That title is like word salad, right? Two things are happening, one important and one fun, and I was trying to fit them both in. The fun one involves a chance to win a $25 gift ceriticiate to DriveThruRPG, but let’s start with the important one.

The Important Thing: Spam Account Purge

We have spam comments locked down, but spammers are ingenious at registering spam accounts. Usually those accounts don’t have any comments associated with them, so accounts with zero comments are quite likely to be spam.

The other reason there’s a correlation between zero comments and spam accounts is that nothing on Gnome Stew is hidden: All of our content is available, for free, to everyone. The only two things an account lets you do here are 1) comment on articles and 2) be eligible for contests and giveaways. In other words, there’s no reason to have an account here if you’re not going to write at least one comment.

We understand that people sometimes create an account and then never use it for one reason or another, though, and we don’t want to delete any legitimate accounts. The goal is to have all accounts be legitimate.

So here’s the skinny:

If you’ve commented at least once, your account won’t be deleted, of course! It doesn’t matter which article you comment on, or how long it’s been since you last commented — again, we’re only nuking accounts with zero comments in this purge. But if you’re looking for a likely target article to comment on, read on to see why this one is a good choice!

(Update: Please note as well that having a user account, receiving our articles via RSS/email, and being on our mailing list are completely separate from each other. You can have/do any of those things without having/doing any of the others.)

The Fun Thing: A Contest!

We love running contests and giving stuff away to our readers, and since purging spam accounts isn’t exactly sexy article fodder we thought we’d jazz things up a bit. From now until November 6, 2012, we’re running a contest.

Here’s the scoop:

• You can enter the contest by commenting on this article. In your comment, say something funny to prove that you’re a human being. One comment per person; if you comment more than once, your first comment is the one that counts. (As always, the gnomes aren’t eligible to win.)
• New users are welcome to comment. This contest is open to anyone with an account who comments before the contest ends.
• Comments on this article will stay open until sometime in the evening on November 6, 2012, at which point I will close them and the contest will be over.
• The gnomes will take a few days to read all of the comments here, hold a vote to choose the funniest comment, and that commenter will win the contest.
• We’ll award a $25 gift certificate to DriveThruRPG to the lucky winner.

That’s all there is to it. Happy commenting, humans!