Monday, June 13, 2011

Cotton's PSA and Decision

Hey, I'm Cotton. Sorry, but I fell asleep while waiting to use the computer. And it's been a long wait, but Jan finally made a decision.


First though, a Public Service Announcement from Zoolatry. Ann has a very good post on why many blog readers would appreciate it if the the word verification found on many blogs would be disabled and why it can be a hardship for those with a disability. Jan has health problems that are affected by her computer time too and she has been glad to be spending more time away from the computer lately.

We can't speak for other blogs, such as Wordpress, but Blogger has been doing a terrific job of filtering out spam for quite a while now. It has become rare that a spam message gets through and has to be deleted from a post or that a good message ends up in with spam. But bloggers have to do their part. It's easy. Just go to comments in your dashboard (check them occasionally if you choose not to receive email notifications) and check/clear your spam folder.

An easy way to keep up with what is posted on your blog and what is not is to have Blogger send an email for each new comment. If the email asks whether permission to post or delete, that comment has not been posted, so you just delete it from the Blogger spam folder nest time you think of it. But you have to keep your email address current. Just go to -

Dashboard.
Comments.
Scroll down to "Comment Notification Email" and type in your email address.
Click Save Settings.

But before you save your settings, you might want to change "Who Can Comment" to only registered users. We used to allow anonymous comments because we have non-blogging friends, but since many spammers try to post a comment as Anonymous, we finally had to change the setting.

We understand why many of you use word verification but as Ann points out, there is also the problem of time, often having to do two or more verifications, as some are almost impossible to read. A big problem for us is that we have the slowest DSL and way too frequently, there is such a delay, we think our comment went through, but as we are already leaving the site we glimpse word verification appearing. So we either wasted our time making the comment or we have to go back and do it again.

We thank Zoolatry for her Disable for the Disabled graphic and for the post. We don't know that all of you will be able to disable word verification for one reason or another but we hope at least many of you can.

Our last post was to let you know where we were with our blog at the time, but so many left advice on what to do with stolen content, which was not the problem, so we took the post down.

We were trying to warn you about a site using hundreds or thousands of bloggers RSS feed posts to steal your traffic - not steal your post - to boost their own traffic in search engine rankings - and to get visitors to download a program. All bloggers should be doing a periodic Google search of your own blog name. Don't search for this company, as you will only increase their their "popularity," but if you see brokencontrollers.com/yourblog name, you might want to ask them to remove each of your posts and links from their site. Which they will do but you have to notice them and make the request.

Their are many reasons a blogger needs or wants a domain name. But we will never own JFF dot com again. It wasn't because Jan didn't try to pay them for the domain names. They just kept refusing to accept her payment.

As long as we keep posting on JFF, our old dot com will be following us and can be resold. Today it is owned by a foreign company and it's all ads. Tomorrow it could be purchased by a porn site. Jan really wants to end JFF so this can't ever happen, but she just doesn't have the time or energy to start over and try to build up a new blog, a new zazzle store, Twitter, and everything we're signed up with. And Jan has been busy trying to downsize as we might have to move.

Reluctantly and with trepidation, this blog stays open, but we're going to have to find a new heart for it.

Stop right here. And read the last line again. The way it was written, not the way you are expecting it to read. Please.

23 comments:

  1. We got rid of word verification a long time ago on Typepad and have not had a problem with spam. Once in a while we will get a comment from someone who just wants readers to go to their site and obviously hasn't even read the post. But those are usually on old posts and can be deleted as soon as we get the email notification.

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  2. I don't think our blog has any of that stuff to make a comment. But it is a lot of work to go around making comments. We sure hate to see you give up your blog.
    We get lots of spam comments but we either delete them or report them. We have a deal where I can delete a bunch of them together.

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  3. I do not use the word verification and do not like them. I am sure sorry that you are going to gave to do all that work and find a new heart for your blog. That has to be so disheartening. Thank you for taking time to type out all this information. Big hugs

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  4. Sorry about the typos I get in too big a hurry sometimes.

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  5. We've never like the word verification option, so we've never used it and in nearly 6 years of blogging we've barely had a problem, like you we have our comments set up where anon comments have to be approved, so they do go to the spam folder and since I opted to get an email of each comment I know when they come in and it's only a handful each week, not enough to be troubled by.
    We are glad you are staying, we would miss you. We might not comment each time but we do read each post.

    But we do completely understand when something happens to take the fun out of hobby/business it loses it's luster.

    Still we are glad you are keeping this blog.
    purrs
    >^,,^<
    ♥Abby♥

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  6. We've been following blogs for a long time - way before we started our own. Yours is one we've visited for a while now. One piece of advice we've remembered from our lurking days is that blogging is supposed to be fun. It should not feel like work or cause stress. We know how this must be very hard for you - you've spent a lot of time building up the JFF name. It stinks that faceless entities can and have done this to you. We hope that you find some fun in blogging again.

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  7. Oh Jan and lovely Cotton! Me and Charlie are so sad to hear about your domain name being so used and abused! :-( That's just horrible and more so because it;s your livelihood! Oh dear!! We hope and hope that you will find a way round this mess that you didn't create and hope that there's light at the end of this tunnel!! Take care Jan and all at JFF! x

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  8. I always find your blog fun, hopefully you can too someday...soon.

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  9. I agree with the word verification thing. It can be a pain. I've also lost my comments in a few cases when the Internet is running slower than usual.

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  10. We use askimet for WordPress (which is free for non commercial blogs--fitting most WordPress users) and it works well to keep spam out. We get an email whenever anyone comments so that if something slips through we can grab it. Now and again it can hold a comment from a friend and very rarely it can identify a friend as a spammer but that doesn't happen much.

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  11. Sometimes we have a hard time with the word verification! Not always easy to read and to type them correctly!
    Sure I hope you all are doing well!
    Take care
    Kisses and hugs
    Lorenza

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  12. We've never had word verification and in the few years that we've been blogging we have not had much problem.

    It really is a big disappointment the way your domain has been take over. Just hope things would not get any worse.

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  13. I've disabled the verification. I sometimes had trouble with that on other people's blogs (as in, I couldn't figure out the word to type in for verification!) It stinks that people have to be so mean and steal and ruin things for people who do nothing but good things for animals & others. Hang in there. ((((HUGS)))

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  14. We got rid of word verification a long time ago too. So messy and so slooooooow!

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  15. After we lost our blog cuz Blogger deemed it spam we have been trying hard to keep spam out. We dropped word verification and got tons of spam so back up it went. We thought of stopping our blog then but still kept it up. So sorry you lost your domain name.

    Cats of wildcat woods

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  16. I used to never use the word verification cause I really don't like it but resorted back to it because of some spam that was getting through even though I check it from time to time on blogger. I have been having trouble of making comments on the choose idenity that states annoynomous and others. What you have here Jan that states my blog name and google account I can get through with a comment. The other it sends me to sign in and and when I sign in then hit publish comment it goes to annonymous and right back to sign in. That's one reason why I haven't been able to to comment on other sites. It has been might frustrating and I just don't visit much any more. I will take off the verification and put on choose identity with google account and see where that takes me
    Thanks Jan.

    Monica

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  17. Oh by the way, hope you can figure out what I just said in above comment.

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  18. Hope things start to work out for you. We really enjoy reading your blog. It also helps you are a good cyber-paw pal.

    Essex

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  19. email to brokencontenttakers....

    To whadu@brokencontrollers.com

    Hi,

    I don't mind if you put the first sentence of my content on your site with a link to mine, but I don't want you copying my content wholesale.

    Please remove everything from lepak.com including blog.lepak.com from your web site.

    Regards,
    Ellen

    From: whadu@brokencontrollers.com

    Hello,

    Please provide a link to the page in question.

    Thanks.


    From me:

    http://brokencontrollers.com/katz-and-other-tales-feel-good-saturday-boris-then-and-no-t28431377.php

    and

    http://brokencontrollers.com/katz-and-other-tales-we-re-taking-a-blogging-break-ba-t27903778.php

    for a start.

    Why should I have to go through your stuff and tell you specifically what not to take?

    Look, I am a writer, I make my living by writing, and I don't want you taking my stuff. So cut it out, OK? All content from lepak.com is copyrighted.

    Ellen

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  20. Oh boy, mom could not agree with you more about disabling word verification. It drives her CRRRRRAAAZZZZY!

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  21. That is so messed up about those people stealing your domain name. We love your blog, and you were one of first blogging friends ... we hope you can find a way to keep your blog going.

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  22. I agree with Brian. Love the Funny Farm. :) And your good heart.

    Yes I don't like word verification. Takes forever to make a comment. I leave my open. And knock on wood, that's been ok.

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  23. Ooops! put comment on wrong post? Sorry. But thanks for all the above info. I had no idea all this went on, but will be disabling word verification as it is annoying.

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