Blocked by Disqus from posting on my own site

Question

The other day I was responded to around 20-30 comments in quick succession with similar replies to followers and fans of my work. I wasn't spamming, I was simply getting back to lots of people who had messaged me. In each message I supplied a link to my blog as they were almost all making the same inquiry, and the link to my blog was the most suffice way to answer them.

Now I've been blocked from posting anywhere with my Disqus account. Even my own site! I got no notification, no emails, I just tried to write a comment and was told I was blocked from doing so.

I've just checked my posting history and it looks like most of my posts are 'detected as spam'. Even ones to my own site.

I just tried to write a post on 'Discuss Disqus' regarding this and it seems I'm blocked on there too! I did contact Disqus directly but they haven't got back to me, and I don't expect a sufficient reply anyway.

It seems there's no recourse at this point except to moan about it here. Ridiculous. I know it's free and otherwise I can't complain, but this is a terrifically dumb policy, outright banning people automatically like this with no notification.

Any ideas how I can fix this without creating a new account?

Answer 1

Other than contacting them for a review of your case there is no way to fix this, and creating a new account you will probably find will result in the same thing happening with the new account as most comment engines like Disqus have a condition that you can not create a new account to get around a spam block.

As for the reasons by posting the same link, and from what you're saying substantially the same comment, you where flagged by the automated spam engine, which by virtue of being a machine can make mistakes. Put another way, if a stranger to your site was posting the same message and the same link to every question, even if technically it answered the question, wouldn't you feel that it was spam. Disqus doesn't separate you from any guest on your website when it comes to identifying and blocking spam.

A quick them of the Disqus help portal shows that the following behaviour can cause comments to be marked as spam...

• Including a signature in multiple comments. For example, appending a name or website link to the end of multiple comments;
• Bad or strange syntax. For example, excessive paragraph breaks, bad punctuation, double-spaced comments;
• Posting the same comment multiple times to the same page, or across sites;
• Using multiple links in one or multiple comments.

A solution they suggest is that you contact the site moderator (if it is your site then you should have access to the Disqus moderator tools) and have the moderators remove the relevant text and then approve the comments. When it comes to duplicate comments the recommendation is that only one of these comments gets approved and delete the rest to keep them from being counted against you.

If after doing all that you are still blocked, which I suspect you will be given the fact that your account has apparently been blocked on the whole Disqus platform then your only recourse would be to contact them, however a preliminary search of the Disqus help site does not indicate any contact details other that identifying the Disqus profiles for the three support team members.