Why is my comment not showing?

Just a technical post about this blog, and the Blogger comment system.

In the great majority of cases, when you write a comment to one of my blog posts, the comment will appear on the blog pretty much immediately. If that is not the case, one of the following things happened:

1) The stupid heuristic Blogger spam filter identified (probably mistakenly) your comment as spam, and quarantined it. About once I day I have a look at that spam folder and "unspam" comments that have been mistakenly withheld. Unfortunately Blogger does *not* allow bloggers to turn that spam filter off.

2) You commented on a post that is more than 2 weeks old. In that case your comment is automatically withheld until I approve its publication. The reason for that is that comment spam most often happens on older posts with a high pagerank. Yeah, blog discussions are short-lived, and 2 weeks are an eternity on the internet.

3) Your comment was initially published, but then later deleted by me because it didn't comply with the rules of civilized discussion. That happens rarely, to less than 1% of comments, and usually to one-liner comments containing profanity and personal attacks instead of contributing to the discussion. But in those rare cases the comment does *not* disappear without a trace. Instead the text of the comment is replaced by a "This post has been removed by a blog administrator" message, so the commenter knows his comment has been deliberately moderated.

So, unless you see a comment moderation message, if your comment is not showing, chances are that it is stuck somewhere in the pipeline. I'll do my best to unclog that pipeline regularly, but you will understand that I can't watch the comment section 24/7. My apologies for any inconveniences.

P.S.: I know that other blogging systems or comment systems might have technical advantages. But I'm not moving my blog elsewhere.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:17 AM Permanent Link