THE SHORT SKINNY:
Shortly after posting "Lisa Tolliver On Air and Online - Blogger's new autosave feature: brilliant idea, but don't believe the hype (yet)," my free Blogger blog was locked (up). Is this a coincidence or evidence of a clampdown on Blogger critics and/or a way to weed out free (as opposed to paid, premium) Blogger accounts? You be the judge.
TIMELINE:
- May 30: I posted "Blogger's new autosave feature: brilliant idea, but don't believe the hype (yet)," and did not login to Blogger again until June 3.
- June 3: I discovered this blog was locked, requested a review and saved this draft.
- June 4: The blog remained locked all morning through the late afternoon. I didn't check it again after dinner.
- June 5: It's 7:40 AM and the now unlocked blog has been posted and pinged.
THE GORY DETAILS:
Logging into Blogger on June 3, with my Gmail username and password, yielded the following message:
WARNING
Clicking here revealed:This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts.
Save your post as a draft or click here for more about what's going on and how to get your blog unlocked.
THIS BLOGGER'S OPINION:Your blog is locked
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.
You won't be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review. We'll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than a business day.
If we don't hear from you, though, we will remove your blog from Blog*Spot within 10 days.
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.
The logic of Blogger's approach seems as fuzzy as automated spam detection. The company acknowledges: "Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy," the fact that if I am "an actual person reading this, [my] blog is probably not a spam blog," and "sincerely apologize[s] for this false positive." Yet, Blogger warns: "If we don't hear from you, though, we will remove your blog from Blog*Spot within 10 days."
Is it just me, or do others perceive as inefficient and user-unfriendly Blogger's plan to remove locked blogs from Blog*Spot with such short notice? Blogger has acknowledged its faulty selection process, yet nonetheless issued a 10-day deadline when it could easily be easily missed; June is peak season for final exams, proms, graduations, summer vacations, weddings and honeymoons.
I hope all bloggers who discover, after the deadline, that their locked, false-positive, non-spam blogs were removed will achieve prompt reinstatement. However, I don't want to be one of them.
MY SELF-HELP STEPS:
As I've already learned, God helps bloggers and podcasters who help themselves. So I have (helped myself). I clicked here to learn more about what's going on, and then filled in the form to get my blog reviewed, and ultimately, unlocked.
To ensure I'd done all that I should, I clicked here again. Here's Blogger's response:
Since Lisa Tolliver On Air and Online is no spam blog, it should be unlocked on Monday. At least, according to this assurance: "We'll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than a business day. " But other locked posters (such as these) reveal Blogger is suffering from symptoms of administrative constipation.Your blog is locked
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.
We received your unlock request on June 3, 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.
Spam and spammers are bad. Kudos to Blogger for working to eliminate them. But why, I wonder, did they just get around to locking my non-spam blog months after declaring war on spam? And why, I also wonder, did Blogger lock up Lisa Tolliver On Air and Online right after I posted "Blogger's new autosave feature: brilliant idea, but don't believe the hype (yet)"?
MORE OPINION:
I don't have the answers, but I do know this:
- If Blogger (owned by Google) locked Lisa Tolliver On Air and Online in a conspiracy to clamp down on critics, then the contents of this post won't speed the unlocking process. [For the record, I don't really think a conspiracy theory fits here.]
and
- The longer the blog remains locked, the longer "Blogger's new autosave feature: brilliant idea, but don't believe the hype (yet)" will remain my most prominent post."
COINCIDENCE OR CONSPIRACY?
My judgment: coincidence. Blogger's staff is certainly conspiring to can spam. However, I believe the timing of the clampdown that locked up Lisa Tolliver On Air and Online shortly after my Blogger-critical post was coincidental. What do you think?
