When I first embraced blogging, I had a Blogger Blog. After a year or so I was moved over to WordPress and a have stayed with them since then. My old posts were relocated to the new base and anyone who landed on an old early post link found themselves redirected here to Grannymar. I happily continued to post and visit my usual round of favourites leaving comments when I felt the urge.
Life was sweet.
In recent months I have noticed a change.
When I visit Blogger Blogs these days a large proportion of them have re-introduced moderation of their comments. So now when you post a comment there is no indication that it is the first response, or dumped in an in-tray with a million others.
That is not the reason for my frustration.
My annoyance comes from the actual effort in leaving a comment on a Blogger Blog. Particularly when faced with this:
I have added my words of wisdom thoughts and want to submit or hit publish but how?
The Open ID option does not work for me so I am forced to use the Google Account! It worked fine for a while but recently I have found it annoying. Particularly when somebody uses that link to come back to my blog. They are landing on the ‘oldBones’ my old Blogger blog! I know because a recent visitor* left a comment on that old blog, thankfully I was notified by email.
There is an answer…..
This version gives another option:- Name/URL
It allows me to use my Blog name and my URL (blog address). Simple!
Did you know I have a pet hate? Using a captcha. Sometimes I type exactly what I see. Honestly. I am usually sober when I type…. uoy should ees what ti is elik when I ma tispy! 🙄
Now there was one evening…. I finished my dinner and refilled my glass to enjoy while surfing the blogs…. There was this captcha to fill in. It was refused, so I tried again. And again…. and again! No! it was not the fault of the wine, that was a very nice bottle given to me by a friend.
The captcha didn’t like me so I sought help. I clicked on the symbol
Well it is there for a reason and I needed help!
Dear Lord of demented Corncrake choirs! What in hell was going on? My living room sounded like I had been invaded by 7 coachs of Japanese tourists who found an ancient mummy! OK1 OK! I know I am ancient but Elly will tell you that she was warned at age 10 never to call me ‘mummy’ at the risk of being disowned!
No matter what I did the noise continued, asking for help was dangerous and telling them to be quiet didn’t work, hitting the escape button didn’t work, Elly & George were out on the town so no help there. In my panic I forgot Twitter. I went for the total desperation option and did a hard shutdown. I went off to read a book instead. Yes, Ramana, I do actually have a book or three! 😉
I thought about it during the dark hours of wakefulness. What did I do before the noise started? I retraced my steps in my mind and decided that I should have hit the disabled logo to close off the sound. It works.
When Nurse Hitler was nagging me one day – you remember her – I clicked that sign and she shut up PRONTO! I don’t think she ever tried it before! Her face was a picture and I got two choccie bikkies with my coffee!
* Well worth reading this linked post.
The ways of blogger are not to be determined by the likes of me! I am happy for the thing that allows you to receive comments on the old blog, and get email notice of them – otherwise I’d never know they were there. Unfortunately, due to spam comments, I had to implement moderation again. Darn spammers!!
I’m with you re moderation. I like to know how many comments there have been and what they are before I pen my own words of wisdom. But I know some people have been plagued by stupid or offensive comments so they introduced moderation reluctantly.
As for the word check, I started off without it but had to introduce it after I started getting lorryloads of spam on my old posts. Sorry, I know it’s annoying and sometimes difficult to make out!
When I leave a comment on a blogger blog that doesn’t have the option for providing the URL, I leave it in a signature at end. I just use the “new post” feature in WordPress in html mode to create a link and then paste the html into the comment — example below.
Blogger moderation, commenting structure, and captchas make commenting a pain for visitors to blogger blogs. It IS better than it used to be.
Have a great rest of the weekend!
Mike
Exit78
currently at home in Arkansas.
Absolutely agree with you regarding trying to leave a comment on some blogs – I often just give up. I get so happy when I see another WP blog as I know it is going to be effortless to leave a comment there…like this one 🙂
Judy – I appreciate your problem with spam comments, and perhaps I would do the same if the need arose. All my posts were moved over to this blog so the links should bring traffic here.
Nick – I think people are more inclined to add to the conversation if all the comments are visible.
Mike – Welcome on board and thanks for the tip. I will try that. It is only recently around the time the dreaded ‘Buzz’ was introduced that I found the problem. A Link perhaps?
Marie – Some days I feel like giving up but they are my friends and I like what they have to say.
Grannymar, you have posted about a problem that has been bugging me too. I however simply leave my gmail id and hope that I won’t be bothered. The captcha and half a dozen toing and froing can be annoying at times too.
Ramana – The email address brings the traffic to you and not your blog
Blogger is driving me crazy. First, my photo disappeared. When I tried to add it back, it was large (the shrink to fit didn’t work.) Then I got an offer to try the new blogger saying my old blog template would be saved. Suddenly half of the things on my sidebar disappeared. I spent two days trying to find out how to get my old template back. I finally had to accept the new blog to get it back, ;but in doing so the colors were not my old ones. Arrrgh!. I’m afraid to touch anything now.
Mum, Blogger and Buzz are two completely separate products, they can’t affect each other like that.
I’m terrified of losing everything so don’t move it, not that tech-savvy. some blogs I have to post comment twice as it won’t take the first time, don’t know why that is.
As to the link, thanks GM for the tears this a.m.
XO
WWW
Darlene – I think you are wonderful to keep trying new things and sticking at them until satisfied. I am inclined to leave things to my experts. 😉
Elly – They may well be different, but as I said the problem started about the time the Buzz burst onto my Gmail.
WWW – We grew up in the ‘don’t touch or you will break it’ world, it is hard to delete t5hat from our inner brain.
Grannymar, I just ignore Buzz. It’s rubbish and if you have other forms of chat you don’t need it but I do use word captcha,mainly to avoid spam. It doesn’t always work but does limit attacks by chinese pornographers and crazy ninjas. Sorry for the inconvenience but it’s a necessary evil. I’m not a fan of comment moderation mainly because of the time it takes to accept or deny comments but the captcha has to stay.
I’m lost, again…. I don’t know how to do alot of things with my blog, like linking etc. Hopefully I will learn in the near future, remember I said hopefully…
Ok it’s too beautiful a day here to spend one more minute of it inside.
Baino – I turned Buzz off. I understand why people use moderation, but from the visitors point of view it can be off-putting. I have the odd spam comment slipping through the net, but most are caught by my spam catcher.
Brighid – It takes time for all of us to learn how to add links, photos or videos to our blogs. I remember ‘IT Hitler’ ( its ok she is having her dinner now!) chastising me for asking ‘How do I…..?’ for the sixth time! 🙁 Hope you had a good day outdoors. It was dry and bright here but cold.
As you probably remember, I’m on blogger. I use comment moderation because a few nuisance comments arrived and I wouldn’t like it if I couldn’t check in and see them before they went on as I wouldn’t like them to be seen by others. I took off the captcha when I put the moderation on because you can delete spam without it being seen. One or two of my readers have remarked that they were pleased I took off the captcha. I even have a note in my comment box telling my readers that I have moderation on so they don’t think that they have lost their comment. I hope my blog’s not causing you problems. I love reading your comments and very much value the fact that you read my blog.
Gaelikaa – I was not pointing a finger at any particular blog. It is the way Blogger makes people go through the hoops to make a comment that annoys me. I am sure that some people who are stuck for time often give up and don’t bother to comment.