MY FIRST GLITCH
I've just experienced my first glitch on this site, and I'll remember it as my first kiss though probably not as much as the first time I had sex!
Over the last two days, several comments/replies from JN, Smarty and Joy haven't shown up on my blog posts. Despite getting email notifications showing their comments/replies they don't appear on my blog posts.
Yesterday I was hoping it was a temporary glitch, but it has happened again today. So I decided to report the glitch to the site. I clicked the circled question mark in the top right hand corner here on the site.
Here you can either seek help from or send feedback to the site. There seemed to be two sources of help offered. One was from the site itself by clicking 'visit help forum'. This took me to Blogger's Help Center where there was plenty of advice on how to set up a blog, create a blog post, add images and videos to blog posts, etc. I didn't read any of this advice as it didn't look relevant to solving my problem.
I then went to the second source of help offered by clicking 'Ask the Help Community'. It seems this isn't run by the site itself but is run by volunteers offering help to members, sounds a bit like the Club 7 and Live from AFF groups on AFF. The Help Community tries to offer help within 24 hours. I sent a message off - that task was easy. After a couple of hours I've already received an emailed reply from Adam the Diamond Product Expert. He wanted a bit more information about what blog posts were affected and whether the no-show comments appeared on my 'Comments' dashboard. I'll reply to him after I've submitted this blog post. (I've also got to give Adam the Diamond Product Expert my URL address - this could be my escape route out of the AFF bubble here!)
It seems this site doesn't have a dedicated Site Support group to which members can report problems. To me, this isn't a problem as AFF's Site Support group isn't at all fit for purpose.
Have you experienced any glitches on this site?
I feel quite pleased with myself, given my limited IT skills, that I managed to get that far in trying to fix the glitch.
While rummaging around the site to get help, I found out via Google's Terms of Use what the site's position is on intellectual property rights. Though the site can use content posted here as they see fit, the site informs its members:
"Your contents remains yours, which means that you retain any intellectual property rights that you have in your content.... We need your permission if your intellectual property rights restrict our use of your content. You provide Google with that permission through this license."
As far as I understand, this means that both Google and each blogger can do what they like with any content posted here. That deal sounds roughly fair to me. This Google deal, I think, is a much better deal offered by AFF where all content posted was legally owned by the site.
Below is Guy Venables' cartoon depicting Prince Harry quite recently in a British court.
I haven't experienced any glitches that I know of, there was the third party cookie issue that some were and may still be struggling with, but that's not a glitch. That's a setting.
ReplyDeleteI prefer the Terms here over AFF. I own the content and google can also use the content. On AFF? They owned the content and can also use the content.
There may not be a built in audience like the other place. Would you rather have a thousand viewers where some are possibly fabricated by a site, or ten who actually read what you write and respond thoughtfully?
I know my answer. ;)
Give me real over fabricated any day of the month.
DeleteI get the impression that over on AFF if anyone's mouse got a few inches from a blog post link that would count as a view!
I just always found the differences in views fascinating. They didn't always make sense.
DeleteI also think on AFF that if someone opened one blog post that would count as a view of all blog posts on that page. That would account why my viewed blog post was my private mailbox always pinned to the top.
DeleteWouldn't surprise me. There were a lot of games being played with the numbers. And, now that they implemented that whole thing where gold members blog posts will rate higher in the algorithm, that's just going to mess with it more.
DeleteThe site was and is getting increasingly desperate, suggesting it's not doing well financially.
DeleteI have a friend who blogs on Wordpress and he recently told me bloggers are up in arms there because Wordpress signed a deal to allow an AI developer access to their content - I assume the AI will be crawling all of the blogs for information and writing styles.
ReplyDeleteWhich I think gives some insight into why AI often gives out bad information! It's not like blogs are fact checked.
I can well understand WordPress bloggers won't be happy with that AI deal. There's one thing a blogging site using a blogger's words for their own purposes - at least the blogger knows who wrote them, but another thing to have your words used in some AI mash-up. :)
DeleteI totally get why they're mad. But, I think this will happen regardless of where you go at this point.
DeleteAI is on the march, it's just a shame that governments are one or two steps behind in setting up a regulatory framework.
DeleteThe three laws of robotics, as proposed by Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer and academic, wouldn't be a such a bad place to start for such regulatory control of AI.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
STOP PRESS.
ReplyDeleteI have now retrieved all the no-show comments. Adam the Diamond Product Expert gave me the answer to what went wrong.
It seems that all the no-show comments/replied were spammed despite email notifications to the contrary. I didn't spam them so it remains a mystery whey they were spammed.
If this happens to anyone else, all you have to do is to go to your 'Comments' dashboard, scroll down to find the no-show comment/reply, click the grey tick-box to unspam it and then the comment/reply will show up on your blog post.
I am now officially an IT genius with a little bit of help from a diamond product expert.
The Help Community are good here.
I'm confused. The site automatically flagged them as spam? Somebody reported them as spam?
DeleteI have to assume the site or Bow here did it accidentally since there's no way to mark anything as spam for a reader of the blog that I can find.
DeleteAll I can say is that I definitely didn't report the comments/replies as spam because they didn't show up in the first place for me to inadvertently do that. Though my IT skills aren't good, I do know how to reply to comments/replies if they had showed up without reporting them as spam.
DeleteGiven that no one else can report comments/replies on my blog posts as spam, I can only assume the site is responsible for the no-show comments/replies.
Then there you go, the site marked it as spam erroneously.
DeleteI scrolled through my comments and found a couple that were marked as spam. Thanks for the heads up. I didn't see any reason why the comments would've been marked as spam, tho. So weird.
ReplyDeleteI'm 'pleased' the problem of no-show comments/replies isn't confined just to my blog.
DeleteIt seems that the site is the cause of spammed comments/replies. It is weird because, as you say, the spammed comments/replies comply with the site's Community Guidelines etc.
I am glad they got back to you and found out what the glitch was. Thanks for giving us the heads up here in case it happens to us and or you again.. As for AI, you know my thoughts on that. Makes me glad I am not on AFF anymore, just in case they are there and possibly having my poems taken by them..
ReplyDeleteI don't want to unduly alarm you but Google is almost certainly well ahead of AFF in the AI game!
DeleteJoy, I'm sorry to say, I have to agree with Bow. Google is far ahead of AFF on the AI front.
DeleteI hope I never find my work on any sites, yet feel you are both correct..Sucks! big time..
DeleteDon't apologize Deb. Makes me believe you are Canadian..LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I started to post yesterday about the word "Sorry" due to our convo. yesterday, but tabled it until Monday..lol.
DeleteConsidering how close to Sarnia I grew up (thirty minute drive), it wouldn't be all that surprising that I sound as though I could be Canadian. ;)
Delete"Sorry" Deb but so totally forgot that fact as I remember you telling me about that at one time...lol. You are indeed as close to Canadian as one can get...lol.
DeleteI will be honest I just haven't been posting on here. But I really haven't been posting on the other site either. I have been working and talking with a friend and just relaxing after work.
ReplyDeleteI am trying to spend less time on the computer.
I understand but you've missed some classic blog posts here!
Delete