[Clive Watkins]

At Alex’s request, I have now posted two more threads at The Deep End intended to test the new security arrangements Alex has put in place.

Clive

[Golias]

I'll be watching the new test threads, Clive. It appears that the new tag has effectively prevented Google from finding the contents of my TDE thread titled "Il Ragno." Googling the false poem title and the more unusual phrases in the poem brings no results. Moreover, the hits that appeared when the poem was up without the protective tags have now all disappeared. The Google cache which formerly containd them seems to have been purged. That's very encouraging.

The poem itself is still up for workshopping. Of some interest may be its repeated use of a syntax or phrase order I have only seen once before. It appeared in an unforgettable poem by Trumbull Stickney, so you may recognize it.

G/W

[Clive Watkins]

It does indeed seem that Alex’s blocker text works. Of the four test threads I have posted at The Deep End (two pairs: “Winter Morning Walk” and “A Winter Morning Walk”, and “The Cottage” and “ Thronging the Seas”), only the threads which are not protected by the blocker text (“Winter Morning Walk” and “The Cottage”) show up on Google. The two protected threads seem so far not to have been found.

As I said above, I also posted a subsequent comment to the unprotected thread “Winter Morning Walk”, consisting of some well-known lines by Dryden, and inserted the blocker text at the top of this comment. I have not yet been able to pick up the thread by searching on a phrase from the Dryden – that is, from below the newly inserted blocker text. This suggests that, in an otherwise unprotected thread, inserting the blocker text at the start of a subsequent comment will render everything that follows it (but not what precedes it) invisible too.

According to Alex in an email, this also makes it possible to protect a previously unprotected thread. As the person who initiated the thread, paste the blocker text at the start of your opening post. Then, once the thread has dropped from Google’s cache, which of course may take several months, it will effectively disappear from view.

Thanks for your help on this, Alex. I am sure members who post here frequently and who want to submit their work to editors will find this new facility helpful.

Clive