Admin replies to comments are marked as spam or end up having to be approved. ??

  • I’m logged in as the administrator (not “admin”). When I reply to valid pending comments, my comments are recently marked as pending approval, and sometimes marked as spam. I have to search for what I just posted a reply in either the pending or spam tab of the comments section. If I mark it as “Not Spam”, I still have to go back and approve it.

    Why am I seeing this behavior? Is this a new security thing? If so, it’s counter-productive. I’d appreciate suggestions.

    Incidentally, the amount of spam I’ve been getting has gone to about 50 a day, but they’re all definitely spam. The real comments are found in the pending tab as expected.

    I’ve just removed over 2700 spams from my spam folder.

    Cheers,

    Chris

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Thread Starter gr33nman

    (@gr33nman)

    Nobody is experiencing this phenomenon?

    I am!

    Thread Starter gr33nman

    (@gr33nman)

    I’m bumping this, because it’s a real thing. It doesn’t happen on all sites, but then not all my sites allow comments.

    Here’s a video showing the phenomenon:

    https://youtu.be/w2UVWxU9Xzk

    As an administrator, it makes no sense that my own emails should be marked as spam.

    It doesn’t seem to matter what version of WP I use.

    Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Bumps are normally deleted on sight but in this case it’s alright because you’re actually adding info. ??

    I’m 99.44% sure it’s this plugin.

    Screen Shot

    But you can confirm that easily enough. Also you have 5 pending code updates on that demo site and you should update just to level set.

    Please try the following temporary steps to troubleshoot:

    • Switch to the Twenty Fifteen theme
    • Deactivate all of your plugins, no exceptions
    • Clear your browser’s cache and cookies
    • Re-login and leave a comment via the post comment form.

    Do you still get the problem when you do that?

    Thread Starter gr33nman

    (@gr33nman)

    Jan, Thanks so much for your reply. I’m not sure which plugin you’re referring to from your image, other than perhaps the anti-spam plugin. That plugin did not exist on my site when the problem began. I only had Akismet.

    The site is pretty socked-in to this theme. It’s a live site with steady traffic. Changing the theme would drastically change the CDN, probably slowing down traffic, and perhaps stopping it altogether. Removing all plugins would also remove CDN and caching, which would basically make the site unreachable, so I can’t easily make that happen, either.

    I’ve tried the browser cache/cookies thing.

    All of the plugins that are currently on the site were on it since the beginning except the one change: removing akismet, which became worse than useless, and introducing the anti-spam plugin.

    It might be smarter for me to try to emulate the problem on an unpublished site with the same plugins and theme. That will take as much time as what you suggest for my live site, and would be safer.

    Please stand by.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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