Blogger: different comments email problem - & German??

Monday, September 17, 2007

Team Blogger's Known Issues Blog said yesterday 16 September 2007 about Google's Blogger that:

Comment moderation email appears broken and without formatting in many email clients. Until this is fixed, the Approve and Reject URLs should be visible at the very bottom in the literal HTML. You can also moderate comments by going to the Posting > Moderate Comments tab in the Blogger interface.

What's weird is that I haven't had that particular problem. I've had a different problem, or should I say "issue", instead.

Normally comment moderation emails on my blog look like this (I get my Improbulus emails via POP on Outlook; I've blanked out my comments mod email address):

And after publishing, the published comment emails look like this (ditto):

Look at the Subject line of the email. In both cases you'll notice that the subject line has the title of the post clearly stated in it.

However, since Friday 14 September comment moderation emails (and published comment emails) all look like this - the title of post isn't in the subject of the email anymore, only the title of my blog:

I really miss that feature. It was very handy to see at a glance which post a comment was on. I don't know if Blogger deliberately disabled it, or could it be part & parcel of the "broken" comment moderation email syndrome?

I see I'm not the only person with this problem, at least one other person has posted about the same issue in the Blogger Help Group.

Here's another weird thing. I doublechecked them, several times, and my interface language preferences in both Google general preferences and the Blogger dashboard are set to English (UK). But since yesterday, I've been getting various notes in Blogger in German:

Am I missing something really obvious? If not, what gives at Blogger?? And does anyone know how to change the German bits back to English (UK)?

Labels: Blogger, Google, problems

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6 Comment(s):

I'll give you a guess on the German, looks like it's you English(UK) people causing problems (again). When I set mine to UK I get the German on the same screens as you, regular ole English works...well in English. :-)

Your email issue is probably the same one. The formatting of the comment emails are totally borked (bork bork bork) so the titles aren't coming through in the subject lines either. They aren't for me in Gmail either.

(By kirk, at 17 September, 2007 23:39) Edit Comment

Danke schön! Strange errors, eh? As a (former) programmer, I wonder how these are even possible. Then I remember that software complexity is *way* beyond the state of the art for human artifact management. The most complex thing in the universe - our brains - weren't designed they *grew*. I wonder if software has to be this way as well...

(By Matthew Cornell, at 18 September, 2007 03:09) Edit Comment

coz they found english is from germany! lol

or maybe google is busy localizing reader and mixes with blogger...

(By hermanwest, at 18 September, 2007 08:48) Edit Comment

Kirk, thanks as always, that did the trick for the German though not for the comment email.

Matthew and Herman, who knows the mind of Google, eh? Yeah maybe it's Germanisation and USisation combined...!

(By Improbulus, at 18 September, 2007 22:20) Edit Comment

I didn't think it would fix the email. ;-)

But that's fixed now too!

Must've gotten some Germans to work on it.

magische Schafe

(By phydeaux3, at 19 September, 2007 04:35) Edit Comment

Kirk, yep that must be the magic solution. Vorsprung etc!

Great news about the comment subject line, yeah I noticed all was right with the world again in the very email that wafted that last comment of yours to me.

(By Improbulus, at 19 September, 2007 20:00) Edit Comment