‘Anonymous’: A Gravatar Issue?

~ beetleypete

Following on from my two posts about people having problems with leaving comments, or being shown as ‘Anonymous’, I have some first-hand experience to report today.

As I tried to leave a comment on Sue Judd’s blog this morning, I noticed that my dog gravatar had disappeared, and there were three lines for me to fill in, in order to be able to leave a comment.

Before falling into the trap of becoming ‘anonymous’, I clicked on the generic gravatar symbol shown, just out of curiosity.

That took me to the Gravtar website, and my own account. I was instructed to select a photo from those I have used in the past. After choosing the current one, I was then asked to provide an email address that ‘matched’ the photo. I selected the email I use for blogging, and received a message, ‘Details updated successfully’. When I clicked to save and finish, there was a message at the top of the screen.

‘We are sorry that this was necessary, it is our fault, not yours’.
This indicated to me that they are aware of the problem.

I then went back to Sue’s blog, and left a comment as normal, checking back later to make sure it had appeared.

So I am now confused. On one hand, it seemed to be a browser problem. Yet my own experience today, using the preferred Chrome browser, threw up the same glitch, courtesy of Gravatar.

This seems set to run and run…
I hope someone at WordPress is paying attention.

74 thoughts on “‘Anonymous’: A Gravatar Issue?”

  2. Pingback: The Great Anonymous Glitch | toritto

    1. It is all over the place, Olga. Some users affected by Gravatar, others by Browser issues, and WP losing identities, comment boxes, and even scheduled posts. I hope they get it sorted out soon.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  5. If you are not logged in automatically, at the comment part you can click the small WordPress-Logo too. This does the login. Normally the automatic login is shown in the bottom status bar by showing a short connection to a r-login.wp.com URL. 😉 Its as we say “my daily bread” since some weeks, getting the buttons for reblogging and liking too. -( Michael

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  7. Back to normal as of this comment, I expected it to be sorted as the ‘browser problem’ excuse never sticks for too long, especially given that Microsoft has such a large part of the browser market, WordPress have to follow and fix to make it work or they loose a lot of users.
    Now to catch up on a few more posts 🙂

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  9. This mess gets confusing day by day or worse hour by hour. Is blogging even safe anymore?? The next thing might be us losing our sites. This has to get fixed. I am losing posts already. A step ahead.

    Pete write about people not scheduling posts because my 2 posts got erased back to back after scheduling them. I checked my post and poof gone. And the next thing i know i am rewriting everything again. 😭

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      1. I have to study so I usually schedule all my posts to the time they should publish but for 2 days I have been facing problems. WordPress just brought an update, let’s see if it continues.🙄🙂✌

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    2. First rule of writing and posting: never trust any aspect of the internet, servers, clouds, ISP’s or other sites to secure your material intact and “forever.” If you don’t have a computer with a hard drive to save to, get a remote hard drive – quite affordable now, or a 64 GIG and up thumb drive and SAVE, SAVE, SAVE. When I’m on-line, have a longish comment written and have to switch to do a search, I COPY my comment to clipboard and if my wanderings have caused the original to disappear, a common aspect of WP commenting, I just copy it back in. Trust the internet? I’d sooner trust Donald Trump not to tell a lie. Meanwhile some of us are taking the time to communicate firmly but not too abrasively, with WP’s happiness engineers to remind them that it is not our job, it is their job, the get the machine working properly. I send them specific examples of their system’s repetitive failures and they respond with certain fixes. So far, I can once again leave comments on most blogs, and “likes” on some of them. I’m still not recognized on many blogs as a WP logged in member though I have a paid site and I am logged in. So that glitch will be addressed next. Geeks have a very hard time accepting that their world isn’t perfect!

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      1. I write on a phone application of WordPress. I can’t back it up anywhere. They have not even got any backup or anything else to secure our data so I go through this a lot but these glitches didn’t happen before. I have complained too. But as if they will listen to us. 🙄 I hope your glitches are fixed.🙂✌

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      2. I have a Buffalo 500 GB portable hard drive. I copy all photos and documents onto it on a regular basis.
        I have rarely trusted anything, let alone the Internet. 🙂
        Best wishes, Pete.

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  11. The plot thickens! There seem to be many variations on a theme, and whether all can be attributed to internet browser changes remains to be seen. But all have major impacts on bloggers so hopefully WP will help come up with a fix. It would be nice if they put out a notice too that they’re aware of the problems and are working on it… In the meantime I continue to use Chrome and am vigilant and watching for any irregularities. So far so good. No rain here today, how about where you are? 🙂

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    1. Sunny and dry for a change, Susanne. I had a most pleasant walk with Ollie.

      For WordPress to put out a warning, they would have to admit that there is an issue.
      I doubt that their advertisers would be happy to see that. 🙂

      Best wishes, Pete.

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      1. Maybe not a warning but just acknowledging the fact that users are reporting issues related to recent browser updates? But I doubt they will either. If it’s their issue they will quietly update their software unbeknownst to us, apply their ‘patches’ and things will suddenly ‘self-correct.’ I just think it would be nice to let us know what’s happening, but I guess we aren’t paying enough to have earned that.

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  12. Another interesting back door to one’s site access. When I clicked to comment here, I got the dreaded three lines asking for user name, email, etc. I now just click on the W icon and the lines disappear. This only works if one is using Chrome, of course! As for “Anonymous” issue, I haven’t had that for about 6 months now. Interesting they – whoever they are – would actually admit to being at fault.

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    1. Thanks, Sha’Tara.
      It seems that Gravatar were sort-of admitting that today’s glitch was their fault.
      At least as much as we can expect them to, I suppose. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  13. Thank you Pete for posting on this, I’m new to WordPress and didn’t know if it was common practice to have to sign in all the time when commenting, it does take a lot of time. Also you mentioned traffic glitches and mine is really slow compared to blogspot so I hope I’m not one of those accounts that is marked suspicious? They say 4-6 week fir search engines to catch up to your new site. We’ll see! Appreciate the heads up.

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  22. When these things run smoothly, we never pay attention, but then….remember that about a month ago I suddenly stopped receiving notifications of posts from many of the bloggers I follow…I had to re-set a button I never knew existed, as WordPress had, for reasons unknown to me, put up a block on about 20 of the blogs I follow and I had to “un-do” it…hmmmmm…..technology

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  23. Of late, I’ve had none of the problems you decribe, Pete. Well. sometimes I need to log in to WP before I can comment, but that – to my mind – only happens after I’ve cleared my browsing history, cookies included. It might also have happened after a browser update. Well, who knows?!

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    1. Thanks, Pit. It seems some people are being hit harder than others with this recent ‘glitch-storm’. Pleased to hear that you have managed to avoid it. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  24. Sorry you’re having trouble too, Pete. I described my long list of problems, and how things are different when I go to different blogs — and different problems at different posts at the same blog, different problems with different browsers, and all those things change from one hour to the next — the whole variety package. They refused to have any accountability — said it must be my computer.
    I’ve experienced what you described, as well as the things many other bloggers have described. I’ve also tried all the solutions. Some of them actually work — for an hour or two.
    The amount of time I spend in my usual blog rounds has tripled, but in that amount of time, I can only visit a few. Since I try to support as many bloggers as I possibly can, it has become, not a headache, but a full-blown migraine…
    Indeed — I hope WordPress is listening. Hugs on the wing.

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