Wednesday, October 19, 2005
CAPTCHA Trouble
This is a test of the emergency blogcast system. This is only a test. In the event of a real emergency you would not be able to post to your blog.
Oh wait, it seems we are in a splog emergency, maybe this is not a test. Some people aren't able to post to their blogs. There seems to be trouble with Blogger's new splog solution. Splogger, oops, I mean Blogger, decided that for blogs it thinks are sploggy it will pop up a CAPTCHA (Word Verification) before allowing the blog owner to post. Now maybe that isn't such a bad idea if you can live with the fact that CAPTCHAs are not accessible to the visually impaired, but there seems to be a bug.
A number of people have posted in SplogFighter's comments that even once they have entered the correct word they still can't post to their blog. Some of those blogs look awful spammy to me, but the CAPTCHAs should work.
Anyway, didn't Blogger say yesterday that CAPTCHAs were not the answer?
I can think of a few ways blogs can be used that would look quite spammy. Some use a separate blog as a place to dump interesting links rather than their main blog. Some entire blogs are mostly links and a couple comments about them. That can look pretty spammy especially if you link to the same sites over and over. In that case your blog may look spammy to whatever method they are using to detect spam, including human review. Hopefully any humans Blogger has in the review process are at least as experienced identifying splogs as us antispammers, but who knows.
My suggestion is to do something to make your blog stand out from the splogs. Take a look at some splogs and you will notice what characteristics your blog shares with them. Perhaps like mine, you have a sidebar full of junk linking to a small number of sites. It could also be the overloading of AdSense. If you have more ads than content you probably are running a splog, or at least it looks like you are.
Well, since my blog has many spammy characteristics, lets see if I can post this without seeing a CAPTCHA.
Update: I was lucky, no CAPTCHA.
Update 2: Blogger has updated the post announcing this new feature admitting there is trouble for some users. They plan to have a fix shortly.
Update 3: It appears it is fixed now.
Oh wait, it seems we are in a splog emergency, maybe this is not a test. Some people aren't able to post to their blogs. There seems to be trouble with Blogger's new splog solution. Splogger, oops, I mean Blogger, decided that for blogs it thinks are sploggy it will pop up a CAPTCHA (Word Verification) before allowing the blog owner to post. Now maybe that isn't such a bad idea if you can live with the fact that CAPTCHAs are not accessible to the visually impaired, but there seems to be a bug.
A number of people have posted in SplogFighter's comments that even once they have entered the correct word they still can't post to their blog. Some of those blogs look awful spammy to me, but the CAPTCHAs should work.
Anyway, didn't Blogger say yesterday that CAPTCHAs were not the answer?
I can think of a few ways blogs can be used that would look quite spammy. Some use a separate blog as a place to dump interesting links rather than their main blog. Some entire blogs are mostly links and a couple comments about them. That can look pretty spammy especially if you link to the same sites over and over. In that case your blog may look spammy to whatever method they are using to detect spam, including human review. Hopefully any humans Blogger has in the review process are at least as experienced identifying splogs as us antispammers, but who knows.
My suggestion is to do something to make your blog stand out from the splogs. Take a look at some splogs and you will notice what characteristics your blog shares with them. Perhaps like mine, you have a sidebar full of junk linking to a small number of sites. It could also be the overloading of AdSense. If you have more ads than content you probably are running a splog, or at least it looks like you are.
Well, since my blog has many spammy characteristics, lets see if I can post this without seeing a CAPTCHA.
Update: I was lucky, no CAPTCHA.
Update 2: Blogger has updated the post announcing this new feature admitting there is trouble for some users. They plan to have a fix shortly.
Update 3: It appears it is fixed now.
Comments:
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Replying to the question you asked me over in one of the other Blogs, they didn't actually delete any of my blogs fortunately. I self-deleted the one due to the title and recreated it, but still have the bug coming up. And I'm glad to see that Blogger realizes there's a problem now and are trying to fix it.
Edit
Edit
Nothing is fixed. I have not been able to post anything for 48 hours now.
Do you have any idea what this means:
006 Please contact Blogger Support.blog/46/41/4/lacowboy/index.html
I have been getting this for two days when I try to post.
Edit
Do you have any idea what this means:
006 Please contact Blogger Support.blog/46/41/4/lacowboy/index.html
I have been getting this for two days when I try to post.
Edit
Several people with the problem have reported it fixed and Blogger thinks it is fixed so maybe you have a different problem.
They appear to have first added the CAPTCHA on the morning of the 19th which means if you haven't been able to post for 48 hours it must be some other problem.
Either way, since you still have the problem I think you are going to have to contact them.
Edit
They appear to have first added the CAPTCHA on the morning of the 19th which means if you haven't been able to post for 48 hours it must be some other problem.
Either way, since you still have the problem I think you are going to have to contact them.
Edit
There is no way to contact them I have tried for over 48 hours now.
And they are lying - as usual - about having 'fixed' the problem.
Since no one at GOOGLE will admit or even tell us to what is going on, I have had to talk to other bloggers to find out why I have not been able to post for two days.
Supposedly, blogs with few posts - and I have 300 in one year - but with a lot of links have been shut down without any prior warning by Google. Even Microsoft at its worst has never screwed over its customers this badly.
Now as I write a blog about the media - most of my posts link to the articles I am write about, hence I have a lot of links. But Goggle has now decided to censor my views and no longer allows me to post.
All I get is this:
006 Please contact Blogger Support.blog/46/41/4/lacowboy/index.html
Except - there is no way to contact anyone at blogger support...
--
Brady Westwater
Edit
And they are lying - as usual - about having 'fixed' the problem.
Since no one at GOOGLE will admit or even tell us to what is going on, I have had to talk to other bloggers to find out why I have not been able to post for two days.
Supposedly, blogs with few posts - and I have 300 in one year - but with a lot of links have been shut down without any prior warning by Google. Even Microsoft at its worst has never screwed over its customers this badly.
Now as I write a blog about the media - most of my posts link to the articles I am write about, hence I have a lot of links. But Goggle has now decided to censor my views and no longer allows me to post.
All I get is this:
006 Please contact Blogger Support.blog/46/41/4/lacowboy/index.html
Except - there is no way to contact anyone at blogger support...
--
Brady Westwater
Edit
brady westwater,
Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies? Maybe logging out of Blogger and logging in again will help?
Ugg... I didn't like captchas before and this whole mess isn't helping.
Edit
Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies? Maybe logging out of Blogger and logging in again will help?
Ugg... I didn't like captchas before and this whole mess isn't helping.
Edit
If your complaints to blogger support keep blaming this on the CAPTCHA they probably have thousands of those complaints to go through that are all fixed now. They likely will overlook yours assuming it was fixed also.
Your problem started before the CAPTCHA problem and no one else with the CAPTCHA problem has mentioned that error.
Blogger is not censoring you. This is just a bug. Blogger support is not always fast to respond. They are a free service and get tons of support requests daily. Especially in a period where a major bug is affecting lots of people your problem might not get noticed right away.
Clearing your cache is a good thing to try. If something has gone wrong with the cached files on your computer Blogger can't fix it until those are cleared out.
Microsoft has done far worst to its customers. Missing a blog for a few days is much less critical than missing your email which they too frequently have trouble with at Hotmail.
Try contacting them again but don't be a jerk and don't mention the CAPTCHA problems. Just tell them you can't post to your blog and give them the error.
And stop spamming your complaint all over the place. You have already hit my blog twice with nearly identical "Since no one at GOOGLE will admit..." comments.
Edit
Your problem started before the CAPTCHA problem and no one else with the CAPTCHA problem has mentioned that error.
Blogger is not censoring you. This is just a bug. Blogger support is not always fast to respond. They are a free service and get tons of support requests daily. Especially in a period where a major bug is affecting lots of people your problem might not get noticed right away.
Clearing your cache is a good thing to try. If something has gone wrong with the cached files on your computer Blogger can't fix it until those are cleared out.
Microsoft has done far worst to its customers. Missing a blog for a few days is much less critical than missing your email which they too frequently have trouble with at Hotmail.
Try contacting them again but don't be a jerk and don't mention the CAPTCHA problems. Just tell them you can't post to your blog and give them the error.
And stop spamming your complaint all over the place. You have already hit my blog twice with nearly identical "Since no one at GOOGLE will admit..." comments.
Edit
The CAPTCHA program is nonsense. Google has once again lied. It is not fixed, it is worse.
Once again we have Google doing harm. Completely contrary to their stated mantra. Should we be surprised? No, they won't even recognize legitimate countries, i.e. Taiwan, why should they care about us? They are rich, they don't need to customer friendly anymore. Sounds like Microsoft.
The only good thing about this, is that all the sheeple who slavish follow and lavish praise -- like sychophants -- upon Google will have to re-evaluate their 'hero worship'.
Edit
Once again we have Google doing harm. Completely contrary to their stated mantra. Should we be surprised? No, they won't even recognize legitimate countries, i.e. Taiwan, why should they care about us? They are rich, they don't need to customer friendly anymore. Sounds like Microsoft.
The only good thing about this, is that all the sheeple who slavish follow and lavish praise -- like sychophants -- upon Google will have to re-evaluate their 'hero worship'.
Edit
Mark's problem is that he is not using the Blogger interface to post to his blog, he uses BlogJet. He complains that it doesn't work because they want him to solve a CAPTCHA. Duh, how do you think spammers post to their splogs, they use software.
Then he complains Blogger say it only affects comments or new blogs. That used to be where CAPTCHAs were used, but not anymore. Pay attention.
And finally he whines about China and Taiwan. That is a major issue but has nothing at all to do with CAPTCHAs.
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Then he complains Blogger say it only affects comments or new blogs. That used to be where CAPTCHAs were used, but not anymore. Pay attention.
And finally he whines about China and Taiwan. That is a major issue but has nothing at all to do with CAPTCHAs.
Edit
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