Me, a Spam Blog?

WhatEVerrrrrr.

Yesterday, Blogger locked my blog because they thought it was a spam blog. Blogger says spam blogs are characterized by irrelevant, repetitive and nonsensical text with many links often to the same site.

Consider yourself warned: irrelevant, repetitive and nonsensical text is coming right up.

The day started out shit, literally, when our cat shat on our bedroom carpet, and continued that way. After work, Swee'pea had a meltdown at the daycare when I tried to put all his winter clothes on for the 10-minute walk home, and I couldn't cave because it was minus 13 celsius without the wind chill. His screaming rached boiling point when I wrestled him into the stroller against his will and bumped over the barely plowed sidewalk. He literally screamed all the way home. That does wacky things to an already stretched-too-thin mother: I joined his screaming from time to time in my finest mothering moment yet. I just panicked, because it was the only way home and I wasn't convinced he was dressed warmly enough and I didn't want to waste time putting his toque back on over and over and over again or pleading with him to stop crying so the tears wouldn't freeze on his cheeks.

I was pretty drained and ashamed by the time we made it home and Swee'pea melted down again, screaming for his doodoo then screaming louder when I brought it to him. Finally, he collapsed into my arms, doodoo in mouth, and I checked my email with him on my lap. Which was when I found out that Blogger had locked my blog:

Dear Blogger user,

This is a message from the Blogger team.

Your blog has been identified as a potential spam blog. For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577.

You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog. To request a review, please fill out the form found here: http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=31853698

We will take a look at your blog and unlock it within four business days. Please note that if we do not hear from you within 20 days, we will remove your blog. If this blog does not belong to you, then you do not have to do anything. Any other blogs you may have will not be affected.

Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not spam. We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this erroneous result. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to users like you instead of to spammers.

Thank you for your understanding and for your help in our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

I responded immediately, because I'd already posted four posts using their visual verification test AND requested a human review to remove that damn visual verification. When I went to their little help page and saw that my blog got caught by some sort of filter for irrelevance, repetition and nonsense, I just felt hurt, betrayed by the very people who encouraged those qualities. Although I gave Blogger 24 hours to respond before I left them, I just don't think I can live with them after that kind of betrayal.

Work is already underway to move to www.writeabouthere.com using wordpress. I'll let you know when it's set up.

* * *

Today WAS a better day, apart from being unable to post. I just got word that my blog has been reviewed and cleared of all spam blog-related charges.

And as a side effect, not being able to blog freed me up to try out an online service to sell some of my prints.They ship anywhere in the world, offer a range of paper and print qualities (with the most affordable option still offering great quality), and I will donate 50 percent of any proceeds to the Stephen Lewis Foundation. I've just uploaded my very favourite images of 2007 so if you've seen a photo on here that you'd like to buy, and you don't see it in my imagekind gallery, just email me and I can set it up. The site's a bit hard to navigate but if things go well, I will set up a better, more navigable online gallery that just links to imagekind for the actual purchasing.