What Do You Trust Less?

Posted on June 2, 2008
Filed Under Misc |

Algorithms or People?

The reason I ask this is that I am currently knee-deep in brötchen in Germany, but my blog posts are updating on schedule. Before I left, I wrote out all of the scheduled posts so that there is no hiccup for my readers. Lucky you.

However, one of my favorite parts of blogging has to fall by the wayside: the comments. You can still write them, but they won’t be approved until I return. I may get some computer time, but I have no desire to plan my trip around my blog.

My blog gets about 35-40 spam comments a day, and that’s what gets through my spam filter. I don’t give a damn about advertising, and I only really hope to pull in enough dough each year to meet my hosting costs. The real value to me is the comments. Don’t get me wrong, you can still write them, and I encourage it! I just don’t see the incentive when I won’t see them for two weeks.

I thought about signing up for a comment filtering service or trying Akismet, but Murphy started to whisper in my ear:

What if it is broken when you are gone? Well, that’s probably not likely to happen. These services have been working for a while, and they probably have a pretty high success rate if people use them.

You’ll be gone for over two weeks. By the time you get back, who knows how many spam comments slipped through the cracks? OK, you got me there Murphy.

Basically, the fact that I could go so long without being able to repair any damage is a deterrent for me. This obviously discourages discussion, because commentors want to tell me how much I suck NOW, not in 2 weeks. However, I feel that the potential risk (posts with a hundred spam comments each) outweighs the reward. It doesn’t sound so bad, but it personally bothers me.

This comes down to a fundamental issue: I don’t trust the accuracy of algorithms that predict the behavior of people. Yet. Even the best service that I have, GMail, still throws some of my valid email into the spam folder! If even the best service can’t do the work 100% right, I don’t see why I should trust one I’ve never used. When I am deciding between the evil and stupidity of the world versus the performance of an algorithm, I still have to give the upper hand to the evil.

I’d ask you what you think, but you have no incentive to comment! Enjoy your day.

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Comments

One Response to “What Do You Trust Less?”

  1. Greg M on June 2nd, 2008 12:40 pm

    Jake, I think your paranoia is justified! I hope the trip is going well.

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