Hi Dr. Voisin,

I appreciate the comment you left on my blog at http://wbobr.com.

I agree that the Akismet filter can be a bit of a challenge for a commenter and for blog owners as well. However, in my case I have found it does more good than bad.

My blog is set up in such a way that any comments that are rejected by Akismet are not automatically removed. Instead, they are placed in either a pending or spam queue where I am able to review them and make a final decision on if they will be posted or not. Surprisingly, even though they were flagged, I still allow more than 80% to be posted. Only comments that are blatant spam, in very poor taste, or that add nothing whatsoever to the value of the reader are removed. I allow opposing views because I myself do not trust commentary that is always a 100% positive. We live in a world where people disagree or have their own take on things and I look at those comments as an opportunity to learn.

Once again, I thank you for the heads up and want to assure you that any person wishing to add to the conversation is welcome to comment. If their comment is flagged by Akismet, I will personally review the comment within a few days.

SherryD

Let me explain.

With few exceptions, our business graduate students have been rejected by sites using Akismet.

All it takes is one request from a blogger anywhere for Akismet to ban any home site, whether the blogger is delivering spam or not. (None of our graduate students deliver spam. They are very intelligent commenters who like and enjoy your site, but have stopped visiting here, because Akismet is blocking them on your behalf.)

I am taking the time to write this because I believe your blog to be of high quality, and one from which both you and our graduate students would profit.

If you wish to have our grad students resume visiting your blog, please e-mail me at the College at avoisin@lindachristas.org, and I will place you on our faculty chart as a welcoming blog.

However, Akismet will have to lift the ban on ToysPeriod for you, or you will have to unplug your blog from Akismet.

The person to write to is Alex Shiel at Akismet at support@akismet.com

If you have not blocked ToyPeriod personally, that is even worse. Akismet has been known to universalize blocking.

That is, if one blogger anywhere reports a home page as spam, from then on, ANY person using that website as home page is blocked.

I do hope to hear from you.

If you ever wish to monetize your blog, Akismet will at some time or another have to be disconnected. Otherwise, as with our grad students, visitors will continue to be blocked, even if it is the first time they have ever visited your good site.

Dr. Ann Voisin
Linda Christas College