Waxy says Wordpress had some major ad-mining operations going on ... until someone blew the whistle on them and prompted Google to do a little dance around the bogus ad-phishing posts:

I discovered last week that since early February, he's been quietly hosting at least 168,000 articles on their website. These articles are designed specifically to game the Google Adwords program, written by a third-party about high-cost advertising keywords like asbestos, mesothelioma, insurance, debt consolidation, diabetes, and mortgages.
[ Wordpress Website's Search Engine Spam ]

Say what? One of our own, fallen to absestos mining? Wait, it gets better, or worse, depending on your sense of righteousness and irony, and it's not just because the Wordpress crew have taken to hiding the links behind negative CSS and remaining unrepentant about the practice, it's because someone has made adsense-phishing into a 9-5 start-up ...

The articles are given to him by Hot Nacho, a startup that pays freelance writers to generate 300-800 word articles about specific topics. All advertising revenues go directly to Hot Nacho, and he's paid a flat fee for hosting the articles and ad banners.

Matt said he was skeptical at first, but the money ...

but the money ...

And what money! Let's do just a bit of guestimathematics here: We know Nachos is paying out $1200 for every 400 'short articles' and WordPress is hosting 160,000+ of these, so right there we're into an inventory investment of a cool half-million dollars before tax and handling, and we haven't even touched the sensitive topic of just how much per page however many sites like Matt would get as bloodmoney for playing the trawler captains.

Yes folks, 'fraid so: This is why spam is so hard to beat. This is why trackback was doomed. People buy it -- you can't get squat for writing your best thoughts in a blog or building cutting-edge community portals, and the HRDC says you can't even get a decent honest job paying more than flipping burgers anywhere in software engineering anymore ... but you can get paid for scams like this.

Ok, so it's Matt's project and he and his friends can make their money turning whatever tricks they like, but in the aftermath, Waxy wants to know if it's fair to ask opensource software projects where and how they make their money ...

First, do organizers of open-source projects need to disclose how they're making money off the project? Matt isn't disclosing anything about this activity to the community. I don't think anyone would be upset about Matt trying to support Wordpress with outside sources of revenue, but as an open-source project, they should be held to a higher level of transparency. Without the users and developers all working for free, it wouldn't exist.

Second, is it ethical for open-source projects to make money gaming search engines?
[ Waxy.org: Daily Log ]

Alas to my chagrin, you'll be happy to note that you won't need to boycott TeledyN as all my own feeble forays into ad-phishing have generated precisely squat in extra pocket money, proving once again how I just don't get it when it comes to the real reality of this making a living stuff. Prolly my attitude, or bad karma, or somethin'...