Saturday
Jan142012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Moderation in most things
Jan 14, 2012 Blogs Squarespace appear to have broken the commenting system again, this time in a way that may be terminal. There has apparently been a change to the spam filter. The result of this is that a significant proportion (perhaps a third?) of comments are ending up in the moderation queue.
I've sat and watched the queue for couple of hours, and am going to take a break. So if your comment disappears, you will at least know what happened. I apologise for the inconvenience.
I was supposed to be working on the book tonight.
Not happy.
Reader Comments (18)
I got the moderator message but as The Moderator of the General Assembly of Church of Scotland is a Minister or Elder of the Church of Scotland. I assumed it was you Bish.
Is it retribution from the High Moderator for the video in the previou post?
If not, it should be!
Ain't technology wonderful? Are we back to the "page reset" problem yet? The recent "new and improved" captcha form is unreadable by someone with eye problems.
Jan 15, 2012 at 3:41 AM | Don Pablo de la Sierra
I don't think I have an eye problem but I find some captcha impossible these days. There must be a better way, maybe mixing an easier captcha with a simple maths problem or question. I assume the easier captchas are being broken then for them to need to do this kind of thing.
captcha form is unreadable by someone with eye problems.
Jan 15, 2012 at 3:41 AM | Don Pablo de la Sierra
Glad its not only me Don! I also tried the sound version but old age means failing hearing as well! as eyesight :-(
The answer is wordpress.
Moderation should be practiced in all things, but not to excess.....
Are anyone's comments getting through at all?
Commiserations, bish!
As in all things technological (yeah, I know - sweeping statement unsupported, but hey, it's Sunday so be lenient ...), there finally arrives the point where everything will be a "Schlechtverbesserung", as the Germans say.
(Schlechtverbesserung = 'bad betterment', or making things worse by trying to make them better)
Shub - my comment above went through without a hitch, and no captchas either.
Still can't get the'notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail to work, but then, what is perfect in this imperfect world ...
;-)
I don't really worry if the moderators are after me, it is drawing the attention of the procurator fiscal that I worry about.
Rob Burton
I don't think I have an eye problem but I find some captcha impossible these days.
Just wait a few more years :)
I spend several minutes trying to figure some of them out. Particularly the twisted ones.
I think I might write a computer image processing program to figure them out so that I can get them right. Then I will post it on Hacker.com
Shub
Yes! Zed's comments are getting through on Unthreaded.
Sod's Law at work!
More than that Mike, Zed is also getting on the regular posts
More on Soon Review
Jan 15, 2012 at 2:24 PM | Unregistered CommenterZedsDeadBed
It would appear that it is a clever subterfuge to distract the Bishop.
I recall reading somewhere that the rather tricky second part of the Captchas was google using the world at large to decipher those parts of scanned documents that it's own software couldn't discern. In which case I'd object quite strongly to their use, as I don't think Google should be allowed to assume rights over all historical literature.
On the other hand, since the captcha has to know what answer to expect, then that can't be true.
Where's the aspirin? ... or the beer?
Re: Cumbrian Lad
It could be true.
Even if Google couldn't decipher it fully they would be able to make a reasonable guess. All they would have to do then is calculate the Levenshtein distance (or some similar metric) between your guess and Google's guess and if it falls within an acceptable distance then your guess is accepted. With enough people deciphering the captcha google could then pick the most popular guess and use that for the deciphered text.
BH
It seems to be embedded links that triggers it.
Haven't tried with raw links, so let's see:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/1/14/moderation-in-most-things.html#comments
Well, that went through fine.