Sunday, February 19, 2006

This is a test posting, but it should work now. I hope it does. Blogger's explanation of yesterday's problem is here.

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Feb. 18

This is what I wrote in the morning - it disappeared then and it's likely to disappear again, but this is the only way to find out whether Blogger has fixed the problem...
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I've no idea what's wrong with Blogger. I posted two entries between midnight and 1 am, and they disappeared; I found them through RSS, reposted them - and they vanished again; comments do get sent to my email address, but they don't show on the page.

Now, the craziest part of it is this: to post this entry, I'll have to do the Word Verification routine. Here's why:

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

Before we can turn off mandatory word verification on your posts we'll need to have a human review your blog and verify that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review.


Okay, so I've found the explanation for the disappearing posts and comments problem - it's here, in a thread on Blogger Support Group. Not an explanation, really, but at least I know that I'm not the only person this is happening to.

As for my blog being a spam blog - maybe someone has used a "flagging" option in the upper right corner of the blog and notified Blogger "about objectionable content"? Accidentally. Or deliberately. I'll have to find out.

I'll try to repost my two earlier, disappeared, posts later. Hope it'll work.
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And no, it didn't work for those two posts from a night ago...

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I'm still on their spam blog watch list, though. Funny, huh?

2 comments:

  1. "Clever power players sometimes manage to get the better of time and their ostensible superiors. A few years ago, for example, while serving as a visiting professor in Brazil, I frequently needed to use the telephone. This meant calling on the switchboard operator, who connected all incoming and outgoing calls. Unfortunately the operator, whose job was protected by civil-service laws, had developed an aversion to making phone calls.

    This meant that when people wanted to place a call they had to wait, sometimes a very long time. And if they got angry, they had to wait even longer.

    Aware of this, I frequently dropped by with little gifts-graft might be a more accurate word-hoping that my calls might be given just the tiniest little push. It didn't help. In fact, the operator began pressing me for bigger gifts and mumbling about a government regulation giving low priority to phone calls made by foreigners. I ended up waiting as long as everyone else. Outside her booth, the operator was just another underpaid worker. But with the wires in her hand, she played the waiting game like a pro and controlled her supposed superiors.

    The power principle, then, is a triad: First, making a person wait is an exercise in power. Second, powerful people have thecapacity to make others wait. And third, the willingness to wait acknowledges and legitimizes this power."

    Psychology Today,April 1987, Robert Levine, E.B.White

    http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1175/is_v21/ai_4757174

    P.S.- Perhaps totally unrelated, but get this feeling that internet/computer/software whatever, "administrators" kinda enjoy it.(i wonder why they don't choose a title such as "Systems Field Marshall, 4 stars", or "Network Generalissmo in command of 10 divisions of floors full of computers and data". heh,pompous bastards.

    I posted regularly in a forum, hosted on some free webforum service, and the entire "work", of 3-4 years, with 10-20 regular contributors was wiped out in 1 second by some zealous person.

    For me, these guys are Stalinists. (no offense to Stalin intended.)

    And all you people thought Internet is Free and Democratic? ha :).

    Augusto

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  2. Wow,what in the blue hell was that? I am glad that you are able to post now. I was worried that they were not going to let you back on line. Was the Dr visit ok?

    ReplyDelete