Stanford University and Weblog spam

So last week Adam Kalsey reported that comment spammers (who post bogus Weblog comments to drive up their own sites' Google rankings) were using a Stanford University Center for Internet and Society site as part of a new technique (find a site that doesn't delete spam, then link to it to drive up its Google rankings and so the rankings of the spam sites it points to).

Steve Friedl does some in-depth checking and discovers that the Center for Internet and Society is a Weblog spam hothouse:

"The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University is chock-full of serious luminaries, but for people who are so bright and internet-aware, they are shockingly clueless about how to run a weblog properly. Of the weblogs hosted on that server, 99.25% of the more than 9000 comments are spam. ..."

He provides a helpful chart listing the worst offenders.

UPDATE: Joe Gratz reports that the comment function on the Stanford Movable Type server has been turned off.