Larvatus Prodeo

Firstly, do not assume that this is necessarily something directed at you personally. Most essentially: do not immediately repost your comment - the reason is explained below in the spam-filter section.

Secondly, email the blog administrators or post author directly rather than complain on the blog. Complaints disrupt the flow of discussion and if no one from the LP collective is online to moderate, we won’t see those comments anyway, so they are pointless.

As explained in the Comments Policy, LPers manually moderate comments and sometimes place vexatious commenters in permanent moderation if judged necessary. However, active moderation is not always, or even most commonly, the explanation for a comment which disappears.

If your comment disappears as soon as you post it, not showing up in the Recent Comments section of the sidebar for even a moment, then you have been caught up by an automated process, not an active moderator. If you have the bad luck to be caught by the spam filter, it may take some time to discover your comment in there.

Automoderation filter

The Moderation filter automatically sequesters comments which contain certain trigger words or too many links. This feature is a necessary one, even though some well-intentioned comments that use those trigger words or supply abundant links are also caught. The Wordpress software should inform you if your comment has been placed in automoderation immediately your comment is submitted. If you know you are going to be discussing a topic which uses trigger words that the automod filter dislikes, the use of strategic asterisks can help your comment get through.

Automoderated comments remain in moderation until one of the LP collective finds time to log on and sort through the moderation queue. Although we are very fond of LP, we do not live for LP, and are certainly not paid by LP, therefore offline life does occasionally interfere with prompt attention to the moderation queue, particularly on weekends. Please be patient - these comments will be released as soon as possible.

Spam filter

If you don’t receive a message that your disappeared comment has been placed in moderation, then it has probably been caught by the spam filter. We do aim to clear the spam bucket regularly: again, please be patient.

We use the Akismet spam filter, which is a third-party spam filter accessed via wordpress.com. We have no control over the Akismet algorithm, which responds to the pattern of comments received by all forums on the web which use Akismet as well as the particular patterns of this one site. Akismet regards repetitive comments from a single poster as one of the prime signs of spamming, therefore it is very unwise to repost and repost your comment in the hope that it will appear: all that will happen is that Akismet will flag you as a spammer and start placing all your comments in the spam bucket. As your comments are despammed by us, the Akismet algorithm will eventually “learn” that you are not a spammer, however this usually takes several days, even several weeks, so don’t repost your comment.

Wading through the spam bucket is a chore much more tedious than checking the moderation queue as the ratio of revolting and mindnumbing spam to genuine comments runs at least 20 to one (sometimes 100 to one) and the number of comments held in the spam filter does not show up in the first page of the admin interface, so we have to remember to go and check it. A polite and cheerful request for us to go check the spam bucket is likely to be attended to much more promptly than an accusatory demand: we are only human.

Rare Exceptions

Very occasionally, an inoffensive comment disappears entirely, not hiding in either the mod queue or the spam bucket. In those cases, the most likely scenarios are

1. that the comment was in the spam bucket earlier and was overlooked as a genuine comment while wading through the spam, and thus inadvertently got deleted with the rest. We work hard to avoid these errors, but they do occasionally occur, and all we can offer is our apologies.
2. there has been a server hiccup somewhere in the intertubes, and the comment just got eaten by a grue.

Recovery by you of automoderated/spaminated/lost comments

If you’re quick enough off the mark, your comment can usually be recovered by you only, by using your browser’s back button to return to the page when you were composing the comment (this may not work in all browsers) and using the right-click menu of your mouse to copy the text. This you can now save to a text editor and keep it on hand - then you cannot lose it again as you further navigate the perilous highways and byways of commenting. As explained in the spam filter section above, just remember to not immediately repost it!