So yesterday, someone who had been attempting to post a comment to a blog post via the "Blogger" platform messaged me to express frustration because she hadn't been able to. I promised to post the material manually, then got to wondering about something.
So I went to the blog's dashboard, opened "Comments," looked in the "Awaiting Moderation" file --- and found more than a year's worth. Yikes.
Here's what happened: There are hundreds of posts in this blog, which will celebrate its 14th birthday this month. Originally, I allowed comments to be made directly to posts. Then several years ago, spam got to be a problem when the Blogger spam filter failed to work effectively. The spam had nothing to do with the posts to which they became affixed and generally were attempts to steer readers elsewhere --- to places I wouldn't go myself, let alone allow readers to.
So I enabled "moderation." As the system worked then, each time a comment was posted, Blogger sent me an e-mail, I approved the comment and it was published or, if it was spam, I deleted it.
Then, more than a year ago, Blogger in its wisdom seems to have discontinued the notification e-mails and I obviously wasn't paying attention. Comments kept appearing on Facebook links to blog posts, which apparently kept me occupied, while comments via Blogger just sat there.
I spent maybe an hour yesterday posting comments (and deleting the spam). My apologies to all who have posted comments via Blogger then been frustrated when they didn't appear. I'll monitor the moderation file daily now and am thinking about dropping that step entirely and returning to the original plan.
There really isn't a comments policy here. Anyone is welcome to have his or her say so long as it's expressed in a civil manner. Corrections, opinions and additional information welcomed. And I'll do a better job of keeping up.
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