Okay, hands up who’s been trying to comment in my blog and had their comments eaten up.
I’ve found the culprit. The answer hit me suddenly.
It’s my wonderful, lovely, huggable spam filter plugin, without which I would’ve had to personally deal with 41,225 spam entries in the last six months. (Figure is accurate at the time of posting.)
The plugin automatically sends all suspect comments to the spam folder and deletes them after 15 days. I don’t make it a habit to check the spam folder, of course, because about 200 spam comments get caught each day and some of them are as long as a fresh roll of toilet paper, boasting endless strings of popular sleazy keywords and bearing tempting sounding links to excite the similarly sleazy.
So if your comment never made it to public view, and you never got a message saying that it’s being held in the moderation queue awaiting ransom, then it means you’ve been spaminated (made-up word) and your comment will lie dusty and forgotten in the spam folder until it’s called to meet its maker in 15 days (although that’s a really bad turn of phrase to use, seeing as the dead comment is likely to never return to you, ever.)
Well it’s not my fault that you people come up with dodgy names and e-mails that all but scream “SPAMBOT ALERT”!!!
For instance, I have this reader who calls himself A Suspicious Man.
What the hail! You walk around with a name like that, you’re just asking for spam filters to axe you!!! Wahahaha.
Okay, but A Suspicious Man seems harmless enough. Not that I know him personally, but I read some of his blog entries and found that he writes pretty well, so I made a comment in his blog, which led him to contact me through MyBlogLog, by the way highlighting to me that my blog didn’t allow him to leave comments.
A Suspicious Man isn’t the first “victim”, though.
Ruok has been a long-suffering victim who also happens to be a long-suffering friend. He’s been complaining to me about eaten-up posts since time immemorial but I never gave it much thought because I sometimes also have trouble commenting in other people’s blogs (only in blogspot blogs), and I always assumed it was some cookie/security error.
So I found out I was wrong.
I was able to fix things by wading thick into my spam folder to find the eaten posts and “despam” them, which tells the plugin that these jokers who got axed aren’t actually spambots, they just happen to have suspicious names/e-mails, but they’re friends no less, so please allow their comments in the future, no matter how dodgy they sound.
If you’re a spambot-lookalike who’s had trouble commenting, you now know why.
What can you do about it?
You can either use another name or e-mail address, or you can e-mail me to get your choice of name/e-mail despammed, after which you’ll be able to post like a normal human being and not get discriminated against by elitist plugins.
My e-mail address can be found here. I’ll just need to know which name you used to post your comment, and you must have posted something within the last 15 days.
Speaking of which.
Spam is the answer to the recent luncheon meat ban. But spam is not as tasty as luncheon meat, so I’m pretty upset about it. I love luncheon meat more than you can imagine.
Well, that’s all, folks. Back to work!
Me, not you.
Yes, I’m working. I’ve become a temporary corporate slave in order to set to rights the gross injustice I did to my bank account over the Christmas holiday period. So if my blogs are short or boring or late, know that I’m being held against my will in the evil clutches of corporate slavery.
Perhaps you want to rescue a poor damsel by donating generously?
Okthxbye.