There’s been a substantial increase in lost comments here at CC. We think we know what the problem was: Our setting on our spam filter for borderline spam was to automatically discard it. That must have happened along the way, because we used to have them go in the “Comment Pending” file. We’ve switched back to that. Which means that if your comment doesn’t show up, it will once someone approves it.
Here’s how to reduce the likelihood of that happening:
1. Too many links. I’m not sure of the exact number, but more than a few.
2. Long, complex, dense verbiage: This came to our attention the other day when Daniel Stern couldn’t get the following comment to post:
It’s easy to call the headlamps inexcusable, but they were exactly the opposite of that: excusable, i.e., they met the legal requirements. The last time the minimum acceptable headlight performance was increased in the US regulations was mid-1978, and the new-for-1979 halogen sealed beams were quite a bit higher above the minimum threshold than the Chrysler cloud cars (and the first-generation LH cars big and small, and the ’96-’00 minivans, and the ’94-’02 Dodge Ram trucks…). This remained the case through two and three revisions of the US/Canada/Mexico headlamps, and it was also the case with the Europe/rest-of-world headlamps. They were all far too small and cheap to do any better than provide the bare legal minimum performance.
As for the rest of the car: great big step up in modernity and driving dynamics versus the predecessor AA-body Spirit-Acclaim-LeBaron cars…and equally great big step down in durability and repairability.
No links, but something in this comment did not pass the spam filter. One of us even broke it down into four parapgraphs, and three would work, but one, in bold, would not get through:
It’s easy to call the headlamps inexcusable, but they were exactly the opposite of that: excusable, i.e., they met the legal requirements.The last time the minimum acceptable headlight performance was increased in the US regulations was mid-1978, and the new-for-1979 halogen sealed beams were quite a bit higher above the minimum threshold than the Chrysler cloud cars (and the first-generation LH cars big and small, and the ’96-’00 minivans, and the ’94-’02 Dodge Ram trucks…).This remained the case through two and three revisions of the US-Canada-Mexico headlamps, and it was also the case with the Europe and rest-of-world headlamps. They were all far too small and cheap to do any better than provide the bare legal minimum performance.As for the rest of the car: great big step up in modernity and driving dynamics versus the predecessor AA-body Spirit-Acclaim-LeBaron cars, and equally great big step down in durability and repairability.
Thanks for the update Paul, I’ve had this happen a few times, and figured it had to be some sort of anti-spam algorithm, I just didn’t know what I was doing that was randomly triggering it. For what it’s worth, it seems like the comments that haven’t gone through for me often have image attachments, I usually use italics if I’m quoting someone too, very rarely bold.
Oh and sorry in advance for the 4-5 attempts I tried to paste in a comment I had the foresight to copy before it disappearing today, I didn’t realize they were going to pile up in a pending file!
Ah, thanks for the update. I had a big multi-paragraph one get whacked the other day, so I’m glad to know the problem’s being sorted.
Thanks Paul.
The only thing I’ve noticed was when something disappears from my comment when I put it in brackets that look like arrows on each end; your greater than and less than symbols… reluctant to type them here, but I’ll try… this and that ***. Whenever I’ve used these… POOF, whatever’s inside the brackets goes away.
Question though: How does Daniel Stern get a hyperlink to replace a word? He’ll type “here and here” for example and both “heres” are a link to something cool, or another CC for example.
Also, BOLD text, and Itallics… how do you all get that to work? It’s just plain text for me, and whether I use my iPad or PC, it doesn’t matter. I can’t figure out how to do it. I’m not an idiot… I know how to do this in Word or other editors, but this forum doesn’t let me get fancy, yet it obviously lets some of you play. What gives? Or better yet, what am I doing wrong?
*** update I tried to put “this and that” inside those greater than and less than brackets and sure enough, it was stripped from my message. But the comment still went thru. Perhaps it’s a safeguard against nefarious code or something?
Some markup tags are honoured; all others (and anything else formatted like a tag, that is contained within <angle brackets>) are disregarded entire, neither executed nor displayed.
The syntax for linking clean text rather than just pasting the link looks like this:
<b><u><a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1977-pontiac-bonneville-the-reincarnation-of-a-coal/”>Here’s</a></b></u> a post about a real nice ’77 Pontiac.
Which renders as :
Here’s a post about a real nice ’77 Pontiac.
Clicking the word “Here” opens a new browser tab or window (however you have that set) with the linked page. Best not overdo it, though; Paul says excessive markup code may trigger the spam filter and send the message for human review. I haven’t had a problem with one or two or three links in a comment, but I’m keeping an eye on it because I don’t want to make extra work for the human reviewers.
Thank You Daniel! I’ll store this away somewhere and try it next time I want to link to another article here in a comment post. The way I’ve been doing it is kinda clunky, but it works.
I suppose it’s a similar html code for things like italic and bold fonts, like when someone is quoting someone from a prior post in order to comment on that.
Sadly, there’s no slick right-mouse-click-change-font thing for our comment editor, yet some of you guys are getting this to work. I’ve seen XR7Matt do it when he wants to comment on a particular point made by a prior poster for example.
What I use for quoting is <blockquote><i>Quoted text goes here</blockquote></i>Commentary goes here
Which renders as:
Commentary goes here
Just wanted to say a sincere thanks for the work that goes into keeping CC’s comment section civil and spam-free. This is one of the few sites whose comments are consistently informative and worthwhile.
I frequently still get the “posting too fast” error, and yesterday tried to post a brief, not-at-all-spammy comment about the AMC Rebel that wouldn’t show up, or was flagged as spam. I’ve learned to do a control-C or cut-and-paste before posting anything to save it in case there’s a problem
I see that from time to time as well, but only when posting from my phone. Strange.
Same here. No idea why. Maybe Android is making my comments look robotic.
Ha ! Was trying to agree with you, and it just did it to me again.
Maybe Android is making my comments appear robotic…
Ha ! Just did it to me twice as I was trying to agree with you.
Android making ny comments look robotic, maybe?
I have gotten that a lot too. Also I tried in vain to attach some images to a comment in the 1977 Pontiac article a few days ago.
Thank you Paul for looking in to this. The CC community appreciates your hard work.
How does one know if one is waiting for Godot, sorry, waiting for goodly approval? I just now had my bloviating comment in Roger Carr’s new post evaporate, and I don’t know if it is patiently sweating in a queue or if the re-typing I just did is now a double-up?
I just checked, it seems have gone directly into the trash, so your retyping was not wasted effort. Apparently there are still issues to address.
Sometimes I have the ability to edit and delete other people’s posts. I never touch them, but that does seem like a system error.
Ah yes, I’ve seen that also.
I’ve seen that situation several times in the last few months…
I’ve seen that once, but when I tried to make a (trivial) edit it wouldn’t let me save it.
Sometimes when entering a new comment the edit/delete option doesn’t appear. Strangely, I can usually make it appear by responding to my own comment, revising the original comment, then deleting the extra response.
Something I have done to address the “posting too fast” is copy before submitting, and leave the text in a notepad. So, if you get the bad news, you’ll just wait instead of getting frustrated and deciding not to post that text. Of course, I’m doing that with this text also.
Interestingly I tried something like that a couple of days ago. On my first attempt I got the “posting too fast” error. On my subsequent attempts to copy, paste, and repost my post just disappeared into the ether until I just gave up. I assume the spam filter interpreted my repeated attempts to post the exact same text as spam-like behavior.
It’s more than likely. I have also experienced that…and had to give up until next day.
On the subject of spam, is there anything that can be done about the “spam images” that seem to be showing up in the Cohort more frequently now? I assume you know the ones I’m talking about — pictures of an attractive woman posing somewhere with a caption in the description about how she sells stuff on her website (Because I’m sure the woman in the pictures is the actual person running the website…)? They seem to be included in a bunch of random groups, which happen to include the Cohort. I know this is really more Flickr’s problem than yours, but I’m just curious if you are aware of anything Flickr might be doing to combat the problem. As someone who occasionally browses the Cohort I just want to yell “Hey, you’re not a car!” at the woman in those pictures.