I suspect Scienceblogs.com is under attack. Why? Because the site is going really really slow, and the spam coming in is different … huge spamy comments with a zillion links which I think send the server into conniptions. I’ve closed comments on all posts over five days in age on this blog, for the time being. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Perhaps our Respectfully Insolent friend has riled up a nest of bad guys.
If you are being attacked it means you are hurting them. Good job.
I once gave up having a comments section because it would get full of meaningless links. I tracked a few down to see it was some kind of way to up the sites ratings on google. It was not. Two measures that might help. Filter out links. People can still give them without the .com if they are meaningful. The other is one of those weird letter anti-bot scripts.
I have been getting “Service Not Available” messages for several blogs, the first time I try to view posts. I need to refresh several times in order to see things – I assume this is the result of all the crap coming in?
Or maybe just technical difficulties. I am not sure.