You know what else really grinds my gears?
Having my comments not approved to be posted in the first place. A moderation queue is generally intended to block off spammers and trolls from ever getting their comments onto your blog. When you use it to block off people who say stuff you just don't like, you've gone too far.
What makes it particularly frustrating is that this incident didn't occur on some woo's blog; it was on one of the blogs at ScienceBlogs. I won't mention which one in order to be more tactful that is probably deserved, but I'll note that it wasn't one of the big controversial blogs. All my comment really was was some helpful advice, but apparently some people can't take it.
Disclaimer: I have heard rumors that there have been some weird interactions of ScienceBlogs' e-mail notifications and Gmail's spam filter. I have seen other comments appear on this blog since I sent mine, but the interaction is apparently a bit capricious. This exists as an alternative explanation, though the cynic in me doesn't believe it.
3 comments:
Infophile, have you commented on that blog before?
I ask this because my blog is set up to automatically put first time commenters in the moderation queue. There's a good reason for that on WordPress blogs.
The Akismet spam filter occasionally misses a comment or two. Some days more like 10 or 20. By sending all first time commenters to the queue, I ensure that "xpdfverlkd" whose comment consists of "buy viagra here" from his shiny new IP address can't get a whole bunch of crap on my blog at once.
I approve all legitimate comments however, as soon as I see them, with exactly two exceptions, both of whom are justifiably banned commenters. (Two banned commenters in a whole year of blogging seems like a pretty good record, I think. Uncommonly Dense bans more people than that in a week! - And for nothing more than not toeing the party line!)
And for the record, neither of those commenters was banned for disagreeing with me, but for being genuinely and generally rude assholes over many comments, which still stand on my blog.
Returning to the topic at hand, sometimes Akismet also puts legitimate comments in the spam bucket for no apparent reason. Sometimes I get several thousand spam comments a day. (I shit you not, though it's eased up in the past week or so.) With that many spam comments, I don't even bother fishing around in the spam bucket any more unless someone posts another comment or sends me an email telling me that they've lost a comment.
Because of this, I usually let the spam bucket go to about 20,000 comments before I empty it, just in case.
Just a thought (or a few).
That indeed was my first time posting on that blog, however I have no idea what software they might be using to moderate comments. I did get a message saying I'd been put in the moderation queue, and I assumed this shouldn't be much of a problem. New comments have appeared on that blog since then, so if everyone's been moderated, he's been checking the queue. If it's just me, he might not, and this might also explain it.
Of course, I still have a fair bit of cynicism that won't let me assume the best. I'll keep checking on it for a bit and see if the comment ever shows up, though.
And... has it shown up yet?
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