A few hours after I was removed from WordPress, I was back up and received a note of explanation:
Hi,
The link to bobjohnson.com did that. It’s a site spammers link to very heavily so it is automatically scanned for now.
Sorry it caught you.
Your blog will not now be checked by these scans so please do not worry about tripping one again.
I do apologize for the shock and worry we caused you.
Mark
Now, Bob Johnson is a very respected higher ed consultant. He does an excellent newsletter and a good blog. There’s just nothing bad about the guy, but apparently spammers love his site. I still don’t understand the mechanics of what Mark explained but I know many of you do. So if you Web folks would send a note of explanation, all us PR types would be grateful.
I appreciated the response, which was fairly prompt, and the explanation. I also appreciated the fact that Mark sent it to me. It wasn’t signed The xxxxxx Team like so any other sites. It was Mark and it was an explanation, and it was an apology (“for the shock and worry we caused you” — only a human could generate a message like that).
And when I got the note, I loved Mark as a person and WordPress as a responsible and responsive site. (Although fo awhile I felt like a Kafka character thrown into exile by anonymous machines and left to float in a cyber junkyard while the emotionless army of x’s and o’s trudged onward).
Thanks Mark and WordPress. It was a glitch. You responded, explained and apologized. It was good customer service and good marketing.
(Now, somebody, translate Mark’s explanation).