Hey, why didn’t my comment get posted?
As a fairly-frequent commenter on other people’s blogs, I know how frustrating it can be when I’ve spent a few minutes working on the perfect riposte, only to have it disappear somewhere in the void. So I thought I’d explain a little bit about how comments on johnaugust.com work, and why they sometimes don’t show up right away.
In the beginning, there was spam. It cluttered your box. Then came blogs, and soon followed comment spam. These are short, meaningless posts that generally link to some site involving gambling or prescription drugs. In most cases, the comments are not made by actual humans, but rather by automated programs (bots), who scurry around the web looking for open comment systems.
In order to keep this site from being overrun with comment spam, there are a few safeguards built-in:
- In order to comment, you have to type the required word from the 16-word phrase. This is sort of a home-brewed solution, but it’s worked fairly well.
- Comments that have certain words (or combinations of words) are flagged for review. These comments are logged in the system, but won’t show up until the administrator (me) approves them.
- The same applies to comments with three or more links in them.
- Comments from certain spammy IP addresses are automatically flagged for review.
The three-links rule is often what trips people up.
If you’ve posted something and it hasn’t shown up, be patient. The system will automatically kick me an email when a comment gets flagged for review. Unless I’m swamped, I’ll usually get around to approving it the same day.
Thanks for posting.
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September 11th, 2005 at 11:15 am
Yes! First to comment!
SPAM! SPAM! SPAM!
j/k :P
September 11th, 2005 at 11:22 am
^ As this was a post about comment’s, I thought the above comment to be appropriate, I thought it would be a funny comment or something, but now I realize my terrible error -it wasn’t a funny comment at all, why I even thought it would be a funny comment is beyond me. I do apologize for my totally unfunny comment. :)
(er, this wasn’t funny either sorry.)
P.S. I’ll regret posting this in a moment…
A beat.
Wait, I already do regret it. So don’t post Tom. STOP.
September 11th, 2005 at 1:04 pm
In the beginning, there was spam? The world was created from spam? Now that explains everything :D All the mess in the world.. Really, it explains everything.. Thank you for sharing the truth! :D :D :D
September 12th, 2005 at 11:42 am
would you like to get rich? send me a dollar for my secret.
just kidding
September 14th, 2005 at 5:16 am
Tom,
I disagree with your second posting. I laughed out loud after reading your first.
Or, was the second posting tongue-in-cheek and I missed the joke?
Humor is really tricky.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:17 am
Tom,
I disagree with your second posting. I laughed out loud after reading your first.
Or, was the second posting tongue-in-cheek and I missed the joke?
Humor is really tricky.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:18 am
And posting comments is tricky too. Perhaps I should stick to reading rather than posting the same comment twice.
September 14th, 2005 at 7:34 pm
I completely agree with your assessment of “Constant Gardener”. Several times over the last few weeks I have found myself in one of those “The Emperor’s New Clothes” scenarios where a friend or colleague will say how great they thought the film was and I will agree, submtting to an understood movie geek consensus.
Not that I didn’t think the film was good. I did, just not great. I found the scene where Justin hears Tessa say something to the effect of “is the purpose of this relationship just to keep producing dead babies” to be forced and manipulative. Conversely I found the scene where the Nigeria police try to frighten Justin and his diplomat friend only to have the tables turned when he asks for the officer’s name to be genius.
It’s nice to know that I am not the only one who didn’t love that film.
September 17th, 2005 at 4:14 am
“I disagree with your second posting. I laughed out loud after reading your first.
Or, was the second posting tongue-in-cheek and I missed the joke? “
Fred, it was a bit of both: I was partially apologising just incase it annoyed somebody, but it was tongue-in-cheek, really… :P
June 15th, 2006 at 7:43 am
hey sir john,
i knew you wrote the screenplay for big fish. that’s my most favorite of my favorite movies. but i only knew your screenwriting credits include the charlie’s angels movies when brian herzlinger interviewed you in his “my date with drew” documentary. i’m so surprised when i discovered that.
it’s just amazing because the two films are different in nature (hmmm.. how do you call that in film lingo?), but i think you did good in both films. oh, let me repeat that, you did best in big fish. and i could say that again and again.
by the way, i’m a 20-yr-old fresh graduate from the philippines and i would like to be a screenwriter with a purpose to do something as memorable as big fish. so i have a few questions i wish you would find time to respond to.
1 were you asked to do the screenplay or did you choose to make something of the novel? 2 i haven’t read the novel. was your screenplay completely inspired from that or did you and tim burton also incorporated your ideas? 3 do you prefer writing a screenplay out of your own story? how does writing a screenplay from somebody else’s story work? are your own ideas put aside? 4 why are screenwriters not given as much credit as directors? i think they do equal imagining and creating, or even more.
i’m wishing you more big fish to deal with.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Ivi, Yeah I. R., quit trying to squeeze poor John. He has no time to help you. John is busy trying to squeeze blood INTO a turnip. You know, make a nine a 10. The guy has talent, has it all really, but no nads when it comes to reaching down and picking up pieces that aren’t his. Not afraid to ask the audience for nine dollars though to fertilize his L.A. dreams. Questions or help saught that does not play to his creation, his agenda. you can salt that pig down and forget it son. Put a fork in it. I wrote him an e-mail crazy crooked with ed. sullivan type ‘Really Big, really really big show’ curtain call cred. He’s afraid to touch down into the field of dreams. When you’re full of ”’legal-shmegal”’ worries that someone from the patch might ”plow you” you water your own and leave the rest to wrath. Sorry charlie and I don’t mean ‘Angels’. Keep writing though. Someone else on this blog might jump off their high horse to help you with some creative answers. Good luck i. r. jaggedlegsix@yahoo.com
September 1st, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Ivi, A bit more for the record. A screenwriter is someone who takes the brilliant work of someone else that can light up a day and turns it into something the size of the bottom of a coke bottle that if he’s lucky may, just may fill a room with speculation. Nothing more nothing less. A great screenwriter ‘in his own words’ told the sun “rise”, forced the tide to “go out and stay out” and won the wager that he could do both simultaneously. So which one do you think John is? If you said “dunno” you’re right.