UPDATE 30th January 9.50 PM GMT: Jacob from Blogflux has replied in a comment, thus proving that his company is not dead. The problem with the contact page seems to have been fixed – at least they responded to a test message with a proper Message Received page, not the word “shoo”. But mail to web@blogflux.com is still being bounced.

FURTHER UPDATE 30th January 10.00 PM GMT: When I tried to resubmit my list of problem web pages, the “shoo” message reappeared. Perhaps the reason for this is that the system is rejecting messages over a certain length, or containing more than a certain number of links to websites. While I can understand this as a sensible anti-spam measure in some cases, it does seem a perverse one for use by a company which provides web-based software and so needs to be informed about problems with websites. And I consider it very rude to respond even to probable spammers with a message like “shoo”, because of the likelihood of false positive spam detections. It costs (very nearly) nothing to respond with a polite message about spam.

I use Blogflux Commentful to keep track of comments on blogs which I read and comment on. Usually it seems to work well. But its working has recently become erratic; in fact basically it is failing to pick up new comments on many (but not all) posts on several of the Blogger blogs I read, including Complegalitarian and Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream. So I cannot recommend this product at least until it is fixed.

But I not hold my breath for it to be fixed. This is because I have been unable to contact Blogflux to report these problems with Commentful. When I submit feedback through their contact page, their response is a simple page with just the message “shoo”. Now I don’t know if this is an intentional message or just a random one, but to me a message “shoo” is very rude! And then when I try to submit my comment to the e-mail address which they give, I get a rejection message

550 <web@blogflux.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual mailbox table

This situation has persisted for several hours. In other words, Blogflux appears to have terminated support for their products and blocked every way of contacting them. I have searched their site for any indication that they are working on fixing a temporary problem – which they could have reported in place of the message “shoo”.

Blogflux and Commentful are stated to be resources provided by Bloggy Network LLC, but they offer no contact information at all. The domain blogflux.com is registered to Enthropia Inc in Toronto, Canada, for which at least I can find a mailing address (PO Box 592, Station-P Toronto, ON M5S 2T1 CA) and an e-mail address. So I will send them a copy of my feedback with a link to this post.

Ruth Gledhill of The Times gives an excellent illustration of why it is important for comments to be allowed on blogs. Astonishingly, she had to put a post on her own well known blog just to contact a blogger who misquoted her. Here is her whole post, including the title:

Christopher of In God’s Coutry – contact me

This is the only way I can think of contacting you as the unhelpful people who run your Six Apart software won’t contact you on my behalf and it seems to be impossible to register to post a comment on your blog. Neither can I find any contact details for you on your blog. Your post misquotes me and needs correcting, that’s all. Please email me, thank you, Ruth.