Forum Hidden Tag

downhill

Two of my recent posts were assigned the Hidden tag. From what I've been able to verify, the posts are not visible to those not logged in. Are the posts also not visible to those logged into the forums?

What kinds of things can get a post assigned a Hidden tag? A little bit of transparency would be appreciated.

DataDrake

downhill We use Akismet for spam detection and it flagged your posts. It's overzealous at times and I can't really say how you would avoid it. All you really can do is wait for one of the Mods to come along and approve it.

kyrios

downhill Also, if a new post contains just a link you can be sure it will be flagged as spam and that's a good thing since throwing a link with no context, no word of explanation, etc. doesn't make sense.

This kind of bad practice was used by some SEO to try to improve the ranking of a site in the search engines and it goes against the "netiquette" (not sure if that word exists in English, it is a combination "net" and "étiquette" which means good manners/behavior).

If an administrator or a moderator should remove a post, a motivation is given. This is also part of the netiquette.

downhill

kyrios Thank you for the reply. There was context in one of the posts, but not the other. I don't always provide context when sharing a link. The title and link text in the post without context provided enough context in my opinion.

DataDrake

downhill Akismet isn't that smart. It even flags posts with quite a lot of text. But it's far better than the alternative of all spam being immediately visible. Waiting a little while for your post to be approved is a small price to pay compared to the spam hell we went through on phpBB near the end.

downhill

DataDrake I take it that going through posts tagged as Hidden is not a high priority...both posts are over a week old now. Why aren't the posts in the Song of the Day thread flagged as spam? Many of those are links only.

Trust me, I understand the hate for spam. I've had to deal with it on my blog.

DataDrake

downhill I take it that going through posts tagged as Hidden is not a high priority...both posts are over a week old now.

None of your recent posts are hidden. I see three posts that were deleted (which is not the same as hidden), two of which you were told why they were removed and one that appears to be a link with no context.

downhill Why aren't the posts in the Song of the Day thread flagged as spam? Many of those are links only.

We don't develop Akismet, so I can't really say how it does or doesn't flag content. I can say that despite the false positives it has an excellent true positive rate on spammers so far.

brent

downhill I've had a couple hidden or trashcan icon before, twice I believe,...thought maybe I was wind-baggy or really off-base perhaps which is seems pretty likely for me. Did not take it personally but did not think it was Askmet til I read this thread.