Tuesday

Day 26 of the August Blogging Challenge

For every day of this challenge, and for many days in July, this blog has required word verification to publish its posts. Why? Because Blogger.com has tagged it as a potential spam blog. How can I get that reviewed and changed? By requesting via their link that a real person look at my blog. I have done that four times, with a week's mandatory wait in between. Still no word from them. Still the annoying requirement to word verify every single time I post or edit a blog. Being somewhat sight-impaired, this is not a convenient step, since I usually must repeat two or three times to get the letters right.

I've asked for help on various blogging forums. Nada.

I've asked for help on Blogger.com's own forum in several threads. Nada.

I'm stuck with Blogger.com because many of my newbie blogging authors have this platform and because WordPress doesn't allow me to upload photos on a dial-up line and Blogger.com does. I've reached the point that the inconvience of switching to another platform is no longer a hurdle, at least not psychologically. Blogger.com has made me that angry with their lack of service. I'd switch in a second if I had a faster service.

What would you do in this situation? Do you have any better ideas on how I can get a real person to look at this blog and deem it as worthy, useful, and definitely NOT spam? I ask you.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't it always a case of who you know rather than what you know? I've only been in this game for five minutes and I've lost count how many times I've had my knuckles rapped lol. I feel like I'm back at school again, on the carpet for pulling little Sally's pigtails. And all because I use the wrong words. Well, excuse me!!!

I'm here solely for the purpose of helping to promote a novel that has recently been completed along with my co-author. We're not published yet, so taking advantage of your "Tours" concept is a little way off.

I have a home page on Wordpress and the only thing I can suggest to get around your problem is to post your material in the site of your choice and then copy and paste the finished product into another. Will that work? I'm new here so I hope I haven't appeared like a dork.

I start all my material in Squidoo and then I copy and paste it to five other sites. Of course there is a bit of editing and deleting/adding to do but it works for me. Mind you, what I'm doing probably isn't as complicated as what you're attempting.

I feel another spam coming on. Oh yes, here it is . . . Go to my The Meadow home page and see what I've done and compare it with my Squidoo pages. You can find the links for Squidoo by clicking on the contents bits at the beginning of each blog. It's just my way of getting folk to have a look in at Squidoo. Once you're in the home page you can navigate to the individual pages.

Sorry if I've talked nonsense, but then that's what a lot of folk in this crazy cyber world accuse me of. So what do I know lol?

Happy blogging,

Mike O'Hare

Anonymous said...

Hmm - sorry I can't be much help. I had an issue with Goodreads two days ago (they had a book attributed to me that I never wrote - apparently there are TWO Marvin D Wilson authors on Goddreads - what're the odds? Plus it was some how to book on farming for god's sake - here I am trying to get branded as a spiritual/inspirational author - lol) but anyway, they jumped right on it and fixed it, sent me a notice today. It sucks when trying to do business on cyber space when you can't TALK to anyone and then if cust service is not listening you're just screwed. Oh well, I guess I'll try & see if I can get your letter qual's right - I hate 'em as much as you do. I usually give it 2 or 3 tries, and if it still doesn't let me post, I just move on.

Anonymous said...

I'm actually going through the exact same thing with one of my blogs. It's annoying as hell and the catcha is hard to read. I never get it on the first try. Every couple days I have to check to see if I'm in the cue to be checked.

I'm in the process of switching over my personal website to Wordpress. After that goes well (hopefully). I'm going to switch over the BIW site and eventually the blog I'm referring to so it'll all be on my servor and I can do what I want.

I don't understand the whole dial up thing with images.

What up just using a flickr account and using html to add your images.

Dani said...

Moe, the dial-up is glacial even for loading photos onto Flickr. Same problem with WordPress - the photos just never get there. I don't have this problem with Blogger and really, it's the major reason I suffer with them. Otherwise I'd move the blog elsewhere. Am wondering if Typepad might be the best choice. Not free, but who cares if you can work with them.

Mike, you can't start too early planning a blog book tour. Just scoping out the best blogs for host potential takes time. Can't tell you how many people join the yahoo group expecting to line up a two-week tour... only to find out they have to find their own hosts! Surprise. There's no way to get around building the foundation for a good tour.

Yeah, I like Squidoo. You can really give your blogs an oomph linking to a lens. Moe has Squidoo lenses galore! My fave is http://www.squidoo.com/50 Memes ... since she didn't leave the link herself. :)

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid I have nothing constructive to offer on the blog site. However, I've learned that grabbing a pillow, shoving it in my face and screaming as loudly as I possibly can is quite calming when trying to deal with cyber beings.

I hope Blogger wakes up soon and addresses the issue.

- Char

Dana Fredsti said...

Is there a contact for Blogger where perhaps all of the people in your BlogBookTours group could write and complain? Or is there a phone number (I know, I know...) for contact if necessary? I am baffled as to how they could think your blog was spam in the first place idiotic. And for all my problems using Wordpress, I am now rather grateful I switched.

Kim / POWER OF RUN said...

What do you think about Live Journal? I finally moved my blogs to Live Journal. I like the way the comment features work. I think it enhances the networking aspect.