Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Where is Ramya?

Ramya over at Ramya's bookshelf has recently disappeared. What!?!
NOTE: if you don't want to read all of the process, and are only interested in the conclusion, scroll down to the conclusion at the bottom of the post.
Yeah, nothing serious though...but you will get this message if you go to her blog:

Blog has been removed

Sorry, the blog at ramyasbookshelf.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.


I emailed Ramya after several people contacted me about her blog being gone when they went to check it and this is what she said:

hey bethany!
well, blogger classified my blog as "spam blog" and has blocked it temporarily.. they just wanted a confirmation from me to make sure it is not spam.. i have no idea why they did that!
it should be back in action either today or by tomorrow..will keep you updated!:)
Ramya.

So I went to find out about these spam blogs, and blogger has an algorithm it uses to see if someone's blog is a spam blog. Here is what blogger had to say for itself anyway:

Why is my blog disabled?

If your blog is disabled, it will be listed on your Dashboard, but you will not be able to click on it to access it. If this is the case, there will be a grace period during which you can request that it be reviewed and recovered. The disabling is a result of our automated classification system marking it as spam. Because this system is automated there will necessarily be some false positives, though we're continually working on improving our algorithms to avoid these. If your blog is not a spam blog, then it was one of the false positives, and we apologize.

What are spam blogs?

As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.

http://brettduncan.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/spam-c07.jpg

Conclusion of all that jibber-jabber:
Why am I posting this super-long thing about this. Well, because I was contacted several times with "what happened to Ramya?", and then I got worried it was because she got rid of comment verification (my fault). I was worried that my movement (haha!) "Kill Word Verification" was hurting my fellow bloggers. But now I see that that had nothing to do with it, and I feel a tad bit better (since she will be back today or tomorrow). I am therefore sad that Ramya's blog was classified a spam blog, but relieved to see that it was not due to her getting spam comments from disabling word verification (what I originally thought) but it meant that they were curious about her links. So it still stands, just do it:



19 comments:

Darlene said...

I had emailed her as well. Glad to hear she will be back in action tomorrow because - YIKES- what would we do without you Ramya!!!

bethany (dreadlock girl) said...

I know!!!! what would we do!?!?!!?

Darlene said...

And you know what else---they need a way better system of classifying spam blogs than an automated one. Geez, you could get booted that way for any number of reasons. Ok, I'm off my soap box for a bit but that's maddening. I understand that a lot of blogs out there may be spam but geez shouldn't somebody be checking these things out before they boot you.

avisannschild said...

I've got to agree with Dar, it's crazy that a blog that's so clearly NOT spam could get shut down so easily. I hope Ramya's back online soon!

Anonymous said...

"irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text"

I could see me getting the boot for that, but not Ramya!

bethany (dreadlock girl) said...

Dar- yes it does seem strange. Yet, it is free service, right? I don't know, when I thought of that it made me feel better. Does it you?

avisannchild-we could all chant: bring Ramya back! brink Ramya back!

softdrink- hhahahah!!! I laughed so hard when I saw what you said. Haha. I feel like I should have been closed down LONG ago :)

Darlene said...

Yeh, I never thought of that Bethany-it's free, who are you going to employ to monitor it-good point.

I'm still busy busting a gut over softdrink's comment about her own blog.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for updating us about this, Bethany! I went to her site last night and was sad to not see it there.

Ladytink_534 said...

Spam blogs are awful! I've had a few visit me. Some people can get your blog temporarily banned too.

Sandra said...

My son's been through this more than once at Blogger and it's awful waiting for them to declare you a legitimate blog again. His is just called "popular fiction", he writes humourous family stories and book reviews. I'm on Blogger now and dreading it happening to me too. It's impossible to know what reason they have for doing this because they don't give you any. And it still happens after you've been there a couple of years too. Not a thing you can do about it. Poor Ramya.

Anonymous said...

thanks for the post bethany!:) i am soo frustrated with this whole deal.. and i was going to post about this whole spam blog business as soon as i was back in action.. but looks like you got ahead!:)
and thank you all for missing me:)i hope none of you ever have to go through this ordeal!!
lol softdrink!! you totally crack me up!!
dar/bethany - the classification of a blog as a spam blog is automatic..but if you contest the decision, then their verification is manual. I guess a "human" goes over your blog to confirm it is not a spam blog and then they grant access back to you.. until then i am helpless! but i am glad, they have that human verification part:)

Unknown said...

Hey Bethany, thanks for this post!!! I was about to email Ramya today to check where she disappeared.. been trying to access her link since last nite! Glad to know she will be back in action soon! :)

Anonymous said...

:-)

Thanks Bethany!! :-)

I was worried about er blog and didn't know her id! SO asked you :-)

Welcome back Ramya!

I would love you to spam my reader ;)

hehhe!

Serena said...

I wonder what that means for the rest of us? Will we soon be classified as spam?

Anna said...

Thanks for posting this, Bethany! I was just wondering what happened to Ramya's blog.

I was a contributor to a blog that was deleted. Who deleted it you might ask? Well no one knows and Blogger wouldn't shed any light on the situation.

Anyway, ever since that happened, my profile has been broken. I've contacted them about fixing it, but the person in their help center gave me a link to a form but told me not to expect anything to change unless a lot of people had the same profile problem. Wonderful!

But it's free, and as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

--Anna
http://diaryofaneccentric.blogspot.com

bethany (dreadlock girl) said...

she is STILL not back!!!! ahhhh.

Anonymous said...

Poor Ramya, she is still not back.

How frustrating. Sheesh, I'd be so ticked off at Blogger right now.

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said...

When will she be back? I emailed her last week when I tried to leave a comment on her blog and couldn't, and she mentioned that it would be up soon again. But I've been out of town and still no Ramya?? :( If you hear anything let us know--and Ramya--we miss you!

Darlene said...

No, still no Ramya. I tried again this morning and her blog still isn't up. Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg-how frustrating for her. Besides that we all miss her!