I just checked my dallasnews.com e-mail and see that some of you have had trouble posting over the weekend, having received notices telling you that your comments were being held for my approval. In one case, this generated a nasty response from a reader who decided that this revealed an ugly side of my character; in another, it generated a worried e-mail from a longtime regular poster who wondered what he'd done to offend me.
Let me assure you that in neither case was I aware that the readers hadn't been able to post comments. This software sometimes, for inexplicable reasons, decides to hold the comments of people who are otherwise allowed to post. Usually it will let me know either in the blog management section or by sending me an e-mail that there's a post awaiting my approval.
I found the first reader's comment stuck in the comments section, awaiting my check-off -- which is weird, because she'd been allowed to post before without my approval, and there was nothing in this comment objectionable. Besides, the software did not generate an e-mail flag for me. In the second case, I have no idea what happened. I got no e-mail notification about the reader having posts held for my approval, nor do any of that reader's posts show up in the comments management section of my software as being held pending approval.
Let me ask you to be patient if you see that your comment hasn't been posted pending approval. The software makes those decisions on its own -- I've got nothing to do with it. We've been getting bombarded badly with spam in the past three weeks, with comboxes on older posts overwhelmed by spammed ads posted by robots. It's possible that Bnet has set the spam filter higher -- I noticed over the weekend that I'm not seeing nearly as many of those posts to this blog -- and some of you are inadvertently being caught in the tighter net, through no fault of your own. Anyway, don't assume that you've been banned, or that I'm being mean to you. Just drop me a note to let me know what's happened, and I'll look into it. If anybody is permanently banned from posting here -- which rarely happens -- I always let everybody know.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
i m a fatalist in this case, if my posts don't appear somewhere for technical reasons i can't help it, if they are deleted by authors i would hardly take courage to demand explanations, owners have a right to delete anything they don't like without giving any explanations (to passers-by whom they hardly know)
i m a fatalist in this case, if my posts don't appear somewhere for technical reasons i can't help it, if they are deleted by authors i would hardly take courage to demand explanations, owners have a right to delete anything they don't like without giving any explanations (to passers-by whom they hardly know)
Same here. If my comments on somebody's blog get deleted because of a technical glitch, I'll shrug and move on. If it turns out that Rod actually really doesn't care about what I have to say, I'll shrug and move on. Truth be told (and I don't mean this in an insulting way) I'd be surprised to learn that the hosts of the majority of blogs that I comment on really care about what I have to say -- I don't know most of them personally, so they have no way of distinguishing me from an ASCII-generating robot. Some people take this whole interweb doo-hickey way too seriously.
I sent a rather long post that went to moderation, however I assumed it was because I forgot to fill out the name and e-mail address.
Sometimes comments will get hung up if they have key words accidentally imbedded in them. Socialism without the dash, or a phrase like 'what's special is . . ." because the name of some internet drug is contained within.
At least that's the case on my blog.
Sorry, everyone! We are trying to fine-tune our spam filters and a number of posts over the weekend were flagged as spam. I went through and approved them last night and will be keeping an eye out for any further problems. On a up note, I've only found three so far today that didn't post.
Thanks!
BeliefnetPat
Asst Community Manager
Beliefnet.com
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.