the perils of being on Blogger

While Blogger's service has, all in all, improved since Google's takeover, we Blogger-using proles have to put up with a constant trickle of shit from the admins. Right now, I'm having to deal with an annoying "word verification" system that has shown up at the bottom of every post I've typed in the past 24 hours.

For those who don't know: a word verification system is an anti-spam device that forces the poster or commenter to type in a random letter sequence to prove they are truly human. The letter sequence appears as a graphic: a string of letters, slightly warped or otherwise altered, which must be typed into a blank field. The letters are presented as a graphic to prevent spam (spidering?) software from reading the string of letters and automatically entering the verification code.

It appears that my blog has been flagged as a spam blog, which is why the word verification has suddenly appeared. The flagging occurred thanks to automatic spam detection software that decided, according to its arcane algorithms, that my blog posed a threat. The verification system represents "the benefit of the doubt": if I'm truly a human being and not a spam bot, I can simply type the verification code and continue blogging. In other words, Blogger hasn't cut me off from my blog.

But Blogger has made life annoying, and it's done so quite unnecessarily. That's what drives me nuts, and me nuts don't like it.

I've been mulling over a change to WordPress, but need to research the service to see whether it suits my needs. If Blogger continues to encroach on my bloggerly freedom by making stupid top-down adjustments (the "flag this blog" feature also annoys me, though to date I've never been flagged), I might just have to jump ship.


_