May 2, 2008

"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog."

Blogger tells me as I try to post this morning:
Your blog requires word verification

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on May 2, 2008.
In other words, I successfully perceived a set of crushed together, distorted letters and managed to type them into a box.
On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog.
On behalf of the robots = geek humor.
Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.
Just don't ask my enemies.
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.
No, thanks, but I understand. You have to fight the spam, and Blogger has done a great job of nearly eliminating the spam comments that are much worse than dealing with this occasional perception — by robots — that I am a spammer.

But I understand that robots think I write too much.

21 comments:

Ron said...

I wonder if the blog is an ongoing work of fiction by one RLC, and maybe "Ann Althouse" herself is a fictional construct, complete with an actress for photos, videos, etc...

I am not a commenter.

Manfred said...

it was the c-word.

sincerely,
the robot

Tibore said...

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog.

You realize that's all Titus's fault, right? ;) I mean, his posts sort of do read like Cialis spam.

MadisonMan said...

I think an interesting test someday would be to invite people to write spam words in a thread, and see if you get the email again.

Make Fast money Now!

Anonymous said...

"What's a spam blog?" Why, it's a blog about Spam! Join the Spam Fan Club here! http://www.spam.com/fanclub/members.aspx

Dan from Madison said...

I got the same thing for my blog. I think it may be B.S., a ploy for Blogger to weed out splogs. I have such low traffic that I was quite surprised that they chose mine to be a splog, but so it goes.

Anonymous said...

All commenters should be required to type the phrase "You, a law professor!" in order to post a message. Not to block spam, just to get it out of their system.

Triangle Man said...

I for one welcome our new anti-spam-blog-robot overloards.

Also, geek humor.

bill said...

Anyone else notice that when you clean out your gmail Spam folder the context ads are for SPAM recipes?

Can't decide if this is just stupid logic or Google's idea of a joke.

Chip Ahoy said...

Our comments spam bots have detected your comments are possibly computer generated spam comments by errant bots. In our effort to eliminate spam commentators to spam bot blogs we ask you to discern the completely indiscernible set of characters not found on your keyboard and enter your answer in a imperceptible box that's made out of alignment for this purpose. Apologies for our hyper botish wankery, it's just the way we roll.

Answer: My bot detecting bot detector has detected detection detection. Please have your bot's bot contact my bot's bot to determine hyper botage activity. Thank you for your inhuman patience.

Chip Ahoy said...

They're not so interested in eliminating spam, it's more egregious than that. It has to do with copying content, messing up search results, and manipulating advertisement revenue. Plus absorbing all kinds of internets resource, kind of like Kos and Huffington. <-- See, now that was snark.

vbspurs said...

How in the hell is this anti-Althousiana!??

Cheers,
Victoria

Bender R said...

On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. . . . But I understand that robots think I write too much.

This is a very ominous sign. The First Law of Robotics is "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."

Clearly, the robots are harming you here. This is very troubling, and it might be a sign of the beginning of the end of humanity. Today the robots block a blog, tomorrow they rebel and take over the earth.

Chip Ahoy said...

Just as long as they don't sent their spiders. Got this thing about spiders.

KCFleming said...

Agent Deckard performs the Voight-Kampff test on Rachel.

former law student said...

Signs point to yes: After reading this blog for a while, my abs are now rock-hard, AND, I'm the proud owner of a new copy watch.

victoria: re Anti-Althousiana: robot opposition is still opposition.

blake said...

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

WE ARE TOP OFFICIAL OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTRACT REVIEW PANEL WHO ARE INTERESTED IN IMPORATION OF GOODS INTO OUR COUNTRY WITH FUNDS WHICH ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN NIGERIA. IN ORDER TO COMMENCE THIS BUSINESS WE SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE TO ENABLE US TRANSFER INTO YOUR ACCOUNT THE SAID TRAPPED FUNDS.

[etc]

vbspurs said...

victoria: re Anti-Althousiana: robot opposition is still opposition.

Heh, I know FLS. You should know by now I go for the quips. ;)

Cheers,
Victoria

rhhardin said...

It's called a type II error.

A type I error would be failing to detect actual spam.

A type II error would be detecting as spam what is not spam.

You can make your sensitivity to actual spam as high as you want, but at the cost of increasing type II errors.

The cost of type II errors can be diminished by apologizing in some winsome way.

Which is what they have done, in order to keep the sensitivity to spam as high as possible as cheaply as possible.

A true geek apology would point out that they don't actually care themselves, but there's a good reason for it.

Don Singleton said...

"What's a spam blog?"

It is one that hijacks copy from another blog's RSS feed, and that exists just to post links to another website, in an effort to improve that site's Google Rank

Joe Roberts said...

I'm having the same problem - twice in the last 3-4 months, in fact - on my blog (1WineDude.blogspot.com).

Just curious if you ever got it addressed (and if so how! :-) ?

Cheers!