I do concede that some cases are clear cut, which is why I use spam filters and appreciate that there is often value in search result ranking–which also amounts to filtering when the number of matches exceeds those displayed.

But, as you point out, my relevance criteria may not be the same as Google’s–or anyone else’s. That’s why I want control over the experience, rather than the benign paternalism of a search engine. I want HCIR!

I’m especially glad you give a nod to the subjective nature of what constitutes “spam,” a concept is all too 0ften glossed over – or rather, is not even acknowledged as a being both a theoretical and practical matter worth debating.

It is interesting that the link you supply for attention bond mechanisms (published July 2004) defines spam as “any email that you would rather have not received,” which at once exposes the historical roots of the concept and suggests how it has morphed. Though not an irreducible concept in itself, spam framed by email is at least relatively black and white: this is either a communication that I requested (or at least expected) or one that is unsolicited. The focus here is on the user experience.

For Google, spam has come to include – in the specific arena of their search results – “web pages that are ranked higher in results than their content or linking environments warrant,” as well as more straightforwardly unexpected or unsolicited communications (such as a redirect to another page, or the installation of malware).

The criteria used by Google to determine which pages fall into this category are both obscure and, again, subjective. Certainly at the linking level these criteria presuppose, it seems to me, a pool of “neutral” humans without a vested interest in a page’s ranking/reputation, pitted against a seemingly pool of commercially-interested manipulators whose interest is in artificially elevating a web page’s ranking through manipulative practices. The “neutrality” of those raters-by-proxy, and the notion that similar efforts by those with mercantile connections constitutes “spam” is, I think, very much open for discussion.