The Spam Folder

When a moderated comment on this blog shows up on my dashboard there are three buttons I can click on: Publish, Delete and Spam. I’m always scared I’m going to delete something by mistake because those buttons are close together and you can’t undo that action. The comments that get moved over to the spam folder/page can be undone by opening up that page, selecting a comment and clicking on its ‘Not Spam’ button. A couple of times when my brain went out to lunch without me I accidentally missed the mark and clicked where I didn’t mean to click. When it happened I posted an acknowledgment, fessing up to deleting someone’s words and tried to sum up what was said. “Big Deal! You owned up to your mistake." Who said that in my head? Mom, Dad or the Good Fairy in the blue dress?

 

When I look through my spam folder, once in a great while I’ll find something that should have been published. It only happens to readers who post anonymously. Some bloggers don’t allow anonymous comments on their blogs because it cuts way down on the advertisements and the pure junk that comes along. (I’ve learned over time that using ‘sex’ in a title line can get me spam ads for porn, penis pumps and pills for God knows what.) But I still allow anonymous comments because I’ve cyber-met some of my favorite followers that way. I, do, however really appreciate it when people leaving anonymous comments include their first names with their words. Sorting out which anonymous comments should get published and which are fake can get tricky at times and a name helps. My rule of thumb is this: It must be apparent that someone has actually read the post they’ve left the comment on and they haven’t included an email address or a link to a place that’s selling something.

An August post I wrote titled, Love Letters and Those that Aren’t brought in an unusually high number of questionable comments---thirteen to be exact---and I still can’t figure out why. Most didn’t pass my rule of thumb test but a few still have me scratching my head. Here’s a sample: 

“What you said makes a lot of sense. But think about this. Suppose you typed a catchier title? I am not saying your content is not solid but what if you added a headline that makes people desire more? I mean “Love Letters and Those that Aren’t” is kind of boring. You might want to glance at Yahoo’s front page and watch how they create news titles to grab people to click. You might add a video or a related picture of two to get people interested about everything you’ve written. It might make your posts a little livelier.” 

I can’t tell you how long I studied that anonymous comment trying to decide if it was sincere or if Yahoo News actually sends out bots to leave comments like that to drive up their click counter. It also crossed my mind that there was hidden coding in with the words that would blow up my blog if I published the comment. There was a coding icon in it that I’d never seen before, a black square with a question mark in the center. If you have a blog and you have gotten a similar comment involving Yahoo or if you know what that black square is all about, please let me know! Curiosity might not kill me like it did the mythical cat, but I don’t like unsolved mysteries.

I do get my fair share of comments telling me how to improve my blog. My favorite was posted on the above ‘Letters’ blog entry and it said, “You have too much text and not enough pictures.” Short insults apparently are the best. If I had published that one I would have been tempted to do tit-for-tat and reply: “I’m not writing a blog for preschoolers” although a part of me says it’s a fair criticism. Another comment on the same blog entry said, “Can you tell us more about this? I want more details.” That’s it, not another word. Anyone who has read that post knows it wasn’t a how-to article on writing love letters. It was written memoir style and I’d already beat the details to death. I finally decided the commenter didn’t pass the rule of thumb rule but for what purpose would someone leave a comment like that? Another head scratcher. Ohmygod, maybe I should check my spam folder for lice. Every time I go there I’m scratching my head!

All this over sharing of my spam is to illustrate how, on rare occasions, a legitimate comment that comes from an anonymous poster gets accidentally sent off to Spam Land. It happens when I've marked one too many boxes on down the line then clicked on the ‘Spam’ button and off they went in bulk. Gone until I’m bored enough to read my spam folder in the middle of the night. Sorry, Leze, who splits her time between England and New York, I just found your comment about expensive bras and bathing suits, left on my post about getting a bra fitting. But on the good side, it gave me a topic to write about and I thank you for that and hopefully for understanding how your comment erroneously ended up in Spam Land. ©

Blogging from Widowhood Lane

Last week my view counter ticked up to and over 150,000. Not bad for three years and I really wanted to do some sort of commemorative post thanking people who return to read from time to time. I guess I didn’t put it high enough on my priority list to follow through. Or maybe I held back from doing so because of something I wrote at the 100,000 mark. Along with thanking frequent readers, I bemoaning the fact that I get so few comments and I was rewarded with a snippy comment suggesting that I must be a comment whore. I replied back was that if I was writing just for the comments I would have quit a long time ago. To date, I’ve chalked up 1,494 comments. Does that really sound like I’m writing just for the feedback? I rest my case. I am not a comment whore even though I treasure each and every one I get. Thanks for asking, Snippy Lady. 

Why do bloggers blog? I read somewhere the blogging is dying out in favor of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. I get that. I get that not everyone loves to write and at all those social media sources, short throw-away posts and comments are the accepted norm. I have accounts at all those places but I read far more than I post. Saying things in 120 characters is too darn hard for me at Twitter. Facebook I use mostly to keep up on what is going in Don’s and my family. Pinterest feeds right into the bulletin boards I was crazy about creating in my younger days but it bothers me that we’re telling cyberspace advertisers exactly what kinds of things we like. (As if Google doesn’t already know that.) And Instagram. Dear Instagram where I love the photos family posts and the concept that others can’t nab or share them, but I can’t seem to manage a cell phone picture without my thumb included so that leaves me out of the sharing process. No, I’ll stick to blogging where I hope/can pretend I have a connection with people who don’t care if the format is on its way to Horse-and-Buggy Land. If you are still reading this, thank you.

A far more interesting question, though, is why do people read personal blogs written by ordinary people, living ordinary lives? I can only speak for myself but I enjoy getting a window into how others feel about their day to day existence---the frustrations that get them down and things that make them feel joyful inside. I learn about myself from reading what others write, too. One of my favorite bloggers, for example, couldn’t be more different than I am when it comes to core values and life experiences but we are so spooky, scary alike in every other way that I just know we’d be great friends if we lived next door to one another. Without reading her blog, I never would have gotten beyond the labels we put on others to discover that, and that helps me when meeting new people in person. Reading personal blogs also makes me feel connected to a community when the isolation of going through life-crisis’s such Don’s disabilities and eventual death, then the whole widowhood “thing” could otherwise make me bat-poop crazy. We care about each other in cyberspace just as much as if we were talking over the back yard fence. At least that’s my view from here. Oops! My View From Here is the name of another one of my favorite blogs to read and I just plagiarized Donna’s catch phrase.

(Note: I wanted to say above, "...could make me bat-shit crazy..." but when I used the word 'sexual' in the title of a recent blog entry Bloggers sent me a notice that blogs with x-rated content will be turned private in the near-future. Oh, my, I thought, swearing content can’t be far behind on the no-no list if THAT post got tagged!)

A few people may already know this but I’m going to repeat it in this post because I’m old and that’s what old people do. Anyway, I started blogging a year after my husband’s stroke as sort of a gratitude journal and speech class diary. It was so hard back then to pull myself out of the darkness that goes with a life changing event like the massive stroke of someone you love. So I consciously made the decision that I couldn’t go to bed each night without first finding five good things to write down about my day. Before I knew it, I’d find myself saying during the day, “This should go in my journal” and that turned into seeing the funnier things that were happening in my world where I was a caregiver/wife to a wheelchair bound guy who worked very hard at building up his vocabulary. A vocabulary that turned out to be at its highest point only 25 unprompted words on a good day. When he died the bottom fell out of my world again and my blogs had to go with him.

Eleven days later, in January of 2012, this widowhood blog was born. Fast forward to now and here I am, knowing that the blog world has helped, does help and will help me again with whatever challenges life throws my way. It’s given me a place to spill my guts---my secrets, my desires, my fears, my disappointments and joys and my plans A, B and Cs. If you’ve been here often enough to see me put Band-Aids on my broken heart and rip them back off, thank you. If you’ve been here often enough to see me rub salt in my own wounds then wash it back out, thank you. If you’ve been here often enough to care if I ever put some real adventure into my widowhood days, as the blog title implies I should, a double thank you. ©