We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Captcha

acronym/trademark. An acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

A ‘Captcha’ is form of a Turing Test (qv) used to differentiate humans from computers programs. Their primary blog related use is to defend a blog’s comment sections from automated spam (qv). The term ‘Captcha’ a trademark of Carnegie Mellon University.

Comment Spam

noun. ‘Spam’ is unsolicited online messages generally of a commercial nature, usually delivered as e-mail (i.e. virtual junk mail). Comment spam however is when someone posts off-topic commercial remarks with links in a blog’s comment section.

Some comment spam is overt but just as often it takes the form of innocuous remarks such as “I agree with your article!” or “Hey, great site!” in a blog’s comment section: the spammer’s ‘payload’ being in the personal details link, which takes you to a dubious (often pornographic) site. One reason comment spam is a major problem is that if readers visit the spammer’s link(s), their site often tries to install browser hijackers, tracking cookies or other adware/malware on the duped reader’s computer. Most comment spam is entered by spambots rather than actually people.

Increasingly blogs are using technical means such as Turing tests, pre-publish moderation or registration in order to prevent spambots from polluting their comments sections with Viagra ads, online pharmacy scams and links to Russian porn sites.

Crisis Blog

noun. A company blog (or ‘Biz Blog’) set up to handle a public relations crisis for a company or institution. This can be either to handle internal communications or to allow a company to present its side of a story in a frank, credible and timely manner when a situation is developing rapidly.

Commentariat

noun. The community of people who leave comments on a blog.

Usage: “We got some useful suggestion from the commentariat today on how to deal the spammer problem.”

Clog Blog

noun. A Dutch language blog.

Commenter

noun. A person who leaves remarks in the ‘comments’ section which many blogs offer.

Crud (code)

noun. When a blog is published with incorrect html which resulting in visible code on the page, rather than a clickable link or special character or formatted text. The unintentionally visible code is ‘crud’.