I mentioned in this post yesterday that at least a half a dozen of you told me that my comments have ended up in your spam folders. Well, it continues to happen, as three more of you have told me today that you retrieved my comments from the fiery depths of spam hell.
So I decided it was time to address this conundrum head on. My bright idea was to reach out directly to Akismet to review my account and find out what’s going on. And that was when I discovered that around 13 months ago, in late June 2018, I contacted Akismet with the same problem. I even posted about it here.
Here is how Akismet responded last year:
Looking at our logs, it looks like you’re leaving a lot of comments in a very short amount of time, which imitates the behavior of a spambot, which is why Akismet keeps catching you as spam.
I suggest you to slow down a little bit with the rate of commenting to avoid this inconvenience in the future.
Akismet must have jiggered something last year because my comments on other bloggers’ posts stopped winding up in their spam folders.
I don’t mean to sound plaintive, but saying that I was commenting too much and too frequently was so not true then and is so not true now. And that I’m mimicking the behavior of a spambot? Seriously?
I think perhaps another blogger with whom I was having a bit of a political debate about the role of guns in mass shootings may have gotten pissed at me and tagged my comments as spam, which would be a cruel thing to have done. Although the guy’s an asshole, so it wouldn’t surprise me. But that’s just conjecture on my part.
In any event, I just contacted Akismet again and am awaiting their response. I’ll let you know when I hear back. In the meantime, this is a wrap.
Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (conundrum), Daily Addictions (bright), Your Daily Word Prompt (review), Ragtag Daily Prompt (plaintive), Word of the Day Challenge (cruel), and The Daily Spur (wrap).
This, That, and the Other 
This has happened to me before. It was in the month of April when the A2Z Challenge was going on. Apparently, if we leave comments on too many blogs everyday, we’re in severe danger of being labelled as spam. It’s ridiculous. I mean the one thing WP itself stresses is that we’ve got to read much more than we write! And then Akismet goes and does this.
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Mixed messages!
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I wonder if that’s why I appear in spam now. I feel I have been commenting more this year, but yes it’s mixed messages when you are supposed to read other blogs and write there too. After all, by doing so, mixing with others on their blog is what makes it a brilliant WordPress community. Yet, WordPress do this.
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Indeed.
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Interesting. That hasn’t happened to me before, but I’ll be mindful of this if I ever end up commenting WAY more.
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I see by the ‘suggested posts’ that follow your post you are not the only one to suffer this fate. I mean, we are given the tools to block people, put comments in moderation, etc. I suspect you may be right, that someone labeled a comment as spam. I would ask that question directly to the good folks at WP.
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I will endeavor to get to the bottom of this.
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I am sure you are one of those who would comment on lots of post from a blogger in a few minutes.
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If my comments are being spammed by Akismet, nobody has ever told me about it, however I often make comments on other bloggers posts and I never hear anything back from, but I am still able to sleep at night.
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This is unfortunate that this is going on. I leave lots of comments at times on many posts and have talks with other bloggers and nothing seems to happen. I think maybe did mark your comments as spam which is wrong. I hope this time you will get an answer that will correct this mistake.
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Yours and others hit my spam folder occasionally when you have a link back but never normally.
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Interesting. I rarely put links in my comments.
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I so rarely check my spam >.<
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🙂 Fandango, you never ended up in my designated spam area.
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That’s good to know.
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Ha, ha, ha, slow down, seems like good advice to me whatever the context.
Both my email server and my email client do anti-spam checks, neither of which is reliable. I’ve trained myself to go through both Inbox and Spam folders, but possibly me default operation (read or delete) is different for each.
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Well now, ain’t that something!
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“I suggest you to slow down a little bit with the rate of commenting to avoid this inconvenience in the future.” Hahaha, priceless!
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Ah……………………….
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slow down? really? why not just add a white list to their stupid askimet so we can show you are WANTED and not a can of nasty meat?
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The comments that quite sparingly end up in my spam folder are random, and none of them are from anyone I would consider a super heavy commentor. I believe your suspicion that “Charleton Heston” reported you may be correct. I think I know the bozo you’re thinking of and I wouldn’t put it past them to try and silence you.
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“Charlton Heston” — Ha! Yeah, that’s the guy I suspect of trying to shut me up…or shut me down.
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I just checked and one comment from last week of yours was in my spam folder. Makes no sense.
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I don’t get it. Hopefully my reach out to Akismet will help fix the problem.
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Seriously? You comment too fast? Bologne! I’m on commenting because it’s my job and what I do. LOL! I haven’t heard that my comments end up in the abyss… At least, not that I know of. Hmm?
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I haven’t found any comments from you in my spam folder. 👏
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Yay! I’m special. Hahahaa!!!! 🤣
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