At sixapart they are pimping what they offer in the face of an excellent WordPress 2.7. The link to the post popped up in a feed so I go to look. Scrolling to the comments I see one comment that presumably stayed because it has a bit of a pop at Akismet.

It’s a pity the author url was not checked – it’s a spammy comment.

I View Source and to get to the comments I look for the author of the comment – Penny. ctrl-f for penny and there is nothing. Paste the whole lot into Smultron and search for Penny and Akismet. The comment does not appear. There is a lot of what I assume is javascript where I think the comment block should be.
Rewind to January 2008 and another post on that same blog. Check for a commenter name, search the Source and it is there. All the comments look just as you would expect.

Why wrap the comments out of sight of search engines? Not prepared to link back? And why hide the comments like that when you have confidence in your own product to block spam? (And why on earth have comment moderation when a link like that can get through?).
And why have Recent Comments in the sidebar when you never show them on single post views?

Hi, I saw your post at Digitalpoint.
You say you can setup blogs and customize them. This is what I would
be after:
- I choose 5 themes, each blog to use one of those
- feedwordpress installed and prepopulated with the feeds I will be
pulling in. There will one set of feeds for every 10 blogs.
- cron jobs set up to regularly pull the feeds in
- my adsense publisher ID to be inserted into each blog / plugin as
needed
- I would like the default ping list in the blog changed to one I
already use elsewhere. It pings 30 services.
- do you auto-upgrade? I’d like these blogs set up and for me to do
nothing except collect those Google checks :)

Hi Mark,
It can be done.

Do you have MSN , AIM or skype?
It is easier for me to take down all the things you need.
Skype: mxhub.com
MSN: joseph@mxhub.com
AIM: jjwaterfall82

I suggest setup a blog with all the plugins & theme..i will duplicate it into multiple copies.

Do you have root access for your server?

So if you too want to join the splogging, spamming and thieving pondlife you just need to give joseph at mxhub.com your money.

mxhub.com – content theft our speciality.

See the Help link?

Takes you here:

http://help.blogger.com/bin/static.py?page=start.cs

See the Help Center link? Takes you here:

So not only do Google help spammers and sploggers by making it just about impossible to remove them (flagging stuff is a joke. I’ve flagged many blogs and many youtube accounts and it’s has not made the slightest difference) but it also does not let you find out.

And the DMCA?

To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written communication (by fax or regular mail — not by email, except by prior agreement)

As they don’t provide free fax, and as they probably know fax machines are not easily available they choose to use it because it slows everything down to what must be a complete stop for your average blog creator. That’s being pretty evil to your average person.

Edit:
http://www.google.com/dmca.html

If you are sending a large number of URLs in one removal request, please also send an electronic copy of the notice to removals at google dot com.

Why don’t they have an actual email link there? Don’t they trust their own spam software? Are the people on the end of that email afraid of, well, work?

Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Google to contact you (email address is preferred).

So they want the easy way but you take the hard way?

Apparently Google are hiring. I looked through several pages of their jobs. I couldn’t find a single one that was focused on user support. Now what does that tell you?