The Real Blogger Status

We're starting to see regular evidence of dissatisfaction, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about Google+ based Blogger commenting. We've known about some undesirable features of Google+ commenting , for a while now. No ability to moderate comments, made against your blog, before they are published. No ability to moderate comments, from the dashboard. No controls for moderation, or for notification, of comments. No ability to view all comments, made against your blog. No ability to block all undesirable comments, made by people who don't like your blog. These are just a few details, which directly affect commenting.

Blogger blog owners, who are accustomed to recovering deleted files on a personal computer, will find Blogger Comments to lack useful protection. If you accidentally delete a file on your personal computer, no worry - just look in the Trash Can, find the file in question, and recover the file. Just do this before you empty the Trash Can. Comments, published on our blogs, cannot be recovered once deleted. I deleted a comment - but now realise that I acted in haste. How do I recover the comment that I deleted? To this person, there is no useful answer.

One recently identified cause of deleted Blogger blogs appears to involve brute force hacking against our Blogger / Google accounts. We've known, for some time, about blog owners receiving alerts about "suspicious" / "unusual" account activity. The alerts frequently involve locked or deleted Blogger / Google accounts - and generally include the owner having to change their password, solve a CAPTCHA, and / or provide their phone number (mobile or home phone) to login. Later, people started reporting that their blogs were being deleted - possibly as a result of having to change their password, solve a CAPTCHA, and / or provide their phone number.

Not every blog owner understands the limited ability to moderate comments - and to correct a moderation decision, previously made in mistake. We see occasional evidence of confusion in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I deleted a comment by mistake. How do I get the deleted comment back? and I marked a comment as "Not Spam" - but now it's not in "Awaiting moderation"! The ability to move comments, in the moderation queues, is limited - and it's not symmetrical.

One evidence of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , comes from blog owners who are moderating comments, to their blogs, using comment moderation email. I am constantly assailed by spam comments, being published to my blog, delivered to my Inbox! Is there anything I can do, about the spam, except just keep deleting? Comment moderation, using email, offers several choices for action - but only one action will have any actual effect upon the spam.

One constant activity in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken involves blog owners whose blogs were deleted - either righteously or spuriously - as part of the ongoing battle against spam , in Blogger blogs. Generally, the problem comes directly from the blog content . Sometimes, the problem is more subtle. When I tried to login to Blogger, I got a screen that said my account needed to be verified, due to "unusual activity on my account". Having verified my account, I see that my blogs have been deleted. This is part of one of the more intriguing episodes, in the never ending fight against hacking and spam , in Blogger.

We have seen this question, periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? When will Blogger provide me with the option to block an abusive commenter, from my blog? This is a request that simply cannot be fulfilled. The issue of blocking individual commenters won't be solved by a new Blogger feature. It's technically impossible. It's contrary to Blogger policy.

Periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see a naive query. How do I report a person who posts nasty things, in comments, on my blog? And the unfortunate response here is You can't report unwanted comments. There is no comment censoring agency. Blogger considers comments to be protected as freedom of speech. Outside of moderation for spam - which is a collaborative activity - comments are up to you, the blog owner, to treat as you please.

Some blog owners are learning about the reality of comment moderation - or lack of moderation - when comment feeds are being published. Today, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , we see a blog owner getting bad news. I deleted a comment, but in the 'Recent Comments' gadget, it's still there! Help me!! This blog owner is about to learn about the "Recent Comments" gadget, in an unpleasant way.

We've had the new comment moderation system for since 2010 . Some people are just a bit confused by the filter training process . We see signs of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I've been deleting the spam, but it keeps coming. How do I get the spam filtered? You get the spam filtered by persistently moderating, and training, the spam filters. That's the short answer.

Until late May 2011, we would see various odd and mysterious problem reports, about posting comments, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I posted a comment, but now I can't delete it. It's labeled as "Anonymous" - even though I used my Google account! and I tried to publish my comment, but the Publish button doesn't do anything. Both complaints were representative of the many different problem reports seen.

Besides the previously reported problem of blog owners unable to login to Blogger using the "www.blogspot.com" redirection , we're seeing a flood of reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from people who can't login using the "Sign In" link in the navbar - or who can't login to moderate comments, to post comments, or to Follow a blog. I cannot log in to Blogger, at all. After I try to log in, the screen just tells me to log in again. or I clicked Sign In, filled out my account name and password, hit enter, and it just asked me again for my account name and password. Some folks try using a different browser. Depending upon their specific basic problems, a different browser may work - for a while.

Recently, a number of blog owners have found themselves with deleted or locked blogs, and mysterious messages mentioning "Unusual activity on your account". When they try to surf their blogs, they see The blog you were looking for was not found. If you are the owner of this blog, please sign in . Upon signing in, they see their dashboard, and no mention of the missing blogs. Possibly they see the advice You are not an author on any blogs yet, create one now to start posting! In other cases, a blog owner may sign in, and see another previously experienced frustration Blog is not locked Your blog is not locked and does not need a review. If you are having problems accessing your blog or if you received an email saying that it was locked, please leave a message in the Help Group and we will investigate the issue. After a brief diagnostic session, Blogger has issued a terse advice We've identified a bug this morning which may temporarily delay the spam restoration proce...

The new Blogger commenting system has been out for several weeks now , and as some blog owners are becoming accustomed to it, it appears that others are occasionally confused. We see recent reports in BHF: Something Is Broken I am moderating comments, yet I find some comments being published without my input. and I deleted the comments, and now I can't get them back! and All of the comments to my blog are going straight to Spam. These reports may be from folks who are not observing what queue they are looking at, or what the buttons do, in the Comments wizard.

Almost daily, some optimistic blogger asks in BHF: How Do I? the question How do I report unwanted comments? as if Blogger has a classification in the Report Abuse form for spam comments. Unfortunately, they do not. There are 4 levels of authentication, permitted at the option of the blog owner. Anyone / Anonymous. Registered Users / OpenID. Users with Google accounts. Blog members. With options #1 and #2, Google has no control at all. If the blog owner chooses to allow comments to be published by anybody, or by anybody externally authenticated, Blogger commenting has no choice but to accept the comment being published. With option #3, and since a Blogger account has no intrinsic value comparable to a FaceBook or Twitter account , were Blogger to block or delete any Blogger account for attempted spam comment publication, it would be a trivial effort for a spammer to switch to another Blogger account. The more active and persistent spammers use many different identities, a...

Every week, we see the anguish How do I get user xxxxx blocked from commenting on my blog? because many people enjoy FaceBook and Twitter, where there is no spam, and no unwanted comments. They think that Blogger comments should be controlled , as social networking like FaceBook and Twitter are controlled. With FaceBook, each person controls their own Wall, and their own neighbourhood. With Twitter, each person decides exactly who they wish to Follow, and sees tweets from only those folks that they follow. Neither FaceBook or Twitter encourages you to open up your neighbourhood to the world; both allow you to establish each contact, one by one, at your discretion. With Blogger commenting, you are encouraged to allow anybody - or anybody with a required level of authentication - to comment on your blog. This encourages freedom of speech, and extends your neighbourhood far beyond the walls that you setup with FaceBook and Twitter. Some commenters, and other readers of your blogs...

Blogger supports anonymity - both in our ability to maintain and to own a blog anonymously, and our ability to comment on blogs anonymously. But this anonymity comes with a price. I need to contact the owner of "xxxxxxx.blogspot.com", but there is no contact information and the blog is private. or How do I find out who left an anonymous comment on my blog? or I can't access my blog - I forgot the password and the email address doesn't exist any more. or I deleted my account, and they won't give it back to me! All of these are queries by bloggers who do not understand the price of anonymity.

If you publish a blog, and allow comments, you're going to occasionally get comments that you don't appreciate, on your blog. Some comments will be blatantly offensive, and contain links to hacking activity, porn, and / or spam. I won't provide an example here - but some, that I've seen recently, have been pretty nasty. If you're going to keep your blog suitable to the general public, you're going to have to moderate comments, either before or after publishing .

One of the reasons why we identify ourselves, when we post comments on somebody else's blog, is so we can use our own blogs to authenticate or strengthen our comments. A second may be to generate relevant links to our blogs , as part of making our own blogs part of the blogosphere. A third, and possibly overlooked, reason would be to have the option to remove a comment, in the future. Should we wish to post without authenticating, ie anonymously, the third option isn't available. A comment posted anonymously might be posted by anybody, not just us. Anonymously posted comments, or comments posted using OpenID, can only be deleted by the blog owner. And how many blog owners will be anxious to remove any comment posted anonymously, as requested by any one blogger? I posted that comment, can you remove it for me? Take my word for it, I posted it! Yeah right. If you want the option of changing your mind, post under an authenticated identity . And be consistent - always u...

With a blog that uses a Layouts template, the key blog maintenance wizards, like "Create Post". "Edit HTML". "Edit Post". "Page Elements". "Pick New Template". and others are all related. The blog template contains meta code that makes some of these wizards work. If we mess up the template, some of these wizards may not work anymore. Then, we say simply that we have a "corrupted template" . What now? Can we recover from a "corrupted template"?