THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

Here is the letter that I wrote to Editme after they blocked access to our site a few months ago.

Dear Editme Contact:

I am a regular contributor to the editme site “The Jo-tel” (jo-tel.editme.com). Our group has subscribed to editme for nearly two years now and during that time have upgraded our service once. As a long and loyal customer of your software and server, I write now to state my indignation over the block that has been placed over our site for violation of editme’s maximum bandwidth. Despite the fact that none of the free blog sites even HAVE maximum bandwidth limitations, we at The Jo-tel have always been willing to work with editme’s bandwidth restrictions because we appreciated the freedom that the editme platform offered. However, the imposition of the block in the current instance is unwarranted and unfair. Indeed, the only reason that we have exceeded our bandwidth for this month is because of a debilitating flaw in the editme software: namely, the inability to block spammers from the comments section.

This month has been a slow month on the Jo-tel - a month where we have posted nowhere near our maximum bandwidth. In general, our decrease in posting has been the result of an overwhelming and suffocating increase in the amount of spam allowed into our comments section by your software. In July of 2006, we averaged 350 unique viewers a day according to our site meter. Although we at the Jo-tel consider ourselves magnetic writers, we acknowledge that a central draw for our readers was the ability to comment and to create a vibrant community of interested parties in the comments section. In October of 2006, however, we started to receive a profuse amount of comments from the likes of phenteramine, online casino, and cialis free shipping. These “comments” stifled our visitor’s ability to comment themselves and, thereby, to participate in our blog. We immediately activated the editme comments verification word feature. However, this feature, much like a certain Greek warrior dipped into the immortalizing river Styx in all but one place, has a fatal flaw: the verification words are REAL WORDS. The result is that your software’s screen is easily circumvented by rudimentary spamming software. For our humble blog this meant a precipitous decline in readership (we currently average around 100 unique viewers a day).

This has been disheartening. Which is why we are currently so irate over the block that has been put over our site. Believe me: we initially tried to delete the spam as it came in. However, as the spamming got more pervasive, ridding the comments section of spam-links would have been a full time job. As a final evasive maneuver to save our blog, we changed the title of our home page, leaving the “home” to the spammers and posting a link to our spam-free content page (jo-tel.editme.com/jo-tel). Unfortunately, it appears that the powers that be at editme are not content with simply ruining our blog with their inferior program. You must also completely shut it down to make us pay for the programming flaws that we are helpless to rectify. I would like to reiterate: the current size of our bandwidth is the sole and direct result of the spam in our comments section. Because this is not our fault, and because I understand that the block currently imposed on our blog is an automated one, I am writing to request that the block be lifted - at the very least so that we may salvage the two years of content from the burning wrecking that is the editme platform.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please contact me with any further questions.

Sincerely,
[Shark]

Niggas can’t see me.

-Shark