Thursday, March 29, 2007

[Blogger] Disappearing Comments

I am certainly not paranoid or anything but something really weird happened to me yesterday. Some of you may know that brief references to me were plonked in an article about how unethical amateur online restaurant reviewers are in last week's SF Chronicle. As if that wasn't enough attention from the press for one year, The Chron's Food Critic picked on me again in his blog on Monday, highlighting one of the comments I had made in my own post about Sunday's article.

His blog was then picked up and commented on Serious Eats which I read and noticed the following line:

"1 The comments section of Breach's entry taking the story to task seems to have been removed. Here's the cached page from Google."

"Huh?", I thought to myself? I haven't removed the comments. I hadn't touch the post for several days and hadn't myself noticed the comments were missing because I tend to read them through email. I edited the post and sure enough, both the comments and backlinks had been switched off.

How is this possible. I know with 100% certainty I did not turn off my comments. It's very strange that it should happen on a post where the comments were slightly controversial - it makes me look like I was trying to hide them on purpose. I just can't understand how this could possibly have happened. Has anyone else ever encountered something similar?




This Post was written by Sam from Becks Posh

12 comments:

Cate said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cate said...

Removed other comment - had typo.

Quite the controversy stirring up - bad memories of Cheese Sandwiches. ;)

As far as the comments, I am quite certain that Blogger/Google can go in and do whatever they want. Another blogger and I co-write/run a non-food blog, and Blogger/Google actually deleted an entire post on us. Long story, but it has happened.

Unknown said...

How ironic that it happened on this post, of all of them. I noticed it yesterday and thought maybe your comments had gotten out of control and you'd had to turn them off. Sorry that happened - and I wish I could be helpful with this one!

Susan said...

I've had a slightly different comments problem. When I started blogging 5 weeks ago, I had a default setting that allowed comments and backtracks for all posts. Fine enough. Now, for the last several posts, I noticed random posts did NOT allow comments or backtracks when I checked on them right after publishing. I didn't change any of my settings. So I had to go back in and edit the particular posts and manually tick the allow comments and republish. I realize at this point I have very little readership, but I don't want to blow anyone off by implying I don't want their comments. I certainly do. So now I have to add this manual task with each and every post. I feel like I have to make sure the radio is turned off in the car to keep the battery from running out. Very annoying.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good case made for one to be "master of their own domain", figuratively and literally. I didn't know that sort of shenanigans happened with blogger (no reason to think either way) but they obviously have more control over a blogger blog than does the author. The needs of the corporation and shareholders will trump the needs of the TOS-constrained author, one of millions.

Ilva said...

Nika-there's no need to be so drastic and change from Blogger, it's enough to get a comment service like Haloscan so that the comments aren't linked to Blogger.

nika said...

Ilva: excellent!

I didnt even know about such a thing (because it didnt really bother me when I was on blogger to have the comments the way they were).

Trig said...

I've seen a problem with Blogger recently causing it to switch off comments and backlinks. I haven't seen it on posts already published, but it happens sometimes on new posts. There's nothing wrong with your html, but Blogger refuses to publish, reporting that comments options have not been selected. And one of my posts got published with comments switched off. I don't know if this is what's happened to you.

Unknown said...

Happened to me too, a few weeks ago. Now it's fine. Go figure.

Kalyn Denny said...

Sam, I hadn't previously had problems, but it just happened to me today. I didn't change any settings, but I posted a new post. When I hadn't gotten any comments for several hours, I noticed that the comments link wasn't showing. I went back into the post in dashboard, and both the comments and backlinks were switched off. I know I didn't change anything. (I would have had to accidentally change two settings for this to happen.)

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