Blogger down, BRPS knows

Hours ago, I tried to get into Blogger dashboard but I got bX-kn2493
 then I thought it would be fixed soon. After a while, I went to do reviewing, then I found out requests count had a big drop. I checked one of my blogs, I got bX-59cppw, I realized it's whole Blogger down.

Here are two charts, the first one was taken from App Engine, it shows Requests/Second versus Last 24-hour time:

Second one is the Completed Requests over Last 24-hour time:

Last one is the Active Blogs over Last 24-hour time:

I wonder what Blogger did, maybe it's just a hardware failure?

About Reviewing

I review every blog, usually it only takes me five to thirty second to decide if this blog should be marked as

• Reviewed — I think it's okay and BRPS will notice me this blog again 90 days after this reviewing.
• Accepted — I gives it green light, it's a good blog, I don't need to review it anymore.
• Blocked — It violates Blocking Policy.

Here is a quick screenshot of reviewing interface:

Generally, if your blog is quite unique—you customize your layout quite good and don't have crap Flash or images, then your blog should be marked as accepted. If you use those awful-professional template, it could be marked as reviewed.

Note that you could only know if your blog is blocked or not, you wouldn't know if it's reviewed or accepted. If your blog is blocked, you will get a warning message instead of a list of related posts.

Blocking Policy

(Last updated on 1/6/2010)

BRPS is a free service, it uses free quota of what Google App Engine provided. It wasn't planned to charge, however the quota is limited and lots of blog using BRPS, therefore some blogs may not be using BRPS.

Any blog is having the following

• Copyright infringement (If your blogs have links to any illegal downloads, directly or indirectly, upload by youself or not, please DO NOT use BRPS. Otherwise, your blogs will be BLOCKED for sure),
• Hate against a protected group,
• Adult or pornographic images,
• Promotion of dangerous and illegal activity,
• Content facilitating phishing or account hijacking,
• Impersonated user identity, or
• Abuse this service.

will definitely be blocked.

There are more could be used as blocking reasons:

• Similar contents — There are few blogger (useless content creator) creating lots of blogs with very similar content in each of their blogs. Those contents are useless, the primary purpose is to expose their blogs and get revenues.
• Referral contents ­— Almost all posts have link to Amazon or some online stores with their referral code. Those blogs are just created to make money.
• Few posts — BRPS automatically block blogs only have less than 20 posts. There is no much benefit of using BRPS. Please don't waste server resources. If you got blocked, request a unblocking review once your blog post count reaches 20. (Added on 10/18/2009, updated on 11/17/2009)
  
• Test blog—If you are testing BRPS on your sandbox blog, that blog will be blocked. (Added on 10/18/2009)
• Failed installation/script removed blogs — Script installed without key or incomplete installation. Blogs have removed the script. (Added on 1/6/2010)

The reasons above are not the only ones, your blogs could be blocked for any reason.

If your blogs are blocked and you believe your blogs shouldn't be deserved for that, please report with your blog URL.

You can still host your own BRPS on Google App Engine, you can grab the code and run on your own. Please DO NOT ask for help about self hosting!

Special note to template developer: Please DO NOT activate BRPS if you add it into your template creations. Comment out the script! And write a instruction to guide your user to activate it.Not everyone needs Related Posts in their blog. (Added on 10/18/2009) (Removed on 1/6/2010)