A Little Help From My Friends…

Dear friends and fellow bloggers,

You know me, right? I’m a prolific commenter, most of the time. I usually have an opinion, and I love hanging around blogs. We’re all friends here in the blogosphere.

Ham turned to Spam!

However. At this time, I’ve been relegated to Spam. Yup, everything I might try to say to you on your lovely WordPress blogs currently most likely ends up in your Spam folder. Why?

WordPress uses something called Akismet to protect our blogs from Spam. Occasionally, Akismet tightens its criteria or logarithms or whatever it is they use, and legitimate, innocent bloggers such as myself end up on a blacklist. Completely randomly. Completely without reason. For I’m not Spam, right? Not fair, uh-huh, but that’s what happens.

How did I find out about this? Well, let’s say I spent time yesterday leaving comments on people’s blogs, as is my wont, and they didn’t appear. The blog would say, “posting comment” and then… nothing. No “your comment is awaiting moderation”, just nothing. This got me thinking and Googling, and hey presto, there it was, the hypothesis. Am I on a blacklist of some kind? Does WordPress think I’m Spam?? I Facebooked with one of the bloggers and she duly found me in her Spam folder (and restored my comment: thanks!). Hypothesis confirmed; panic stations!

I’ve contacted WordPress, and they’ve been very helpful but there’s not much they can do. I’ve contacted Akismet but their contact form is like a big, black hole and I don’t even know if my message got through.

No Way Out?

Meanwhile I’ve been advised conflicting things. Some say, hold off on the commenting altogether for a  while. Others say, comment and ask the blog owners to retrieve your message from Spam and approve it. Apparently, that action sends a message of a ‘false positive’ to Akismet which will eventually (in a few days? weeks? months?) prompt Akismet to take me off the blacklist. (Have I mentioned that I hate being on any kind of blacklist? I’m deeply distraught!).

I’m not alone in this. Check out this post, for example (or try Googling the phenomenon, but this link is faster, LOL):

http://dukeo.com/how-to-get-off-akismets-blacklist/

Instructive, huh? So where do I go from here?

Hope Against Hope

Well. I’ll comment a little less, perhaps, but I will remain your active friend!

Perhaps you could check your Spam folder every once in a while to see if I’m languishing in there. Perhaps, if you find me, you might mark my comments as THIS IS NOT SPAM and approve them to restore them to your blog. I would really, really love that.

Hopefully, one day I’ll become a happy, one-click-and-my-comment-shows blogger again. In the interim… don’t forget to check your Spam folder every once in a while, just in case. Thank you all for your support!

🙂