There is an entire industry of spam blog comments out there. Often they take the form of either sycophantic enthusiasm or unsolicited advice. But today I was clearing out the spam comment folder, and I found this, the ur-message from which all spam comments are derived. Literally! I assume there is usually a processing step that pares this down to a single message, but somehow that did not happen this time.

Specifically, it looks like there is a nested structure something like this: { aaaa { xx | yy | zz } | bbbb }, where within each set of brackets you would choose one of the elements separated by or-pipes. So, this structure would give you aaaa xx, aaaa yy, aaaa zz, or bbbb. In the comment, we see a number of possible comments, and within each comment, there are numerous places where different phrasing can be used. Presumably the game here is to have a large enough set of combinations that spam blockers won’t zero in on a specific long sequence of words.

But here’s my favorite thing about this. Some effort has clearly gone into providing sets of alternatives that work grammatically when slotted in to the same place in each sentence. But then the rest of each sentence — the fixed part — is usually completely ungrammatical.

Anyway, it’s nice to know that someone appreciates my {great|wonderful|fantastic|magnificent|excellent} writing, even if it is just a spambot.

{
{I have|I’ve} been {surfing|browsing} online more than {three|3|2|4} hours today, yet
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{It’s|It is} pretty worth enough for me. {In my opinion|Personally|In my view},
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{realize|recognize|understand|recognise|know} {so
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Thanks.|
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{blog|website|web site|site}. I stumbledupon it
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{Superb|Exceptional|Outstanding|Excellent} Blog!|
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Any way keep up wrinting.|
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{I love|I really like|I enjoy|I like|Everyone loves} what you guys {are|are usually|tend to be} up too.
{This sort of|This type of|Such|This kind of} clever work and
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{Thanks a lot|Kudos|Cheers|Thank you|Many thanks|Thanks}, I appreciate it!|
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{By the way|However}, how {can|could} we communicate?|
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soon. {Kudos|Cheers|Many thanks|Thanks}|
This is a topic {that is|that’s|which is} {close to|near to} my heart…

{Cheers|Many thanks|Best wishes|Take care|Thank you}!
{Where|Exactly where} are your contact details
though?|
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give you a shout out from {New Caney|Kingwood|Huffman|Porter|Houston|Dallas|Austin|Lubbock|Humble|Atascocita} {Tx|Texas}!

Just wanted to {tell you|mention|say} keep up the
{fantastic|excellent|great|good} {job|work}!|
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{A great|An excellent|A fantastic} read. {I’ll|I will} {definitely|certainly} be back.|
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Cheers!|
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{these days|nowadays|today}..|
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So, I have mostly completed the move now. The Lost in Transcription blog is now here. Information about my research, which had been languishing on the servers of the Santa Fe Institute, is now here. Poetry stuff, which had previously been hosted at this URL, has been embettered.

As with any move, it will continue to be a work in progress for a while. There are still a bunch of virtual boxes that need to be unpacked, but at least there’s a place to sit down and eat pizza and fried rice.

So come on over! Check it out! Feel free to nose around in the closets and the medicine cabinet. I have no secrets from you, Dear Reader. Also, if you have any decorating ideas, let me know in the comments. Houseplants should be delivered via Twitter DM.

So, this is going to be the new home of the Lost in Transcription blog, which has previously been housed at http://jonfwilkins.blogspot.com.

The reason, obviously, is so that you can finally satisfy all of your JonWilkins-related needs in one convenient, online location. So, come on over!

If you subscribe to the blog through Feedbuner (at http://feeds.feedburner.com/LostInTranscription), you should already be all set, as the feed from here already redirects there. If you come via bookmark, you’ll want to reset it to http://jonfwilkins.com/blog/.

So, there have been a couple of interesting discussions about blog comment policies in the past couple of days. Over on his Scientific American blog, Bora Zivkovic wrote a long rant about bad-faith commenters and how he deals with them. Greg Laden wrote a good response post. (As have a number of other people, I’m sure. If you’re one of them, leave a link in the comments.) Unrelatedly (I think), Jerry Coyne wrote about his commenting policy, specifically regarding when he will and will not permit pseudonyms.

The thing in common among these posts is the willingness on the part of the bloggers to strongly assert ownership over the comment threads on their own blogs, which seems like part of a broader trend, one that I approve of.

At some level, the whole challenge of designing and implementing a commenting policy is that you want to encourage engagement, but you want to find ways to keep that engagement civil and constructive. Basically, you need to prevent trolling, whether in the form of off-topic comments, disingenuous ones, or bullying ones.

There are things that fight against that, though. In particular, there is the (sometimes disingenuous) complaining by people who think that their free speech is being violated. So many things wrong there, it’s hard to know where to start. First, a blogger is not the American Federal Government. Second, deleting a comment is not the same thing as a fine or a prison sentence. Third, deleting a comment from a site does not stop you from posting that comment elsewhere. In fact, if you really really want to make a trolling comment about a specific blog post, you can start your own blog, and write a whole post about it. Or you can probably still register the domain name the.january.31.blog.post.by.jon.wilkins.about.commenting.is.lame.com. (If not, try .info.)

Bora and Greg both cite the metaphor of a blog being like one’s living room. This metaphor originates, to the best of my knowledge with Ronin Institute Research Scholar John S. Wilkins (no recent relation), whose blog, Evolving Thoughts, features this comment policy:

This is my living room, so don’t piss on the floor. I reserve the right to block users and delete any comments that are uncivil, spam or offensive to all. I have a broad tolerance, but don’t test it, please.

Try to remain coherent, polite and put forward positive arguments if engaged in debate. There are plenty of places you can accuse people of being pedophilic communist sexist pigs; don’t do it here.

The point is, like your 1950s-Archie-Bunker-stereotype father used to say, “my house, my rules.” As a blogger, you have every right to impose any damn commenting policy you want. If you only want to permit sycophantic comments that say things like, “Great post, Jon! You’re the best!,” go for it. There is nothing “fair” or “unfair” about it. Of course, I don’t think that’s a good policy. In a good comment thread, people will make corrections and additions, and to engage in an honest, constructive debate that adds real value and builds a community.

Basically, your comment policy should be guided by these two things:

1. Pragmatics. What sort of policy will encourage the type of conversation you want to have on your blog? If you want constructive conversations, you have to hammer down the trolls as soon as they pop up. If you want a flame war, post on controversial topics, sit back, and watch.
2. Your comfort zone. If you hate profanity, then ban profanity. If you hate the word “sensual,” then ban all comments with the word “sensual.” If you like arguing with people, leave the comments up and respond to them. If not, don’t.

Remember; free speech doesn’t extend to having a right to have a say in any place, by any means. You can no more walk into the offices of a newspaper publisher and demand column inches than insist that your comments be published on a blog. One is at best a guest when visiting a blog; and one’s behaviour must be acceptable to the host.

I like the idea of a blog being like a newspaper. Comments are like letters to the editor. The newspaper is under no obligation to publish all of the letters it receives. Similarly, you can choose which comments you allow to be posted.

Anyway, here at Lost in Transcription, the policy is both simple and complicated, as it is based on the subjective judgment of an extremely complex neural network. Specifically, if I think you’re a bot or a troll, you’ll get deleted. Most of the time, the distinction between those and real comments seems pretty straightforward: most of the comments that are not obviously spam are perfectly constructive. In borderline cases, factors like identity may help to tip the balance, with a leeway ordering of real name > pseudonym > anonymous. I have no plans to take up modifying comments, but if I do, I will note that they are modified.

If your comment gets deleted, think back about what you wrote and think about why it might have come off as trollish or spamish. For example, did you respond angrily to something that was obviously a rhetorical and sarcastic question? Did you write something that sounds like it could have come from a press release? These are things that will get you deleted. However, if you want to try again, you’re welcome to do so!

Alright, comment away!

So, I started this blog as a place to talk about evolutionary biology, poetry, and — occasionally — other topics that came up.  How’s that working out?  Well, here are the top ten search terms that have led people to Lost in Transcription:

1. ann coulter radiation
2. macho man stops rapture
3. randy savage rapture
4. macho man stops the rapture
5. lost in transcription
6. macho man rapture
7. randy savage stops rapture
8. randy savage stops the rapture
9. ann coulter hormesis
10. sonic hot dog radio commercial

So, here’s what I got up to last year, presented for your viewing pleasure in three word clouds.

This blog launched on July 29, and talked about the following topics:

My poetry book, Transistor Rodeo, which was published this year, contains the following words, in marginally less random order:

And finally, here are the papers that I published this year. Note the prominence of “et” and “al,” which really tells you all you need to know about science:

Thanks, Wordle!

So, I like to imagine that people are reading this blog, that they are intrigued by its content, and it’s got them wondering, “Why is this blog called ‘Lost in Transcription’?” As I noted in the pilot, the aim here is to talk about poetry and science, particularly those parts of science that are related to my own research, where I can claim some degree of expertise. The title is meant to bridge between these two worlds.

First, in the literary domain, it is a play off of the phrase “lost in translation,” which appears any time there is a discussion of either literature, of cultural differences, or of Scarlett Johansson that goes on for longer than ten minutes. Within poetry, its two most famous appearances are as the title of a James Merrill poem (perhaps the best poem ever written about working a jigsaw puzzle), and in a quotation attributed to Robert Frost, that “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”

Within genetics, translation refers to the process by which an RNA sequence is read to generate an amino acid sequence. In a related process called transcription, DNA serves as a template for the synthesis of RNA. One of the topics that I work on is genomic imprinting, where one of the two gene copies in a cell has its transcription silenced. So, in a strictly literal sense, a better title would have been something like “loss of transcription,” but if you are willing to stretch with me, we could imagine that at a genetic locus that is subject to genomic imprinting, the genetic information from one of your two parents is Lost in Transcription.