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Spam in Reader

  1. iqatrophie
    Member

    I'm following for example http://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/ in my reader. The thing is "polyglots" has been spammed recently and now all this posts are displayed in my reader.

    The "Polyglots" blog itself already removed the spam but my reader still shows them all the time. It's a pain.

    As far as I know I can't delete these myself in the reader, can I? By the way, this was not the first time this happend. Makes the Reader pretty unuseable when it happens.

    The blog I need help with is iqatrophie.wordpress.com.

  2. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Thanks for the report! I'm reprocessing the feed, so this should be cleared up in an hour or so.

  3. iqatrophie
    Member

    Thanks for fixing it.

    Well it's fixed for now, but what if this happens again? Will the Reader always get unusable when one of the blogs (e.g. Polyglots) gets spammed again? Do I always have to contact the owner of the blogs I follow and ask him/her to reprocess the feed?

    Is this by design or is there a way where I can delete those posts in my own reader?

  4. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Generally, we'll double-check the entire feed within 24 hours of the next post and remove any deleted posts, but we can also reprocess the entire feed manually, which is what I did yesterday.

    If you run into a massive spam flood that's clogging your entire Reader, it's probably best to just unfollow the blog for the time being and ask us to reprocess it.

    And, also find out what the blogger(s) can do about stopping spammers from posting to their blog. ;)

  5. iqatrophie
    Member

    I see. :)

    Well, can't you double check automatically let's say every hour instead of just 24 hours or is this technically not possible and would generate too much load? I'm just asking because this sounds like the solution to the spam problem.

  6. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    I'm not sure myself. I'd say it's a combination of just load and timing. We're big, but we aren't Google.

    However, it's not that common of a problem. Most people don't allow spam to be published as posts on their blogs. ;)

  7. iqatrophie
    Member

    We're big, but we aren't Google

    But you're on your way. :)

    When I count all the blog services that went down over the years (Posterous being the next), the people who imported their blogs to WordPress.com because of that and not to forget the increase in support response time (because of these many people), I'll think you're definitely on your way.

  8. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Thanks for the kind words! :)

  9. iqatrophie
    Member

    You're welcome. :)

    On the other hand it's a fact. I bet there will be (or maybe is already) another huge spike in the number of blogs hosted on WordPress.com due to Posterous going out of business on 30th of April.

  10. iqatrophie
    Member

    Me again. Seems like Polyglots has been spammed again. I've watched the spam in my Reader and now over 24 hours after they've already been removed from the blog itself they're still displayed in my Reader.

    Generally, we'll double-check the entire feed within 24 hours of the next post and remove any deleted posts

    Seems like the feed isn't double checked every 24 hours or why is the spam still there?

  11. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Thanks for the report!

    I have forced the feed to refresh, and I hope they get their spam problem under control. :(

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