Robot takes down ILMK: human to the rescue!
As some of you know, I write about real life robots in my blog, The Measured Circle.
I’m generally very positive about them. I can’t wait for my self-driving car (and we’ve made progress towards that in California).
Unfortunately, they do sometimes make mistakes…oh, probably not as often as humans, and they make different ones.
Today, a robot took down this blog, ILMK…and defamed me as well. 
It was an anti-spam robot at my blog host, WordPress.com.
It was, honestly, disconcerting and disheartening….I didn’t know what I had done wrong, and I hadn’t changed anything. I’ve had a great relationship with WordPress for over three years.
The worst thing for me was that the website said publicly that
was no longer available, and that it had been taken down because I had violated their Terms of Service.
Fortunately, WordPress gave me a way to contact them (by response form), and I got an e-mail telling me it had been restored within a couple of hours:
“Hi there,
Thank you for getting in touch.
Your site was flagged by our automated anti-spam controls. We have reviewed your site and have removed the suspension notice.
We greatly apologize for this error and any inconvenience it may have caused.”
I want to thank Andrys Basten of A Kindle World for sympathy, kind words, and advice.
Everything is fine now, and I’m back to my usual happy self. 
This is the kind of thing that should be reviewed by a human before an action is taken, since it could really give people the wrong impression if they saw the site while it was down.
By the way, I have a hypothesis in this case, although it may just be that they changed the rules for the robot (or it changed them itself, if it’s a learning bot).
I saw that the sticky post at the top of my blogsite which links to current Kindles and apps had appeared in Flipboard. That post, which is not intended to go out in feeds, could easily trip a spambot, I think.
My guess is that someone intended to tweet some other post of mine, and accidentally tweeted that one.
To avoid that happening in the future, I’ve removed that sticky post, and made it a page in the blogsite instead.
Anyway, back to normal…whew!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
October 22, 2012 at 3:44 am |
I read the latest news about a bot taking down your blog – but did you know that your blog was not available on Pulse for about a week, a week or so ago? When there was no new post on Pulse ILMK for several days, I went directly to the blog site and saw that there was no interruption there – there I found all the recent articles I had been missing on Pulse. Then, after about one week of no ILMK – BOOM – the posts were back on Pulse. The missing articles weren’t restored, the posts just began with the current day’s article. I never saw a mention of this missing week on Pulse. I don’t know if this is connected to today’s subject. But you’re missed when you go missing on Pulse!
Larry James
October 22, 2012 at 12:52 pm |
Thanks for writing, Larry!
Yes, that was a very frustrating situation!
There were several comments on it here (on different posts, so I know that’s not easy to see), and I mentioned it briefly in this post:
http://ilmk.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/can-a-popular-book-be-a-good-book/
I had contacted Pulse, and it seemed to take them a bit to figure out a fix, but then it was okay. I didn’t really have control over it, and that’s one of the main things that made it frustrating for me…I couldn’t fix it for my readers.
October 22, 2012 at 4:14 pm |
It is said that we never really appreciate something until we lose it … hey, I’m glad everything worked out and a lot of us appreciate your blog and other forms of communication. We are all human and make mistakes … Oops, I guess I can’t say that in this case with the bots making the mistakes
October 23, 2012 at 1:58 am |
Thanks for writing, George!
I’m also appreciative of this blog and my readers when I do have it.
I’d guess I’m grateful every day, and it’s part of what makes the world a great place for me.
On your second point…we are humans who can make bots who make mistakes…
October 22, 2012 at 5:36 pm |
Glad you’re back up and running. I saw the notice yesterday, but figured it must be a mistake!
October 23, 2012 at 1:58 am |
Thanks for writing, Alisha!
Thanks for having that faith in me! I’ll keep working hard to deserve it.