Beware!

Updates can be found at the bottom of the post.

Here I go again, disrupting my blog’s flow. (If there ever was one…)

Long story short, I just wanted you all to know that I have not forgotten about you. There have been plenty of great posts published in the last two days, and so I shared my thoughts on those in the comment sections of almost all of them. Aside from showing my appreciation, I also shared personal stories and started some conversations. Unfortunately, almost all of them were never posted. After I would hit the “Post comment” button, my comments would just vanish. No “Your post is awaiting moderation”, no error given. Just nothingness.

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Is the picture a good enough visual of nothingness? In a way, I also feel like I am in purgatory.

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It makes me wonder if I even exist… Maybe there is no me?

After being tired of trying to figure this out on my own, I reached out on the forums, where my threads are automatically closed and marked as 47 years old.

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Some weird stuff, right?

Finally, I found a way to actually chat with someone about my problem. One person (because he was stumped like me) rerouted my issue to someone who hopefully knows more, while the other blamed it on Aksimet (the spam grabbing firm that works with WordPress). Of course, Akismet does not see why I would be considered “Spam”. (CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? Are my comments really worth less than nothing?)

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As a result, I have WordPress and Akismet people working on this, and hopefully, someone will solve this mystery.

If it is not too much to ask, could you go to “My site”-> “Comments”->”Spam” and see if any of those are from me? It might be of great help in resolving my problem.

So, I apologize for not congratulating you on your blog’s milestones, for not encouraging you to keep writing, for not expressing how beautiful and thoughtful you post is…

Please wait for me. I hope to come back.

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EDIT no. 1: After posting this initially, I received a suggestion in the comments, which seems to have resolved the issue. So now I am trying to make up for lost time and re-do the lost comments just so I have an excuse to stay up late. I am still waiting for official responses from the two involved support parties.

EDIT no.2: A day later I thought all was fixed. Akismet basically came back and said they had no reason to believe it was on their end. With the issue seemingly fixed, I kept commenting away on the “First Friday” blog for new posters. And then, all of a sudden… the issue is back. What fixed it the first time does not seem to fix it now. Maybe there is a limit to how many comments we can post per 24h? So back to comment prison I go.

EDIT no.3: Last night I thought I had found a workaround. I was able to post comments while reading things in the Reader format. So I went on, deep into the night, discovering new blogs, making suggestions, etc. This morning I discovered that these comments do not register on the official page. Oh, how this is so cruelly funny.

EDIT no.4: By now, it was a swing of emotions, but I was calm and collected. Even when WP and Akismet decided to only see the “everything is fine now” email, and skipping the “oh, the problem is back” one. In the end, Akismet said they made some adjustments and things should be ok now. I wonder what those adjustments were and why did they not see any issues in the initial stages of my problems. What changed? Anyway, I am grateful for their prompt responses and help and am happy to be back in the commenting saddle. For now.

44 thoughts on “Beware!”

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    1. Yes, I went from shrugging it off, through frustration, then through fury and am now at the “laughter of an insane person” stage. For my sanity’s sake, I, too hope it gets figured out.

      Comments on my site seem to be fine. It’s just the ones I make on others people’s sites.

      Thanks for your support!

      Liked by 4 people

      Reply

  2. I hope they figure it out and fix it soon.
    I unconsciously noticed your absence in my comment section😂(if that’s a thing).
    Your comments are always well thought out.
    Keep up the good work! ❤

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. OMG I do understand the stages of frustration you have been going through. It’s been two weeks now that I have problem with my iphone. Nobody seems to know how to fix it. Going to buy a new one tomorrow because I can’t post anything on Instagram nor leave a comment. Can only write in French. Every attempt to write in English and the message is transform into something weird that makes me sound like I am drunk. I am at the stage of laughing about it. Because I did send a couple of weird messages before noticing it. Thankfully it was to people I knew very well so they thought it was funny. Hope your problem will soon be fix.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. *faints*

      I always had my (Gr)avatar logged in (or so I thought), because of being logged in to WP and seeing my icon…
      But, as you suggested, I actually went into Gravatar’s site, logged in with my WP account and all of a sudden… I seem to be able to post comments again. What the heck?

      I’m still waiting on a word from the “experts”. Curious what they will say.

      But hopefully this solved my problem for good. I will give this a day or two to make sure.

      THANK YOU SO MUCH!

      Like

      Reply

    1. REALLY? That makes me feel a TINY bit better. Of course, WordPress tells me that I seem to be the only one having problems and no one seems to be able to fix it.

      My conspiracy theory says that it has something to do with the new feature under “Reader” menu – “Conversations”. In technology something always seems to break when something new is added…

      Thanks for letting me know.

      Liked by 2 people

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        1. Well, that is my newest and most tame theory. Some are wilder and more personal (probably less probable).

          This is stopping me from discovering new talent. I could be saving the world, instead I am powerless…

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply

  9. I love the humour as well. Laugh or cry? I choose to laugh as I have lost about 100 people who followed my blog and I theirs and we haven’t managed to meet up since. I have many new followers and readers whom I follow in return, but I do miss the others who were regular readers. Marilyn resorted to some interesting tactics to find me and on my blog, I posted the update from wp regarding phones if that helps. I’m at a loss as to how I could get my lost friends back, but hopefully, they’ll “accidentally” find me again and I, them. In the meantime, I’m completely entertained in finding you and many other bloggers of note.

    Liked by 2 people

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  13. Pingback: The end of 2017. On my terms. – One day at a time…

  15. Reblogged this on One day at a time… and commented:

    A day (or so) ago, I noticed a comment in the “All” folder under the Comment section, which was not showing in my Notifications. The comment appeared in my Notifications hours after I replied to it. The same thing happened today. Apparently, other people are experiencing similar issues.

    I just wanted to keep you all updated. You might want to take a look at your comment section (“Spam” and “All”). There might be some comments hiding from you.

    Like

    Reply

  16. I think this is the kind of thing that gives comedians a lot of their material. Turning frustration into a stand-up monologue….
    I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who goes crazy with malfunctions. (I am technologically challenged. :/ ) I didn’t even know there was a Spam setting in my comments.

    PS Love the dog pictures. Those facial expressions do say it all, don’t they?

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. I’ve never thought of myself as funny (to others), but I do amuse myself sometimes. Things not working as intended can be annoying. Especially when they prevent me from things I feel the strong need to do.

      I’m glad you know about the Spam folder now. You’re not the only one. Trust me. That’s why I think sharing it with others (even though negative) is a good thing.

      Yes! I thought so, too about the dogs.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    1. I’ve had other people tell me they’ve disabled it, too. I still use it, but I choose it to show me what it does, so in the end I have control over it. I can’t imagine people actually trusting in it and not filtering it themselves.

      Liked by 2 people

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  18. I’ve had trouble with disappearing comments (of mine) lately. Assuming that my issue is the same as the one you refer to here, I believe that I’ve identified the problem, as well as a solution to it. It is Akismet (or, Typo Alert!, ‘Aksimet’ [sic] as you’ve called it a short way into your post) deciding that certain of my messages are spam. (But, unlike Daniella Ark, I haven’t disabled Akismet as I think that, on the whole, it does a pretty good job.

    One of three things happens to my comments after I hit ‘Post Comment’:
    1. The comment appears immediately (or, on some sites such as Herb’s, after a short delay while it thinks about it – I usually see a message ‘Submitting Comment’ on Herb’s site).
    2. The comment appears immediately, but annotated to indicate that it’s in moderation (which always happens on Esme’s site, as she puts all comments into moderation so that she can respond to them when she has time).
    3. The comment vanishes without a trace. No error message, no nothing, no ‘This comment has been put into the recipient’s Spam folder’ message (which I, personally, think would be a more Faksimetpolite way of dealing with it).

    After consulting Akismet support about #3 a while back, they confirmed that it was probably some content I was employing that Akismet considered ‘spammy’. And that sounded right, as the majority by far of my ‘vanishing comments’ were ones that contained boilerplate content I was copy-pasting each time from a text file. Unfortunately, those comments were ?Random Raiders! ones. The solution Akismet offered was to submit a simple comment to appeal to the site owner to check their Spam folder to see if mine was in there. And that is now working; I have, however, also modified my behaviour since to try to avoid the problem entirely – I no longer use that copy-paste boilerplate, I craft each comment individually (which is a bit of a pain as it takes longer, but on the other hand I suppose it’s not all that polite to scatter what amounts to ?Random Raiders! adverts all over someone else’s site).

    Now, I’ve deliberately bunged a lot of links into this far-too-long comment (which might put this into moderation, depending on Dailyflabbergast’s Discussion Settings.

    But, in the hope that it will trigger Akismet (assuming that you have it enabled) to flag it as ‘spam’, I’m also going to end with that same boilerplate content I mentioned earlier…

    This comment was brought to you courtesy of 💥 ?Random Raiders! 💥

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Nope, it did not go to spam. Just moderation due to the amount of links. I think my limit is 2 or 3.

      Checking the Spam folder on a regular basis is a must. Admittedly, it seems that 99% of the comments in Spam ARE spam, but every now and again, I will find one that I have NO idea how it landed there. It’s short, does not have any links, is from a person that I talk to regularly, and it seems non-generic. So… go figure.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Those ‘tiny, inoffensive’ ones sometimes appear in my Spam folder too, and, like you, I can’t figure out what it is about them that’s a problem.

        I saw my previous comment appear with the ‘in moderation’ annotation. Odd; I’d fully expected it to go to Spam because of the last line. I hope you don’t mind if I do another test, with this comment: no links here, except for the one in this next line, which Akismet has sometimes, but not always, ‘disliked’:

        This comment was brought to you courtesy of 💥 ?Random Raiders! 💥

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

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