The past week or so, a lot of people have made comments, both here and in private e-mail, about what puts a comment into Moderation. A lot of “every time I do this I end up there,” or “I always do this so I never end up there.”

I understand the human desire to bring order to chaos, so it pains me to say — as the person who rescues comments from Moderation — that apparently all the theories are wrong: there are a few words that trigger Moderation, and always have, but other than that it really is random. Where you post from doesn’t matter. Links don’t matter. Having a Samoan e-mail address doesn’t matter.

What triggers Moderation one day might not the next day.

One of my comments ended up in Moderation last week, and that’s supposed to be impossible.

Y’all feel free to continue speculating if you want, but you’d have better luck trying to ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

Well, I guess they’re okay with warm weather, but there’ll probably be other adjustments.

Fluffy Bunny Slippers’s comment in the “Speaking of ‘Operation’…” post was the 40,000th comment since the site was resurrected just under two years ago (coming in the 2050th post).

Oddly enough, as far as I can tell, not one of those comments came from a Samoan.