Jun 21
Am I Now Nothing But Spam to Akismet?
Maybe the day before yesterday I made a few comments on some blogs, as I so oft do these days. The next day I go back to those posts to see if anyone responded to my comments, and I notice that my comments are not there. At the time I just thought that I didn’t hit the Submit button as I previously believed so I commented some more, and then noticed that my comments just weren’t appearing. Finally, I talked to Listikal over at his site and he told me that my comments were being marked as SPAM. What the hell?
Once again, one of my pet peeves is when technology revolts against me, which seems to happen more and more frequently lately. And now, the good name of Bush Mackel has somehow been sullied across the Internet and I’m struggling to comment on blogs. How could this have happened?
My guess is Akismet.
Aksimet may be the Skynet to blogs. Aksimet is a service entrusted to help bloggers weed out the spam comments amongst the good, and does so automatically. Furthermore, Aksimet is basically handed out with any blog powered by WordPress. And it does a good job…That is, until it doesn’t. And since Akismet is the large entity across the Blogosphere, immediately, I can’t comment on a large bunch of sites because they all use this technology which thinks I’m a spammer. ARGH!
It’s funny this happens now because I’ve really just hit my blogging stride, talking to other bloggers, learning new things, finally getting somewhere, and then Akismet just brings me down. I don’t know what would happen if I couldn’t comment on other’s blogs. That’s a big way to introduce people to your own, to get the word out.
So hey, if you’re reading this post, good chance I read yours. Why don’t you do me a favor and just check your spam box to see if your boy Bush Mackel has been marked as a spammer. If there’s a way out of this hell, it’s with your help.
(BTW, I found a good article about this kind of behavior, check it out.)
*EDIT : 2 of my own comments were marked as SPAM on my own site. Just discovered them. *sigh*
June 21st, 2007 at 10:29 am
Akismet does have problems with false positives. I actually check it everyday just to make sure no legit comments get included.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:43 am
Glad to hear it Brown. So in about 5 minutes when I land in there, make sure to fish me out. Ha ha
June 21st, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Well, dont worry about it much bush..if you’ll comment on many blogs which use Akismet and then if the blog owners will approve them, then you’ll come in the safe list of the akismet. Just make comments regularly on those blogs, where it gets approved properly
June 21st, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Akismet does have problems. Sometimes comments are caught as spam. For me many of the trackbacks are caught as spam. When I delete spam comments, I make sure that there are no genuine comments marked as spam.
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:58 am
Thanks for the support guys, I did go ahead yesterday and contact a few webmasters about this problem so they could take me out of spam land if I infact WAS in there. I guess it just goes to show us that as web/blogmasters, we certainly should stay on top of this.
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:21 am
I’m not sure if they could help. But did you try contacting them directly via their Contact page?
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:42 am
This happened to me when I tried to comment as ‘keira knightley’ for seo purposes.
I will watch my Spam for you as well.
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:44 am
@Benedict – Good thought, stay tuned.
@apex – For some reason, that strikes me as funny, you trying to comment as Keira Knightley. I see what you were going for…But it’s still funny. (#):)
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:47 am
As good as Akismet is, it’s still not perfect. Your comments are coming through fine now Bush. I’m proud to have you as my #1 commentator.
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Akismet is not 100% reliable. You are more than invited to comment at Avirtualexit.com, i know the owner, so he can make sure to filter you out
Hope to see you around,
Gili
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:50 pm
@Listikal – Hey, thanks for always having something for me to read. (#):)
@Gili – I’ll take you up on that offer.
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Geesh, that is frustrating, but your comment came through on my blog just fine, so maybe it’s getting better?
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:27 am
“I got to admit it’s getting better…Getting better, all the time”
Sorry, couldn’t resist.