A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, or so they say.  And they are right.

I figured out something very wrong with my blog today — more specifically, with the way I set things up here.

First, some quick background info:  In  the wonderful modern online world, if you have a public blog and if you post at all on a regular basis, you will undoubtedly get "spam" comments — and plenty of ‘em, I might add, even if you’re just a little knitting blog.

These "comments" read a lot like the spam emails we are all used to receiving by now:  enlarge this, get free that.  The only thing I haven’t seen yet is a comment from the guy in Nigeria with the big bank account, but I suspect one will show up sooner or later.

Of course, the people who write the blog software know this too, and of course, they have ways around it.  You can create a list of keywords and set things up such that all comments that match these keywords will either be "held for moderation" or simply "blacklisted", where they go off into internet oblivion and are never seen or heard from again.

These lists of keywords make for some interesting reading, actually.  My own list has grown as I add to it words that show up in the spam comments I receive:  some fairly ordinary words, like "insurance" and "viagra", but also more colorful words, such as those that refer to most of the interesting body parts and activities.

Now, a while back I happened to add to my blacklist a common 3-letter word for "backside".  And while this did have the desired effect of eliminating any spam comments that came my way about backsides, I meanwhile failed to take in the full meaning of the verbage that is displayed right there where you add the words, that says the spam filters match these keywords to PARTS of words, as well as full words.

What I realized in horror this morning was this:  any comment containing anywhere in it the letters "A-S-S" was simply being sent off into cyberspace oblivion.  With absolutely no way of retrieval.  I don’t even know they’ve ever showed up, let alone that they’ve disappeared.

Pretty smart move for someone who teaches knitting cl-ASS-es, wouldn’t you say??

Yeah, that’s the same thing I thought — except that I wasn’t laughing my ASS off, like you are.

cat

To add insult to injury, even icanhascheezburger — one of my absolute favorite sites — had something to say about it today.  And that even looks just like one of my cats.

So, moving forward:  if you have ever made a comment here on my blog that included anything about, oh, let’s just say for instance, "cl@$$es" — and you were unaware that you were supposed to use such creative spelling as I just did — I’m truly terribly sorry, but it never made it.

It’s not that I decided I don’t like you, or your "ass" comment.  It’s not that you were doing anything wrong or stupid.  It’s just that the moment you hit "submit", and sent it out into the world, the poor little thing got clobbered by my bad-ass spam filter like a baby seal.  It never even had a chance.

Now, it is still true that whenever someone comments here for the very first time, the comment will be held for moderation until I get a chance to make sure you’re not Maria16, inviting me and both of my readers to go look at some webpage with free pictures of "bad boob jobs" and the "naked mile run", whatever that is **.  I think that’s still pretty fair.

But I’ve changed to a whole new spam filter thingy, so including the letters "ass" might cause your comment to be held, but should no longer get your comment killed.  (This is mainly so that Rocky doesn’t immediately post a comment that just says "ass ass ass".)  (I’ll probably approve it anyway, though, because it would be pretty funny.)

And if your comment is held for moderation, it should tell you that that’s what it’s doing.  So if it doesn’t, and your comment doesn’t show up either, well — I’ve probably accidentally added the words "knit", "yarn" and "MOHAIR" to the blacklist, or something equally clever.  Perhaps in such a case, you could kindly send me an email and let me know.

And, while I feel like a (you-know-what), I’m fully confident that now I’ll start seeing just as many comments here as they get over at the Yarn Harlot!

** data taken from actual piece of spam received today

 update:  I just want you all to know, the number of this post (assigned by WordPress) is "666".  I kid you not.  Look at the address bar.

another update:  This problem has a name!  "The Scunthorpe Problem."  I’ll let you figure out why.