Typepad Strikes Back

The Good News: Typepad has revamped it's spam filters for comments.

The Bad News: It's now classifying lots of legitimate comments as spam -- sort of the spam-filter equivalent of lupus.

I'm trying to figure out what I can do to tweak this. They've changed the comment-editing interface (unannounced and without instructions), so I'll see if I can navigate that to make this work better. My apologies for the infuriating inconvenience (particularly to those of you whom Typepad seems especially to dislike -- Ecks, Scott, Jon, Geds, Cyllan and Mrs. & Mr. cjmr, among others).

In the meantime if you're unable to post a comment, please feel free to e-mail it to me -- slacktivist at hotmail dot com -- and I'll try to get it posted from here.

So again, sorry about that and thanks for your patience.

Comments

[Jon]

No worries Fred; there's actually a certain cachet in being among those singled out for disapproval by Typepad. It's as if it's saying that I'm a rebel and I'll never be any good, which only adds to my "bad boy" street cred. That's right; I'm trouble because I come from the wrong side of the tracks, baby! You don't want the likes of me commenting on your blog. I'm a rebel who is not only without a cause, but also without the ability to comment freely. And so forth...

Have you determined what about the posts, exactly, causes them to be classified as spam?

[Freelance Physicist]

It's not lupus!

[Praline]

It blocked a comment of mine repeatedly which I'd drafted on another page and then cut-and-pasted in. Is that relevant? Does it hate cut-and-paste? Or did it just not like my use of punctuation? (It posted it after I re-typed it, changing a few words.)

Just in case that adds any new info to you tackling the problem. :-)

[cjmr]

The group of people that are having the most problems are spread out over the country/world enough that I don't think it has to do with IP address.

[Jay H]

It's not lupus!

HA!

[Jesurgislac]

Six Apart seems to have decided that most spammers are verbose, and long posts seem to be more likely to be tagged as comment spam. Eschew needless words.

[cjmr]

Most of the time, I get called spam when I'm trying to post something short. Multi-sentence ones go through better.

[Jesurgislac]

The only times I've got called spam have been when I was posting multi-paragraph posts. Evidently Typepad's spam filter is of a Three Bears pattern...

[cjmr]

I can just see the little goldilockses now...

You can't post that, this comment is TOO small!

You can't post that, this comment is TOO big!

You can't post that, this comment is TOO hot!

[Geds]

I think Typepad just hates me. In a completely arbitrary way. Either that or it's decided we're in a very unhappy marriage and whenever I ask it why my post isn't acceptable the answer is, "Like you don't know."

[Ian]

I've learned to copy my posts before hitting the "post" button, just in case.

[Ian]

I've learned to copy my posts before hitting the "post" button, just in case.

Ironically, this message got caught in the spam filter.

[MikeJ]

It would be nice if the spam filters learned which blogs leaned towards snarky one liners and which towards longer posts, with more thought put into the snark.

Of course everytime I think of snark, I think of hunting. Then I think of hunting the wumpus. Which reminds me of M.U.L.E. Which reminds me I need to go find a C64 emulator now.

[Mabus]

My last pair of posts on the previous thread were one post, originally. The second post formed the middle text, aside from the "this was filtered" note. Since the attempts otherwise involved precisely the same text, I conclude that length was most likely the problem. (Or possibly number of paragraphs)

[cjmr's husband]

M.U.L.E. FTW! But as long as you're on an emulator, play the Atari 800 version, which is, after all, the original.

Atari Emulators

Commodore emulators

Let's see if THAT get's through the spam filter!

BTW, when you highlight your text to copy it before you post, be careful not to uncheck the "remember me" checkbox. Which oddly enough isn't available on the preview screen.

[MikhailBorg]

M.U.L.E.? Nope, Archon. I must have broken 6 Atari joysticks playing that game until the disk wore out.

[MikhailBorg]

Woot, I just won a "comment spam" prize from TypePad!

Anyway... *ahem*:

M.U.L.E.? Nope, Archon. I must have broken 6 Atari joysticks playing that game until the disk wore out.

[MikhailBorg]

Woot, I just won a "comment spam" prize from TypePad! Perhaps it doesn't like the name for a video game input device.

Anyway... *ahem*:

M.U.L.E.? Nope, Archon. I must have broken 6 Atari 8-direction 1-button input devices playing that game until the disk wore out.

[MikeJ]

Somewhere in the attic I've got a real live C64, no emulator needed, along with a 1541 and a 1702. And a great book on programming the 2k of RAM in the 1541.

[Robb]

Threadjack: Anyone care to comment on Mike Huckabee's Christmas campaign "ad" response to Romney? Or should we leave that to our gracious host to kick off first? Perhaps it's just because he's being compared to/sparring with Mitt Romney most often, but I'm starting to like Huckabee . . . which is pretty much a guarantee he'll do something really creepy to make me regret ever expressing approval of him.

Like sell v1@gr@ and c1@li5 c#3@p!

[Geds]

Like sell v1@gr@ and c1@li5 c#3@p!

Or get Tim LaHaye to back his campaign?

[Majromax]

Ah, perhaps that's it -- heavy keyword filtering. If "joystick" isn't permissible, what else is verboten? For a blog that talks about the "Gay Hating Gospels," we might have a very difficult time discussing anything.

[Robb]

get Tim LaHaye to back his campaign?

For dispensations lasting more than 4 hours, please consult a physician.

[MikeJ]

Mischievous glac-elves want you to be compassionate(tm).

[MikeJ]

Mischievous glac-elves want you to be compassionate.

[Bugmaster]

It's weird... Sometimes, I'd get the CAPTCHA screen, enter in the correct CAPTCHA (yes, I double-checked), and then, Typepad would take me to... another CAPTCHA screen. Seriously, what gives ?

[MikeJ]

I had a nice joke about mischievous glac-elves forcing compassion(tm) on people, but something about the construction (possibly having to do with the word "you" and "want" in reverse order made the spiced ham filters unhappy.

[cjmr's husband]

You won $200 in the colony's steaming pile of produce drenched in butter eating contest. (Yuck!)

[cjmr]

Thanks to this morning's power failure, I now have a spanking-new IP address. I wonder if Typepad still hates me?

[Mabus]

Those CAPTCHA screens can be very hard to read sometimes, Bugmaster. I have a few other hypotheses, though--how long did it take you? Could the data have expired? Alternatively, maybe sometimes it just is programmed to double-check, for some reason.

[Mabus]

Those CAPTCHA screens can be very hard to read sometimes, Bugmaster. I have a few other hypotheses, though--how long did it take you? Could the data have expired? Alternatively, maybe sometimes it just is programmed to double-check, for some reason.

Hmm. And apparently I'm a spammer. Now let's see what it does.

[Mabus]

Those screens can be very hard to read sometimes, Bugmaster. I have a few other hypotheses, though--how long did it take you? Could the data have expired? Alternatively, maybe sometimes it just is programmed to double-check, for some reason.

Hmm. And apparently I'm a spammer. Now let's see what it does.

[Mabus]

Those CAPTCHA screens can be very hard to read sometimes, Bugmaster. I have a few other hypotheses, though--how long did it take you? Could the data have expired? Alternatively, maybe sometimes it just is programmed to double-check, for some reason.

Hmm. And apparently I'm a spammer. Now let's see what it does. Still no response. Stupid piece of junk!

[Johnny Pez]

Part 4 (of, currently, 6) of "The Ozark Effect" is now up on Right Behind: Alarm.

[Bugmaster]

No, session expiration was my first hypothesis as well, but it can be safely discounted, unless they have their expiration date set to T+3s or something. And I understand that you could program CAPTCHA's to double-check, but... why would you ? If a spambot can break one CAPTCHA, it can break them all.

[Jeff]

Oddly enough, yesterday I had one post grabbed as comment spam. When I split it and double-posted the second part, both went through.

Maybe Typepad has been CAPTCHAd by a bot?

[Ember Keelty]

(particularly to those of you whom Typepad seems especially to dislike -- Ecks, Scott, Jon, Geds, Cyllan and Mrs. & Mr. cjmr, among others).

Well, hey, maybe it's not completely worthless.

[jamoche]

If it's captcha timeouts, I can totally understand how people are getting hit - I'm so used to posts taking a while to be handled that once I hit post, I move on to another browser window or do something else; I'm not used to having to come back to fill in a captcha. So either people are doing that and coming back too late, or the length of time it takes to get to the captcha page exceeds the timeout all by itself (which I could believe; it should not take 15 seconds to load a primarily text-based page here at work).

[errol flynn]

The Good News: Typepad has revamped it's spam filters for comments.

There's an erroneous apostrophe in that sentence. Aren't you a copyeditor? For shame!

[errol flynn]

The Good News: Typepad has revamped it's spam filters for comments.

There's an erroneous apostrophe in that sentence. Aren't you a copyeditor? For shame!

[pecunium]

Testing

[pecunium]

I am annoyed that I go to the trouble to get a typepad verification, and then have to use the catchpa too.

The morseo since it seems the cathpas aren't working right, and I have to enter three or four before it decides I did it correctly.

[cjmr]

I was wondering if it was worth it to try to remember what my TypeKey password is, but Pecunium seems to have answered that question for me. It isn't.

[Bugmaster]

Is there a way to assemble a whitelist of registered, authenticated users, whose comments will get through without any filtering or CAPTCHAs ? I would get a TypeKey password if it would get me on the whitelist.

Currently, TypePad seems to be rejecting any comment longer than about a paragraph, based solely on length. This is unacceptable.

[Mabus]

Well, TypePad rejects some of my comments as too short, Bugmaster.

[Mabus]

Well, TypePad rejects some of my comments as too short, Bugmaster.

Like this one, for instance.

[Mabus]

Well, TypePad rejects some of my comments as too short, Bugmaster.

Like this one, for instance.

But if I keep trying eventually some version will go through.

[Mabus]

Well, TypePad rejects some of my comments as too short, Bugmaster.

Like this one, for instance. But if I keep trying eventually some version will go through. I just have to keep pestering it until it recognizes that I'm not posting spam.

[Mabus]

Well, TypePad rejects some of my comments as too short, Bugmaster.

Like this one, for instance. But if I keep trying eventually some version will go through. I just have to keep pestering it until it recognizes that I'm not posting spam. It's really quite annoying, though it seems I can tell whether it's actually going to post by the length of time it takes.