GATEFAIL: Why fanfic gets so little feedback Reason #23

[campylobacter]

Hey fanfic authors! Ever wonder why you get so little feedback on your stories?

Here's a reason: your archive is telling your readers that they're spammers.



BTW, I also submitted feedback using my RL email (one that doesn't have "porn" in the address string) and it returned the same spam warning.

WTF????!!!!!!

The story I was commenting on is "On the Edge" by Hao at Area 52. Her native language is French.

UPDATE:

Response from Area 52 on 6 May 2010:

It is looking for key words commonly found in spam that are not usually in feedback. This includes URLs and email addresses, so don't include your email address - it gets sent any way. Other things I can think of are 'nice site', cheap, buy etc. I'm sure you'll have seen enough spam to know the words that are often there so just re-word your feedback if necessary.

HTH

Patrimas
Admin

This was the "spammy" (?????) feedback I submitted:

"Very poetic; you took great risks with the language that most English speakers who lack the skills would never dare. And although not perfect, the words don't detract from the beauty of the meaning, and speaks of Daniel's transcendent connection to Jack, while Jack fails to understand the depth of his yearning for Daniel."

Comments

[magnavox-23.livejournal.com]

Oh bugger. Have you notified the webmaster/mistress of Arae 52? They may be unaware of the problem.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

OK, I just did. (http://pics.livejournal.com/campylobacter/pic/00063rbp) Their form page has this message: "Apologies - we have had to add a CAPTCHA due to the amount of spam being receieved[sic]."

I hope I don't get deleted by their spam filters.

[magnavox-23.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. What a shame. Good fic authors deserve feedback!

I hope your message gets through.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

Oh my, it did, but I received a robotic response that says:

It is looking for key words commonly found in spam that are not usually in feedback. This includes URLs and email addresses, so don't include your email address - it gets sent any way. Other things I can think of are 'nice site', cheap, buy etc. I'm sure you'll have seen enough spam to know the words that are often there so just re-word your feedback if necessary.

HTH

Patrimas
Admin

[cleothemuse.livejournal.com]

Hope they pick a better CAPTCHA package than the one used by eFiction... I'm going to have to look at re-writing the code and/or integrating someone else's CAPTCHA software after Stargatefan got hit with 100+ spam messages even WITH the CAPTCHA enabled.

Edit: clicked the second picture... yes, that's about as good as CAPTCHA gets (while still being somewhat user-friendly)

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

OUCH! Over 100 spams? That's f!cked up.

I've been thwarted by CAPTCHAs I couldn't read before, but never by a form handling filter.

[cleothemuse.livejournal.com]

Heh. You should have seen how many THOUSANDS of spam review we had before I installed CAPTCHA in the first place...

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

I'd like to hunt down the actual people who click comment spam to buy fake Viagra so I can smack sense into them, because otherwise, the bots wouldn't have continued incentive to spamify forms.