But my spam protection software keeps things under control.

A quick note here about the site’s Guest Book.

You may have noticed that the Guest Book is one of the most viewed “posts” on this site. Yet if you look at the Guest Book, you’ll see that there aren’t many guests signing in. How could that be? All lookers? No signers?

The truth of the matter is that the Guest Book is a common target for spammers — both automated and manual. They’ll go to an entry identified as the Guest Book and will attempt to leave a spam comment. About 98% of these comments are automatically caught and deleted by my second-level spam prevention tool, Spam Karma. (My first-level tool, Bad Behavior, prevents automated spambots from accessing the site at all.) I manually moderate or delete the 2% that get through.

This activity has made me wonder whether it’s worthwhile having a Guest Book at all. I get more Guest Book-type comments via e-mail than in the site’s Guest Book. But I think it’s nice to have a place where people can leave general comments about the site, so it’ll remain.

December 14, 2008 Update:
Well, it did remain for a while. But I removed it today. Trying to simplify the site. Tired of the spam. Besides, I’d rather see folks comment on the posts that brought them to the site. No one reads the guest book anyway.