Wednesday, May 14, 2008

I Am In A Bad Mood! (Updated)

For the most part, I want to keep this blog positive. But I am in a bad mood right now thanks to the good folks at Blogger.

I was working on a blog for a friend (who I've just sent an email to. I wonder if she'll read here first.) and that blog has been removed. I did not delete this blog. I did back most everything up. I don't know why it was removed or by whom. It's just gone. It's not at its URL and it's not in my dashboard anymore. The page I was working on when I stepped away for a few hours is STILL open in my browser (to prove I'm in the right place!) but it no longer works because it's really just a "ghost" of a page. A page that loaded before but is no longer really there. If I try to refresh that page or click on anything there I get an error message:

Blog has been removed
Sorry, the blog at [the URL I was working on] has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.

Did you expect to see your blog here? See: 'I can't find my blog on the Web, where is it?'
But possibly the most frustrating thing is that I don't even have an email from Blogger saying "We yanked this blog, and here's why." I mean if there's a reason, tell me! I am a very reasonable and cooperative person. I've read the Terms Of Service, and though I cannot find anything in there that I could have violated, if there was something problematic with that blog in some way, I would gladly make whatever adjustments were necessary. But I can't do that if they don't tell me what it is!

I've already written to Blogger. I'm sure I'll hear back in oh... six months. I could put up a new blog and start all over with the stuff I saved, but until I know why and how that first one disappeared, I don't want to do another one and have that disappear too! I mean if I don't know why it was removed, then how do I know if another blog I'm working on is going to be removed too! Or even this one?!

It's VERY FRUSTRATING!

And no, it did not have porn!

GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!

Updated at 11:59 PM:

Ok it seems that some overzealous bot thought the site was spam. SPAM??? I don't even have a PICTURE of spam on that site!

I've submitted a request for a review by a human being, and if I don't hear back within 4 days there's a secondary request I can submit. I've also posted to the help forum and asked for information on what exactly was considered spam. Besides the main menu, there were no links on any of those pages! How the heck can I spam people when there's no links? That'd have to be the worst spam site in the world! So really, now I'm insulted, because not only do they think I programmed a spam site, but they think I programmed a bad spam site!

The good news is that at least now I know what happened. What I don't know is why. Hopefully a human being can lend some insight.

And for the record, I have nothing against robots. I met my first AI interface when I was ten years old and I have two bots of my own (yes I do.) It's not the robot I want an answer from. It's the human beings who programmed it!

Oh, and for anyone who's wondering, while I was searching around trying to find out what could have possibly caused that site to be pulled, I found out that porn IS allowed on Blogger.

 

9 Comments:

Nora said...

How frustrating! I hope my blog is not in peril...

MP said...

Breath in...breath out...

Crazy stuff!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Whao, I went to go visit my blogger friend's Val site and it was gone poof! too. Wonder what happened. She's a fantastic blogger.

Can your friend's site be restored??

Melissa said...

Nora: Post porn on your site. Because apparently that's ok. ;)

MP & Abbie: I started breathing better once I figured out it was mistaken for spam, which means that it should be easy enough to have blogger restore it once they have a human check it.(Since it's not spam!) The question is when.

I could restore the pages myself right now with the backups (though not at that URL because it's locked until they check it.) but I'd like to know what triggered the spam bot first. There were THREE pages on there. That's all! Three pages that linked NOWHERE -except for the main navigation menu.

Abbie: Does your friend Val know? I might not have known if I hadn't been working on it. I didn't get any kind of "we took this blog down" notification.

Vanessa said...

How frustrating!

Alice said...

haha... well this is good news, i have so much porn i've been wanting to post. i'd been holding off only because i thought i'd be booted. not so! :-)

Tania said...

Nothing worse than being accused of posting bad spam.

Melissa said...

Mac: I know, right? I mean at least accuse me of programming a really clever brilliant site! Not a SPAM site that doesn't SPAM properly! ;)

Melissa said...

Vanessa: Yes it is! It's still not back up.

Alice: Be sure to let me know when you do that ;)