Wednesday, January 3, 2018

How to check your Blogger Comment folders

Good morning friends. I have been told by some blogging friends that they were not aware of the S***" folder in the Blogger dashboard. Pictured above is a screenshot of mine. This is not in your email account, it is found in your Blogger dashboard after you log in. Your email account filters are another subject entirely.

Let's look closely. It is circled in lime color to see. First, select Comments. There will be three folders appear below that: Published, Awaiting Moderation, and, yes, S***. If you don't use Comment Moderation, that folder will not appear in your dashboard. Next, notice that there are several comments in that S***" folder list. Of course I am not going to Publish any of them, I checked one of the boxes beside one just for an example. Next, below the checked comment, you can select the text link Delete, or the text link Not S***. If the comment is in fact Not S***, like from a friend, simply select the Not S*** text. Next, select Not S*** from the top of that list.

This is how we can train the filters to not flag a person's comments as S*** in the future. There is no other way to repair this. Only by doing this enough times, with enough of that person's comments, will filters eventually be trained. If someone could un-flag theirself, that would defeat the reason for [necessary] filters. This is what research and experience has taught me.

So, how do comments end up in this dreaded folder? Well, comments can be flagged by false positive, meaning by accident due to the wording within the comment. Thus, the comment will appear as S*** to the filters. Since filters do not study each person individually, this can happen. It is very upsetting, as when it recently happened to me. Thank you all for checking my comments as Not S*** and for doing it in the future. The situation is not much better now, as I still cannot comment pretty much any of your blogs. How long does it take to get filters trained? Who knows. After all, we cannot get into the minds of computer algorithms.

Sometimes, even the most innocent sounding of words can get someone flagged. Words such as "welcome", "friend", "giveaway", "pretty", etc... can trigger filters. While it would be nearly impossible to comment without using adjectives, it's good to not overuse them. Including links to an email address or another blog/site in a comment can also trigger those filters. The use of emoticons/symbols and slang words like "lol", "sil" ,"ha ha" can also read as S***. Commenting or attempting to multiple times on the same post can also get someone flagged. Yes, some innocent people do get flagged. It's time to be proactive, though. Let's do something to educate and help ourselves.

Let's just all be more careful about what we type in our comments. Let's all just check that S*** folder regularly, and mark comments from friends that are indeed Not S*** as such. We also need to mark any comments that are S*** as such if the filters miss them. Seriously consider turning on Comment Moderation to keep true S*** comments from publishing directly to your blog. Keep in mind that, without any filters, the internet would be truly dangerous. Nearly all major platforms have filters in place for everyone's protection. Hopefully, this information will be helpful to us all. To read about more internet safety suggestions, please visit the page on this blog that I wrote a while back: Safe Blogging Tips. Prim New Year's blessings.

Blessings, Danice G.

3 comments:

Vicki in MN said...

Thank you for this information, I had never checked mine, just did and found only one of them that was a friend., the rest S***. Do you know how to actually get the word verification to work in blogger? I found it,set it(I thought) but it doesn't seem to work.

Danice G said...

Hello Vicki. You are welcome. To turn Comment Moderation on, look in Settings:Post, Comments, and Sharing. You can choose Always or Sometimes. Be sure to Save Settings once you've done that. Clearing your browser history will allow the most current versions of all web pages. I just made a comment on your blog, and am now following your blog as well. Comment Moderation did not appear.

Danice G said...

Oh, my bad Vicki. You asked about Word Verification. It is also in Settings: Posts, Comments, and Sharing. Show Word Verification is just below Comment Moderation. Choose yes, and Save Settings.