Trouble Posting Comments at ChuckTV?

And now for some housekeeping:

In the last few weeks, I’ve had a few emails from Chucksters saying that when they tried to leave comments on a post, they got the dreaded “You’ve been blacklisted” response from the comment system. Naturally this provoked concern and confusion. We have a fairly robust anti-spam plugin plus manually customized restrictions to combat that oodles of spam that tries to pollute this site. Yes, even though updates are much fewer and far-betweener since Chuck is off the air, the spambots are still trying to post their junk. January and February were particularly active months for spammers: currently, there are 3,080 comments in the spam folder.

There are very few individuals on the blacklist, and none of those who emailed me are among that handful of people. I am looking into what specifically is generating that “blacklisted” comment for y’all, but in the meantime, here are some hints for leaving a comment that doesn’t trigger the spam filter:

• It must be long, but not too long. Comments consisting of 4 or 5 words or less are pretty much guaranteed to trigger the filter. Ditto comments that are more than 100 words.
• No swearing. 
• Avoid trigger words like “blog”, “gold”, “replica”, “escort”, brand names, or anything having to do with dieting. Those words are frequently found in spam comments and are on the blacklist.
• Spread your comments out over several minutes. If you try to post several comments in a short amount of time, the software will think you’re a spammer and shut you out.

As always, we appreciate your comments and interest in the information posted. Keep these guidelines in mind, and you ought to be able to contribute to discussions. I will continue to look at specific triggers to see if something particularly restrictive has been added during recent updates as well.

(Article image chosen to represent spammers holding up the good guys. 😀)