Making a Switch



Change is good. Except when it's not. Or when it concerns the email platform that I've used for the last 10 years. I admit it - I like yahoo mail. And maybe when I say that I've never been fond of gmail, I'm in the minority. I can deal with that. But what I can't deal with is how a majority of the comments that I leave on others' blogs are all sitting there, unbeknownst by the blog owner. I'm not sure why this started happening but it has, and very recently.

After various experiments when commenting on some of the blogs I follow, I think I've figured out what's going on. It looks like gmail is blocking yahoo emails from going through when it's being sent through a 3rd party site, like a Google+ account. As far as I can tell, these things need to be in place for this to happen:
  1. Your blog is hosted on blogger (I've not seen or had an issue with wordpress blogs)
  2. You have your blog set up to email you at a gmail address when you receive comments  
  3. Your commenter is using a yahoo email address for replies.
When these three things were in place, my comments were showing up on a blog but the owner was never getting notified. Instead, I would get an email stating that my comment (or rather the email that included the comment) to the blog owner was blocked by gmail as suspicious or spam. I did some online searches for the specific error and the only solution was to not use a yahoo email address. I tested my theory and changed my blogger/google+ profile's email address to a gmail account and made some comments on blogs where I've had the problem and *poof* - they got notified that I commented.

So if you thought I just stopped visiting your blog, that may not be the case. And because of this I will learn to adapt and like gmail for the sake of the blogs I enjoy reading. Because really - what's the fun of commenting on blogs if there's no back and forth communication. It's what I love about the quilt-blogging community. I just have to be more diligent now in monitoring my own blog so that I'm not missing comments.

UPDATED (3/2/15): Joanna from Riddle and Whimsy also posted on this same topic - check it out here.  Thanks to her suggestion I've decided to try using the comment moderation to see if it helps with the notifications from commenters who use yahoo email addresses, but alas, it still didn't work if the person is using a yahoo address.

Comments

  1. ShaunaMarch 1, 2015 at 3:11 PM

    I know it has to be frustrating when companies do weird stuff like that, but kudos to you for figuring it out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sewing JunkieMarch 1, 2015 at 5:51 PM

    Sadly there isn't a good choice out there. Chris

    ReplyDelete
  3. Barb NeiwertMarch 1, 2015 at 10:37 PM

    That is so bizarre. But what an investigator you are to figure it out. Seems so trivial for Gmail to do that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rachel @ QuiltineeringMarch 2, 2015 at 12:25 AM

    Odd little quirk! Blogging certainly requires us to learn new computer skills!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Joanna @ Riddle and {Whimsy}March 2, 2015 at 1:57 AM

    I have a Yahoo address and have the same problem. I'm not switching though because a) I'm too lazy and b) I only switched my address to Yahoo fairly recently. From my own research it seems like Yahoo put this in place mostly to block newsletter/mailing list type senders to prevent spamming (where a spammer would send things to 100s of people at a time via the mailing lists) but Yahoo didn't stop to consider what else that would affect (as it seems like the way Blogger works is via the same methods as a mailing list -- the blog emails the blog owner your comment on your behalf. This isn't an issue on Wordpress as the comment notifications received via email are addressed from Wordpress itself, not from your personal email account).

    There's one blogger I've spoken to about this as she wasn't getting my comments and I think she's come up with a work around by putting moderated comments on her blog; that way she's always notified that there's a comment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Diana @ Red Delicious LifeMarch 2, 2015 at 11:19 AM

      Thanks for the suggestion on moderated comments Joanna. Not surprisingly, your comment above never got to my email because you use a yahoo email address, but I'm being diligent to check for comments so no one falls through the cracks.

      Delete
  6. Carol SwiftApril 9, 2015 at 10:05 AM

    Totally frustrating! Thanks for the post!

    ReplyDelete

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Thanks for taking the time to comment! I love hearing from my readers. I typically respond directly to your email unless it's an answer that I think everyone would be interested in hearing. If you are a no-reply blogger (and I know that blogger does not play nice with other blogging platforms!), I will reply directly on my website. Thanks for stopping by!