From Wired News, July 14, 2005
By Adam L. Penenberg
When former Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael K. Powell watched television coverage of the London bombings last week, he noticed that most of the significant pictures didn’t originate from professional photographers employed by news agencies. They came from witnesses at the scene using cell phones and digital […]

I hate spammers. I really do. I flipped the switch on trackbacks just now because it was just getting ridiculous in terms of the texasholdem crud that was showing up. Too bad, ’cause the idea is a great one. But I’ve been tracking references to this site via RSS feeds and Technorati already, and I’d say 95% of what turns up here turns up there. Without the spam, of course.

More disconcerting is that when I went to Flickr the other day, an extremely naked woman appeared in my “Photos From My Contacts” stream. Turns out it was spam. Flickr spam. Not good.

I got an e-mail from a teacher who had just done a Weblog training using Blogger, and the issue of the “Next Blog” button in the top right corner came up, as in what if students click through to some inappropriate site? Oy. If you haven’t tried this of late, you need to. Start here at a test site I put up a couple of months ago and click through to the 10 random “Next Blog” sites that come up. Here’s what I got:

#1. A page full of the same candlemaking link intended only to raise the Google ranking of the link owner.
#2. Another one, this time related to child support.
#3. Another one for sun screen protection.
#4. A site filled with picture of nurse porn.
#5. A personal blog written in Portugese (I think.)
#6. A link site for debt consolidation.
#7. A student blog (believe it or not!)
#8. A blog on quantum algorithms.
#9. A link site for golden retreiver pictures (???)
#10. A political blog.

So, six of the ten sites were either spam or porn. I’m sure your mileage may vary, but the point is pretty clear. Just the chance that a student might click through to a pornography site is enough to scratch Blogger from the list of blogging options. So, what to do? Here are a few options:

So Manila 9.5 is out, and the good folks at Weblogger, my most excellent host, are installing it this weekend. From the release notes, here’s one reason I’m looking forward to it:

The Access Control feature adds new controls for what content can be seen and/or responded to within Manila by users. This feature allows editors to restrict access to areas of your Manila site based on membership and/or editorial level. Access can be limited based on membership, eritorial access, or for a specific period of time. The site structure paths which point to a message can also be restricted to members or editors. A new Access Control Prefs page is used to configure Access Control. New access control macros have also been created.

This has always been one of the weaknesses of Manila, and it sounds like they have addressed in in a big way. Hopefully, setting these controls will be easy.

It does not appear, however, that Userland has addressed the issue of approving comments before they are posted, something that is crucial to K-12 users. I really hope I’m wrong.