When link spam of this ilk is rolled out, the thing to realize is that it's a) generally automated to a great extent if not totally, and b) it's about short term effects more than anything else.

Of course the traffic generated will be minimal - but if all it costs you is two minutes' effort, it may still be worth it.

And sure, the link won't be sticky on the home page as none are - but if it takes more than say 24 hours to be removed, it's achieved what it could hope for, especially if viewed within a greater context. E.g. game Digg to push StumbleUpon to push Sphinn to push Propeller to push Reddit, etc. etc. Auto-referential daisywheeling, preferably automated, actually IS worth the effort when you're calculating page rankings in mere days or a handful of weeks at best. Which is what black hats generally do. A simple number game.

What's more, if I were that spammer (and in case you're wondering: no, I'm not. Not that I'd admit to it if I were lol.) I could tell you all about it and you still couldn't do a lot to ward it off. IOW: It's a losing battle across the board.

That's because it's a systemic issue, strategic rather than tactical, if you will: As long as links of any kind pass on traffic, link juice or anything else of perceivably monetizable value, they'll be targeted. Successfully.

The real irony being that behind many if not most of the shittiest, dumbest spam posts out there (anywhere, really) you'll find some of the brightest minds analyzing the system's vulnerabilities in a whiffy and slapping up solutions to game it. (Much like virus developers, in a way, though they're an entirely different crowd, even though their technical mindset may be pretty similar.)

Aye - I know the game. I am actually suprised though, that it lasted this long without getting turfed... I am also curious how they faked the Sphinns on it. That seemed kinda neat.

I didn't see a lot of value, but I didn't figure it would still be up there... so they may get something out of it in the end.

I thought it might have beem some silly fisher having a laugh .... whoever it was may still get the last laugh on it ... ack!

Not having seen let alone analyzed the post in question: What makes you say those Sphinns were fake? 

@Sebastian: Good point about the feed caches - will probably number in the tens of thousands by now.

Well nothing really except it never went HOT .... I don't know butkis about the Sphinn sys - but figured if it had that many it would have been more visable.. that's all

ADD - here's the post http://sphinn.com/story/7566

Well, it went hot:

Just a heads up - when a story on Sphinn is discarded, the page can be reached from the URL but it disappears from the user's Submits, What's New, and Hot Topics.

So yes, the URL still works, but the story is dead.

I've heard that before - spam will stay on the page but no big deal since it disappears from submits, what's new and hot, etc...

But why no go a step further and delete the thing?  It's not hard to remove the content from a database.

For those who ended up with this garbage in their feed readers or etc they may not know that that Sphinn has taken any action against it unless they scroll all the way down to the last comment. Many might just click the link to see what got so many Sphinns so quickly.

Checked out a handful of those autogen users - they're still in the system, i.e. no bans.

Don't know if they're actually functional but an outright ban would have been the thing one would have expected to happen first.

Yes, it was mentioned on the original post I believe. There are a few holes at this point it would seem - he he - I would imagine an expliot like this one wouldn't be all that tough to sort out.

BTW ... I posted a few follow up notes.. thanks for the input.. :0)

Actually we killed this story from public view within 2-3 hours of it being in the system, but if you know the original URL you can still find it in the system.

 Yes it was pretty obvious to everyone that this was the work of voting bots.

 We aren't going to catch everything here right away but we are going to catch it before long, and  lets just say some of the mods are pretty familiar with spotted automated voting bot behavior.  However if anyone does catch something "fishy" before we do I don't mind and I'm sure none of the other mods will mind either if you dropped us a PM pointing it out to us.

@danny
@tamar

FYI amd by the way - I'd be willing to provide you a little (like 3 lines) of code that'd enable the moderators to use the label of 'abuse' for application by moderators for a full deletion of offensive articles.

It's really be a simple bit of code.  I'll provide it vi IM if you are interested.