Comments and Spam

Within the last two weeks or so, and for no reason I can ascertain, there has developed a problem with comments being marked as Spam. I don’t know why this is. TypePad have clearly changed the rules on their Spam filter although they have not had the courtesy to warn me or explain what has changed. I have written several help tickets and so far this is all the response I have had:

Thanks for the note. We have reported this comment to our Operations team so that they can look into why this was incorrectly flagged as spam.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.

As you can see – a virtually useless reply. I don’t know why they find it impossible to tell me what rules they have quite obviously changed on their own filters. I’ll try to follow up with them. But it is out of my hands – only TypePad can fix it. It looks like it might be long comments that attract the filter, since those are the ones that get caught, and apparently splitting them up into smaller comments seems to work. I apologize for this. I can assure you it is not my doing and I am not preventing anyone from commenting.

If you let me know by email that your comment has been held by the filter, I can go in manually and release it. The blocked comments are all sitting in a place that I have access to and I have been able to release comments for one person who requested it. Unfortunately, I am out quite a lot in the day right now, and don’t get to check my email or the blog very often, which means you might be waiting for a while before I release it. But remember I can always do that if you don’t mind waiting a bit. Otherwise, I apologize again and suggest you split the long posts into several shorter ones.

Comments

[Tom Foss]

If the TypePad front page is any indication, this is a widespread problem, and it may get better if people wait to let you approve posts rather than posting multiple (sorry about that). Here's the link.

[Skeptico]

Thanks Tom. I hadn’t seen that – for some reason TypePad don’t seem able to reply to the help tickets set up by their actual customers. I hope they change their algorithms because this is really annoying.

Btw I just released comments from Angela Flynn and Akusai – they appear in the times originally posted, not the time actually released and so you might otherwise miss them (another problem).

[Skeptico]

I’ll check back during the day to release blocked posts – I suggest you wait for me to do that rather than breaking long posts down. (No need to email – I’ll just check in anyway.) In any case, Akusai’s comment was only three lines long, so it can’t be just the post length.

[Liz Ditz]

I had somewhat the same problem -- didn't realize that Typepad had a new system for quarantining suspected spam comments until last week.

One trigger is more than X URLs. I don't know how big X is, but I think it is more than three.

I'm averaging about 75 spam comments per day, mostly for the usual suspects (poker, male enhancement, loans).

[Skeptico]

I think they may have fixed the problem. Or at least, they are aware of it. This from TypePad today:

Thanks for providing the information for us. Initially, the change was made to enable more effective Spam filtering. As of today, the spam filter has been updated to correct the error wherein legitimate comments were being flagged as spam. You should see an improvement in how comments are submitted to your blog. We have been working on adjusting the filter as it had become far too aggressive. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the changes to the way TypePad handles comment spam.

No more need for split comments. I hope.

[MAGNA VERSE]

WTF
just who the f**k do you think you are!!!!!
WHERE DO YOU GET AWAY WITH SELLING THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE......
I OWN THE GOLDEN GATE BRIGE !!!!!!
I bought it from this nice Nigerian Gentleman
a few months ago and I AM PLANNING TO CHARGE
TO USE MY BRIDGE....
SMARTEN UP YOU GUYS...

[genewitch]

Well, if typepad is anything like my phone company, it'll get resolved quick, and they'll let you know the second it is finished. If, however, typepad is like my cable company, then expect it to take three months and a virgin sacrifice (aka call to the BBB) to get anything resolved.

hehe. Oh and skeptico, i'm sure most of your astute readers would never presume to think that you were somehow censoring comments. I know that wasn't my first reaction, at least.