A quick fast count of how many people have been briefly affected by our hard working Akismet spam filter (and eventually been liberated by our hard working docents) recently:

• 2/14 - 6
• 2/13 - 6
• 2/12 - 7
• 2/11 - 3
• 2/10 - 3
• 2/09 - 8

I understand folks get occasionally frustrated. The spam filter is needed for the orderly running of OlyBlog. I and others have written about this many times before and I'd like to repost an excellent contribution Merwyn made:

I think I've mentioned this

Submitted by Merwyn Haskett on Sat, 11/24/2007 - 5:54pm.

I think I've mentioned this before. If, and I mean if because I don't believe for a minute it would happen, the docents were going to be in the habit of playing Access Games with those they perceive to be "troublemakers", then I would have been hit, and I would have been hit hard many, many times. It hasn't happened yet.

Many times I wonder why I even bother tattooing brickwall imprints in my forehead but when all is said and done I have to admit that OlyBlog has always allowed me to say my piece, even if it was just long enough for the gang to jump on me. True, there've been times where I'm right and everyone else was just so unbelievably wrong that it wasn't even funny, but that hardly counts as censorship.

There are a lot of bugs in this website's program. The people keeping it running aren't necessarily computer gurus, and even if they were they have jobs and family and other good things which are high priority. Please, maybe in some areas they need to cut us some slack, but when it comes to their integrity in giving us a chance to be heard I'm allowing them all the slack they need.

Please give me a second grace. Please give me a second face. I've fallen far down, the first time around, now I just sit on the ground in your way.
Nick Drake