Oh, Blogger! The Missing Comments Mystery

I've been contacted by someone who has often posted fascinating comments on this blog - to cut a long story short, his comments recently have been disappearing into my spam folder, without any obvious cause. I'm not aware that anyone else has suffered similarly, but if the same thing has happened to you, on this or another blog, please do let me know. The problem seemed to begin in early April.

The commenter is on Wordpress, but that doesn't seem to be the reason why the comments have gone AWOL. It's a mystery, as he says, that might demand the investigation techinques of Hannah Scarlett to solve! But if anyone has any idea what could explain this little puzzle, we'd be glad to know.

And I'm extremely grateful, by the way, to my correspondent for letting me know and not just assuming that I had, for some weird reason, decided not to approve his comments. I've often published comments I don't agree with, and I certainly have no intention of censoring anyone who expresses reasonable views in a civilised fashion, whether or not I share those views. Once or twice, though, I have deleted comments through sheer personal incompetence. But I don't intend to make a habit of this!

Maybe the problem is something to do with the way Blogger operates? I just don't know, but as I mentioned yesterday, I was very frustrated when the system refused to upload Judith's picture of Kate Stacey and myself. Technology, eh?