Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Gates of Vienna blocked by Blogger

Here's a message GoV's Baron Bodissey left in the comments to his latest post on GoV:

------------------------------------------------
I just attempted to post at Gates of Vienna, and was told by an automatic message that our blog is suspected of being a spam blog, and has been blocked by Blogger.

The full text of the message:

“This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts.”

And here’s what Blogger says about what we are suspected of:

“What Are Spam Blogs?

“As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.”

I followed Blogger’s instructions, typed in the visible letters to prove that I was not a bot, and am now awaiting a response from the Powers That Be.

In the meantime, I can’t even post a notice at Gates of Vienna bout what is going on.

If you don’t think Gates of Vienna is a spam blog (and assuming that your blog has not also been blocked by Blogger), please post a notice about what has happened. If you know of a way to contact Blogger or Google, please let them know that Gates of Vienna is *not* a spam blog, regardless of how politically incorrect it is.

That’s: http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com

Thank you.
7/17/2007 9:46 PM
-------------------------------------------------------

GoV is not a spam blog, but its messages may be not exactly the kind that the Special Envoy on Racism and Xenophobia of the Useless Nations might want to read. Let's hope that it's a genuine mistake, caused by all trackbacks to and from GoV, and that there's not a more sinister reason. Given earlier information, obtained from (a.o.) FoeHammer's Anvil, I'm not too sure.

2 comments:

Beach Girl said...

R. Hartman, I see you already know about the Gates.

Foehammer said...

I cross-posted this on the Anvil.