I’ve had it with Spam Karma. Because it bypasses the indigenous moderation settings, it’s causing certain comments to bypass moderation. The plugin I downloaded for it just doesn’t work properly, and because I’m no longer going to be around every day to catch these things that’s just simply not acceptable.

So, does anyone know of any other decent spam blockers that don’t interfere with WP’s moderation setting? I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.

Also, if people are still having problems with their comments being marked as spam, please let me know. I think the cause is Akismet, but I need to know all the details I can so I can troubleshoot things.

[12.13 Please Note: Comments are not “being deleted” as many people are claiming. This blog is moderated and that means that all comments must go through the moderation queue first. Because of an issue with Spam Karma, sometimes comments get approved without going through first. When I see that, I automatically put them back into the queue without reading them first. That doesn’t mean they’re deleted, it just means that they haven’t been reviewed by a moderator yet. The bloggers here do not live online so be patient!]

Apparently a lot of people are having trouble getting comments through. I’m not sure if this is another Akismet problem (it was freaking out about a month ago) or a Spam Karma problem. If you try to comment, please save your text in another file before you submit it so you don’t lose anything if it screws up. Also, if you have any idea what plugin is giving the error, I would much appreciate being informed.

Half the time I’m not even being mailed the comments, and the other half I’m getting mailed comments but then they aren’t in the queue to approve. I’ll try to fix this as soon as possible, but since I don’t know what’s freaking out and why I don’t know how long it’ll take.

Blogging has ceased to be fun, so I’m going to take a break and enjoy playing FFXI. My co-bloggers will hold down the fort as well as their lives allow, so please play nice. Comments may take a while to get approved because they’re online a lot less than I am, so please be patient.

First of all, I’ve added a new section to the Discussion Rules about what to do if you’re told to check your privilege. Just a reminder, folks, this blog is an anti-oppression blog and while it’s okay to disagree with what’s said, if you’re told that your comment comes from a privileged POV saying “no it doesn’t!” (however politely) is not acceptable.

Also, comment threads are not the place to ask questions or comment about the Discussion Rules. Period. If you have a question, you can contact me with it. I may or may not answer. But if you try to argue the merits of the rules on the board, your comment will be deleted (hopefully before it gets posted… damn Spam Karma) and I will heavily consider banning you.

I’ve changed the way that blockquotes are formatted in an effort to make them more readable.

This is what the new blockquoting format looks like. Do you find it more readable? Less readable? Do you have suggestions for making it better?

Thanks!

Apparently I’ve had a batch of comments (I’m not sure how many) be marked as spam and therefore not published. I also found out that a group of comments that I approved somehow got unapproved and two of them ended up in the spam bin (which would have been deleted except that I checked because of the comment eating problem).

If you find that your comment doesn’t show up after a day, please at least e-mail me to let me know. I have no idea yet how widespread this issue is, or if it means I should seek another anti-spam tool besides Spam Karma.

Sorry for the inconvenience!