The cause (?), and the solution (?)

This is a follow-up to last Sunday's post, in which I discussed the problem that I (and Fuji, too) have been having with my comments on other blogs ending up in peoples spam folders.

A comment from, Bo, (replying to Night Owl's comment about only finding comments from Fuji and I in his spam folder) in that post, "Same thing for me - just Jon and Fuji. Blogger seems to think you guys comment too much, I guess.", got me to thinking. 

It's been a week now since the thought came to me (I meant to do this post much sooner), so I can no longer run through the whole thought process (that's gone already), but nevertheless, I think I may have figured out what's going on.

I can't speak for Fuji, because I don't know what his process is when it comes to commenting, but for myself, I've been in the habit, at least over the last year or two, of reading people's posts on my phone each day, and then going back 3-4 days later and commenting where I can. I do this only because it's so hard for me to type on my phone, apparently that's gonna be a thing that I never get comfortable with. 

Since I've already read the posts that I'm commenting on, and usually still remember the gist of the post, I don't need to read it again before commenting (given how lame my comments often are, I probably should though). By doing it this way, I can often leave upwards of 30-40 comments in an hour when I do come back to comment, and I now think that that's the problem; Blogger doesn't think that I "comment too much" overall, but I do think that it thinks that I'm leaving too many comments in too short of a timeframe. 

Most of us have been blitzkrieged by spam bot on more than one occasion over the years, so you probably already know that when that happens, it will often choose a bunch of posts and leave the same comment on all of them in a very short amount of time, often within just a couple of minutes. It doesn't effect everyone though, because only so many will make it onto actual posts before they start going to spam. So, one person, or maybe a couple of people will get hit, then the comments stop showing up, at least publically. I can't tell you how many time I've seen someone get blitzed, but I seemingly don't get touched, only to later check my spam and see that they did in fact go after me too, it's just that none of their comments made onto my posts.

With that in mind, I'm thinking now that Blogger might have a program in place that gets triggered when too many comments are made by one user during a certain amount of time. After all, Blogger has no way of knowing that I've already read the posts that I'm commenting on, and therefor probably doesn't think, and rightfully so, that a real person could read, and comment on, 30-40 posts in one hour.

If I'm right, and I really think that I am, people can only leave so many comments in some pre-determined amount of time, and once you reach limit, this anti-spam program (?) marks any further comments as spam. Obviously, I have no way to verify this, and I have no way of knowing how long ones comments continue to be marked as spam, but I'm thinking that the system might reset itself every couple of hours.

Again, I don't know if there is any validity to this theory, but I do have two anecdotal bits of evidence to back it up...

1. This whole last week I've been trying to space out my comments, as in just leaving a couple per hour. This has been done by changing the time of day that I read posts, and commenting on them after the first read, as opposed to coming back days later and commenting on the already read posts. And you know something? It seems to be working. None of my comments have disappeared, meaning that none have been sent anyone's spam folders. 

2. I will often check the "receive follow-up comments" box when commenting (especially if I ask a question), so I get the emails every time someone else comments on that post. A few days ago, Mr. Jafronius must've been catching up on his reading/commenting, because he commented on two of my posts, and there were emails showing that he had commented on a couple of the posts that I checked the follow-up box on. His first comment on one of my posts went through okay, but the second that appeared about ten minutes later went to my spam folder (which was un-spammed it of course). From the emails, I can see that he commented on a few more posts during those ten minutes, and I suspect that he went over whatever this limit is during that timeframe. 

I feel like these two things really back up my theory, but until someone get an official answer, it'll have to remain just that, a theory. In the meantime, since I don't know what kind of threshold may be in place, I will be continuing to space out my comments, I figure 5 or less per hour shouldn't be triggering any bells or whistles. And if anyone has had this problem (i.e. Fuji), it might be worth you trying something similar, at least for a few days to see if some of your comments stop being marked as spam.