Mystery in the Blogs

Bloggers is doing strange things in my blog. I’ve used this platform since 2012 and recently I noticed they’ve changed the font size on older posts, presumably to save bandwidth. They also dumped a bunch of short comments into my spam folder. I noticed this because in the past I’ve always kept just ten comments in that folder (Repeat offenders I want to remember) and when I’d notice an eleventh I’d know I accidentally sent a good comment there that was meant to go through to public viewing. Last week when I opened my dashboard I had over a hundred comments in the Spam folder and I was almost afraid to open it and see what had grown overnight. 

For them to by-pass the normal path of first going into the 'Waiting Moderation' file for me to manually decide their fate had never happened before so I expected Bloggers had added a new feature, an auto-bot and it threw a bunch of x-rated comments in that file or the guy who plagued older bloggers with his  “I hate Baby Boomers” comments got out of internet jail and was back sending his nasty-ass crap. Or maybe the woman from India who wants to improve our sex lives with a special herb to help our mates grow their penis sizes was hoping one day I'll accidentally send her ads through for public viewing. Finally, I opened the folder and found mostly my own comments like, “LOL” or “So true”----stuff like that and all of it over a year old. (A bandwidth pruning.) So I deleted them and thought that would be the end of it. It wasn’t. 

A week later a few more old and short comments showed up in my Spam folder plus a longer one from an “administrator”(or someone posing as one) written two days earlier who commented that my title didn’t match the content in a particular post. How it got into the Spam folder without being in the 'Waiting Moderation' folder would be a mystery if not for the fact that long ago and faraway I used to be an administrator on a website with a message board, chat room and blog community and I had the power to do all kinds of things on the backside of that place. One of my jobs was pruning older threads when I wasn’t deleting inappropriate topics or monitoring fights between members in case one or both stepped over the line and I needed to put them in internet jail for a couple of days to cool down. I just never thought a place like Bloggers---as big as they must be---would have humans pruning or moderators. Even back when I was doing that kind of work, pruning could be done automatically but I talked my boss into letting me do it in my spare time because mass pruning would have dumped too many still useful-to-our-members topics.

I’ve never had a knack for naming my posts or anything creative for that matter. My husband could. He named most of the art pieces I did for college art shows and all the photographs we entered in contests way back when I stalked little kids with my camera and he stalked wildlife with his. He even named my sister-in-law’s hair salon. Knowing how often editors change titles of articles and books it never bothered me much that I don’t have the skill to name my posts. But if my posts start getting pruned for not having titles that match the content, then I’m going to have learn at the ripe old age of dirt.

Of course there’s the very real possibility that I moved that "Admin" comment to the Spam folder and I’m having short term memory problems and don't have the brain cells to remember dong it and that a real human isn’t messing with me. 

I tried clicking on that commentor’s profile but it took me to a message that read, “The Blogger profile you requested cannot be displayed.” People do that when they have an invitation-only blog. It's like knocking on the door of an old speak-easy. Someone would open a little window in the door and ask you who sent you before admitting you in. I doubt real administrator for Bloggers would have a profile like that. It’s a mystery.

It's also a mystery to ponder why if I did move his/her comment to the Spam folder why would I have done that. I don't make a practice out of not publishing comments that are critical of something I've written. (Case in point, read the comments on the wedding dress post where I was chastised for body shaming the bride.) In fact when I write about certain topics I'm prepared for a little push back. Conflict can is good from time to time. It has the potential to make us grow if all parties involved stays on point and don't disintegrate into name calling which on the website mentioned up above was the tipping point for time outs in internet jail. (Internet jail, if you haven't figured it out by now, is just using a person's IP number to lock them out from getting on a website for set length of time. They can still communicate with the administrators but protesting your time out, just gets you a longer one.)

If I had published the comment I would have replied that sometimes I purposely come up with titles that don't match the content like if the topic contains sexual, money or religious matters. Long time bloggers know better than to put certain words in the title line or first paragraphs because the internet crawlers are looking there for the spammers to dump their stuff in the comment sections. That was not the case with that particular post title and content but I'm just sayin' it's a better excuse than saying I screwed up. ©

 

Added this morning: Is anyone else getting notices from Mailchimp wanting you to buy "additional credits?" I've been on their free plan to notify subscribers but this morning none are getting the notices. I have no clue what "additional credits" are. When I go to their website directly there is no mention of 'credits'.

Widows and Little Girls with Issues

I wish I had the courage to be as open about my political leanings, thoughts on current events and opinions on social issues in my blog as Ronni is over at Time Goes By. She’s my new blogging hero. But given her long career as a TV producer for shows on 20/20, PBS, CBS and the Barbara Walters Specials I suspect she’s been seasoned well to take more heat than chicken me has ever taken for speaking up in public---if, in fact, she does get nasty, defamatory or hateful emails from people who disagree with the opinions she blogs. Her comment section is not moderated and I don’t see any signs of her getting disrespectful feedback so maybe it doesn’t happen? I find that fascinating. I don’t even see occasional spam in her comments which my moderator function catches from time to time. I mostly use the moderator function, though, so I don’t miss a comment because I feel if someone takes the time to leave one I want to acknowledge it.

Part of the problem with me being more open on certain topics is I’ve learned from early childhood not to talk about religion and politics in public because there were very real repercussions. For example, I had a friend in early grade school tell me on the playground that she couldn’t play with me anymore because I didn’t go to her church. I’d been to her house the day before and her mother had asked The Church question that I would hear often in my life. Have I mentioned that I live in an area once proudly labeled the City of Churches? I had a guy in high school tell me---after meeting his parents---that he couldn’t date me anymore because I didn’t go to the right church. Growing up and well into my 20s, “What church do you go to?” was the second question most people asked. Heck, even today it comes up often when I meet someone new. Early on I learned to lie and name one of the four “approved” churches in my neighborhood. I don’t lie anymore when answering that question but I’m very skilled at giving non-committal answers to the you-should-try-my-church comments that follow. During the Feminist Movement in the ‘60s (my awakening into the world of politics) the people I worked with were so anti-anything that didn’t involve women being subservient that I kept my involvement in the movement top secret. I remember once sitting in the coffee room and listening to a conversation and thinking, “God, these people think people who think like I do have horns growing out of our heads!”

Another part of the problem with me getting more open about the my thoughts on current events and politics here is the title and original purpose of my blog. It started out as a way to deal with my newly minted widowhood and it has evolved from there to a blog about one woman’s search for something elusive---new friends and contentment. I just don’t know how I can make politics and current events fit into my unwritten mission statement for The Misadventures of Widowhood but I somehow think they are connected. I have spent my entire life not being totally honest and open when I meet new people and that is standing in the way of forming anything beyond surface friendships. I'm tired of pretending! How’s that for a new revelation? They think I’m a nice, sweet and agreeable pin cushion and inside I feel like a phony who wants to scream, “I might not go to the right church but I still have good values and a code of ethics that has been intrinsic in every civilized society that has ever walked on earth!” I’d even settle for being able to say to someone face-to-face, “I don’t agree with you because….” I can do it on-line and with four people in my life, but that’s all. The little girl inside is still afraid if I'm honest about my liberal politics and Humanist-as-opposed-religious leanings people will say, “I can’t play with you anymore.”

This isn’t my first blog. I have/had seven others that cover different stages of my life. I could start another where I introduce the “me” that is striving to be more like Ronni at Time Goes By but it’s such a hard decision. My five blogs that are still available on-line plus my Yahoo articles have a combined view count of over 450,000. I think I’m afraid that a new blog would rack up a 50 or so before drying up. Okay, confession time. I’m addicted to my view counter. It’s like validation but the 64 million dollar question is: “What does it validate?” Maybe that a dyslexia, left-handed little girl who had trouble learning how to read, spell, tie her shoes and tell time didn’t deserve the “stupid” label she heard as a little girl? Or maybe that I am worth playing with out in the big scary world? I’m not sure which, but if there is a moral to this post it would be to be careful what you say to kids because they carry labels with them forever. Do you have a label buried deep inside of you? ©