This post was written by Jennifer
Hello My Name Is: Spam
About 2 weeks ago I attempt to comment back to a reader at one of my WordPress blogs. I post a decent size comment, hit enter, and I’m popped up to the top of the blog. Weird; that never happens?
I scroll down and don’t see my comment. Hmmm. I try again and nothing. I feel uneasy, but all blogs have issues from time to time, so I head over to another one of my blogs, post a comment, and the same thing happens. Now I start getting a little nervous. I go to one of my favorite blogs that I don’t write and try to leave a comment - the same thing. I seemingly can’t leave comments anywhere.
Right away I do what you should not do about a blogging issue; I panic. I note that other people seem to be able to comment, so it must be me. In fact I thought it was my computer, on which I had recently downloaded some new software. I figured I messed up my computer somehow, so I try a system restore. I know; that makes no sense since it was an internet, not an actual computer issue, but as noted I panicked and was in the middle of a bad week to begin with. Of course system restore did nothing. Next I try posting comments on Blogger and Drupal platform blogs; which by the way I can do, so now I’m totally confused.
Finally, a very nice b5media co-worker tells me that maybe Akismet is sending me to spam. Well, finally an idea that actually made sense. This is why it pays to post issues at forums where other (more clear-minded) bloggers can suggest ideas. I check my spam comments and there I am, all spammy.
I email Akismet a support ticket and in a day they fix me up. That is until yesterday. The same thing happens; I can’t leave comments on any WordPress blog in the blogosphere. Do you know how frustrating this is for someone who spends most of their time either posting to or commenting on WordPress blogs? Pretty darn frustrating. If blogging is a huge part of your world, and you’re declared spam, it’s sort of depressing.
In any case, since this happened to me, and someone else I know, I figured I’d bring it up. Maybe save you some panic. If you’ve always been able to leave comments before, and suddenly can’t, maybe you’re also part of a system glitch. In this case head to Akismet and hit their contact form. Someone at b5media has also suggested emailing tech support for not only Akismet, but your blog network as well, which is another smart move.
Has this ever happened to you; twice, in the same month?
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2 Responses to “Hello My Name Is: Spam”
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Sympathy! It’s not happened to me, but there are a lot of blogs which are putting on increasingly severe “anti-spam” tools, which are often really “anti-human” too. Why do they dislike me? Well, I’ve a .coop email address, fairly high security settings on my browser (no cookies or javascripts without permission, for example) and some minor eyesight problems - each one of those individually gets me caught by some so-called “anti-spam” tools. These days, I don’t even try to leave comments on blogs if I spot one of the common bad anti-human comment filters.
I’ve not had much trouble with akismet yet, but Spam Karma 2 has a special place in my wrath. If karma is real, its users will be reincarnated as tinned meat.
[...] blogs but they don’t appear? Have you wondered if it’s just you, or is something wrong? Jennifer was having the same problem with her comments too, so you’re not alone. She discovered that Akismet was tossing her out [...]