variations of it it send to  hundreds of thousands if not millions of blogs every day. Not that hard to do, considering that unlike junk mail, you don’t have to you don’t have to put a postage stamp on spam.

Here is another:

I have to admit, I really could not concur with you in 100%, but this is just my personal opinion, which indeed could be incorrect.

Again, not out of line. The writer seems to be giving you an opinion of your blog.

But it is completely fake. A robot might have read it, but the guy paying to have this spam sent out certainly never heard of your site.

So, how can you tell. Well, one certain giveaway is the link that the spammer is trying to put on your site. Hover above the username or handle on the comment. Look at the URL (Web address) that appears in the bottom of the browser window. If it points to a specific website, and that website’s name seems noncommercial, it’s probably OK.

But if the URL seems to be commercial or promotes a product (medication, handbags, ring tones, etc) it’s almost certainly spam. Some spammy links go to deeply internal pages and have longer URLs. But some legitimate commenters are choosing to deep link to their most recent post when the comment.

After you do this for a while, you will be able to look at a comment and tell it’s spam. In the two samples I cite above, you will note that the comment really isn’t specific to the content of your site or the post on which it is nominally commenting. It’s a general comment that can apply anywhere. Why comment to say they agree? And any serious computer user can can learn the theme you use by looking at the page code.

If you are not using a spam filter do so. There are several that can be activated on your Dashbord. Just click “Plugin” and chose “WP Spam Free” (my favorite) or “Akismet.”

In comments delivered during a recent joint webcast with Allvoices.com, the largest open media site in the world, Internet visionary, teacher and author of Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky cited the importance of civic and citizen journalism, its role in journalism’s ecosystem and the evolution of journalism schools in an increasingly fractured and shrinking mainstream media climate.  Mr. Shirky’s remarks focused on principles necessary for the success of citizen journalism including participation; using the media to transform society; and technology’s ability to take local news global for the protection of democratic ideals.

[snip]

“Despite first-person accounts being critical for a detailed and accurate accounting of news, the mainstream media still generally fails to recognize the importance of citizen journalists,” according to Mr. Shirky.  As example, he cited CNN’s anchors watching a Twitter feed during the Green Revolution and saying essentially “[this is the best source] of information we can get right now out of Tehran about the Green insurrection.”

According to Mr. Shirky, “Citizen Journalism is always seen as grainy photographs and grainy videos; there is still a kind of ‘Oh we’ll do it if we have to’ sensibility on the part of media.  Citizen media provides an alternative that needs to be part of the general ecosystem.  And from what I’ve seen, leading by example and showing is necessary; showing journalistic outfits that getting this kind of on-the-ground reporting changes your ability to understand the facts and fundamentally shapes the conversation.”