This is a difficult one and I see no clear answer to it, so I thought I’d put this out there and see what everyone else thinks.
Basically, we get a lot of people join up each day, and a large proportion of them are spam blogs, not written by British people, or just not blogs full stop. I guess when people launch a new site (or want to promote an existing site) they look for as many sources of inbound links as possible, and BritBlog is a great target.
So what is the solution? The approach taken by a lot of similar sites is to get new members to add some special code on their blogs – usually in the form of an image. This allows an automated robot to detect the presence of the code before putting the site up for review for inclusion by the editors.
Personally, I like this approach as it shows people want to be a part of BritBlog rather than just benefit from the links/traffic it may generate. In bound links are important to us as a site, so it shows that members are prepared to give as well as take.
As I go though the process of purging non-blogs/dead blogs from the database, then encouraging existing members to do this will also help.
The flip side to this is that some people may have problems getting the code onto their blog, and this may stand as a barrier to some new members.
So what do you think?
P.S. Don’t forget the Blogmeet!
Posted by britblog 
