Spam filters hate my name
More than once now I’ve had trouble posting comments on blogs. What usually happens is a spam filter catches my comment and tells me that it needs to be moderated and/or that I’m blacklisted.
I was rather perturbed the first time I saw that I was blacklisted from a site I had never posted on! When it happened again, I got suspicious. After much agonizing and some searching the web I found the reason why. You see, when filling out comments you’re asked for your URL and mine is my name, just put together. Now, when you put my name together you get “arapehlivanian” which isn’t such a big deal right? Well, look closely, right there, near the beginning, do you see it? Here, let me help you, “arapehlivanian.” Now do you see it? Well, suffice it to say I’m not at all happy with this because at least one or two times out of ten my comments get blocked.
Sometimes, if I care enough about the comment that I want to post, I end up writing the owner of the blog so that I can embarrassingly plead my case and get the word “rape” off of their spam list.
*sigh* why me?
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6 Comments
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January 5th, 2006 at 7:05 am
That sucks man, but it’s bloody hilarious!
Does Akismet block your comments?
January 5th, 2006 at 9:13 am
I haven’t had the opportunity to play with Akismet yet so I don’t know. Hopefully not. Though, if it is, maybe I could talk to Matt and get that fixed up. At least then a bunch of sites using it would let me through.
January 10th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
That seems really odd that it would single you out preemtively. It shows some cultural bias on the part of the people writing the filtering system. Not all of us have typical ”Joe Schmoe” type names. Okay, so maybe I do. ;)
January 11th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
It is really odd! WordPress 2.0 sends your posts immediately to moderation. I have Akismet installed and it’s wonderful so far - it isn’t what’s blocking you on my site, Ara. It’s terribly frustrating for you I’m sure, and for what it’s worth, I’m happy you participate on my site so much and it makes me mad that you keep getting picked on like that. And, sometimes if I’m traveling or doing intensive trainings, I can’t get to moderate comments for a day or two, which makes it even worse :(
I wonder what the heck is going on. You post with a gmail account, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I can’t see what in your name would be being picked up as problematic either.
If you get any ideas, let me know, Ara. In the meantime, I hope this won’t put you off of posting, your comments mean a lot to me!
January 12th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Nathan: I don’t know if it’s necessarily that my name isn’t Jon Doe. Although that would be surprising.
Molly: The only thing I’ve been able to find so far is that ”rape” thing. I stumbled upon that phenomenon in someone’s post about how they were having similar trouble and someone suggested that it could be because her name had the word ”ass” in it. Otherwise, no clue.
I did finally get in touch with Matt (for Akismet) and was simply told that the only way to counteract Akismet’s behaviour is to have enough false positives reported. So, people, help me out and report that I’m not a bad guy! :-)
February 21st, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Terrific Blog you have. Peace Out.
TreeFrog