All comments going to trash
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On my last three posts every comment is going straight to trash even though the commenters have been regular followers and approved commenters for many years. I have to go to trash, find the comments and restore each one manually. This has only started recently.
WP.com: Yes
Correct account: YesThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
I checked the comments on your site, but currently all I see in the Trash folder are comments that are very obviously spam (you should mark those as Spam, rather than trashing them by the way – our spam filters learn to recognise more kinds of spam when you mark comments as spam, but if you delete them instead they never get submitted to the spam filter.)
The next time a legitimate comment goes to Trash, please don’t do anything with it, but reply here with a link to the post the comment was left on, and the name of the commenter, so we can take a look at why their comment was deleted.
You can also take a look at your comments blacklist at Settings ->Discussion. I see you have quite a few common words in that list, and any comment containing any of those words would automatically be trashed. So make sure you’re not blocking any terms that visitors to your site might be using in their comments :)
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Thank you! I will follow your advice and see what happens with my next post and I’ll let you know.
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I’ve removed all the words in the comment blacklist so all those spam comments are now going to trash. I’ve been getting lots and they’re now going straight to spam so hopefully the number will decrease now. The good news is the regular and legitimate comments on my new post, just published yesterday, have all gone to the post as per normal. So that seems to have fixed the problem. Thank you very much for your help. It’s much appreciated. Carol.
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I thought the problem was solved but this morning there is a comment from one of my regular and approved commenters in Spam. The post is https://theeternaltraveller.wordpress.com/2022/06/05/lets-go/ and the commenter is Anabel from The Glasgow Gallivanter. Her comment is a reply to my response to her first comment on the post, which did not go to spam.
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Hi there,
To confirm, you removed it from the Spam folder by approving it, yes? I see it is a live comment on your site now.
It can be the case that you will get “false positives” like this with any spam filter, but approving the comment will train the spam filter to avoid misidentifying it in the future. If you notice Anabel’s comments in spam again, can you leave it there (temporarily) so we can take a look before you approve it?
Thanks!
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No, I didn’t approve Anabel’s comment. On the comments page in my dashboard, it is still in the spam folder. It is the second last comment on the third page of spam comments and was submitted on 6 June at 5:09pm.
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Hi Carol,
I can see Annabel’s comment in the spam folder. That comment was caught by Akismet (our spam filter), likely because it only contained an emoji. So this wasn’t caused by any of the moderation settings on your site, like the original issue here where your moderation rules were causing comments to be automatically deleted.
The fact that her original comment posted without issue tells me this isn’t a case where her account is incorrectly flagged in Akismet, but if she has an issue with her comments on other sites also going to spam, she can contact Akismet support directly at https://akismet.com/contact/ – there’s an option on that page specifically for people whose comments are being incorrectly flagged as spam.
But as I said, I don’t think that’s the case here – based on the content of the comment itself, I can understand why the spam filters might consider it to be potential spam. You can approve it, and that will train the spam filter to not filter that type of comment anymore.
False positives like this can happen from time to time, but are very rare, and don’t indicate a problem with your site. Much more common is when a specific person’s account has been incorrectly flagged, in which case that person will have their comment going into spam across multiple sites. In that case the person contacting Akismet themselves is the only way to sort it out.
I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any other questions about this :)
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Thank you. I’ve unspammed Anabel’s comment and I’ll keep checking spam to make sure no other comments accidentally find their way in to that folder. Thank you again for all your help. It’s good to know it seems to all be fine again. Have a nice day.
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