Comments – Open Thread
November 20th, 2006Alright, comments. I haven’t wanted to put them on the main page, but I’m willing to entertain the idea A) because several of you have been asking for comment capability on individual posts, B) WordPress has many options for keeping spam away and C) I’m growing tired of PHPbb’s broken-by-design spam prevention.
Here’s how this is going to work: I’m turning on comments, and I’ll allow somewhat fast and loose permissions at first. But if spam and trolls start showing up, I’ll begin turning the screws that lock this thing down. My spam solution for Farmlet is simple. I require each poster to request an account that I manually setup. The result is zero spam.
Well, let’s see how it goes…
Posted in Announcements | Top Of Page
nice one!
let’s hope it stimulates a great debate without the nasties…
This is a great idea!!
Often, I’ll go to the forum looking for responses to a particular post, but I end up getting sidetracked in the threads til I forget what I came for…
:/
If we can all just learn to ignore the trolls, meet any bullshit with deafening silence, maybe we can avoid the fate of RigInt – I’ve long since given up on reading *any* of the comments over there:
“You’re disinfo!!” “No, *you’re* disinfo!!”
“Am not!” “Are too!!”
“”Why is everyone so mean to me?? Goodbye, cruel forum!”
Yap, yap, yap…
Anyway, great idea – can’t wait to hear from my fellow Cryptogonians!!
While it won’t stop trolls, you can at least prevent automated spam without requiring accounts. The trick is to make form submission javascript-dependent:
http://macromates.com/sigpipe/archives/2005/09/25/fighting-comment-spam/
I have been looking forward to this. Good Job, Kevin.
Fantastic, I tried to reply to the thread discussing the switch of the software but comments at that point had yet to be opened.
Hopefully the conversations stay productive and on topic. Great to see the new site coming along, Kevin.
Cheers!
Justin
Re: I’m disinfo, you’re disinfo, wouldn’t ya want to be disinfo too…
That’s why I generally don’t like comments on the posts. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ve been wrong all this time???? * not holding breath, hoping for the best * It’s so easy for trolls to just start flaming people with accusations and nonsense. Who would want to volunteer info if they’re just going to get shit on all the time????
Anyway, if it gets out of hand, I’ll go with the Farmlet model. But ppam is the first thing to deal with. I’ve got Akismet running now. It’s going to be interesting…
Re: javascript dependent posts, I’ll try the hashcash plugin if necessary. Thanks for the tip!
Ultimate truth be known, I’d like to open up Farmlet so more people might comment. I’m using this Cryptogon thing as a test to see how loose it can be and still keep out the spam.
Kevin, you are my hero for adding comments!
As a fellow INTJ, I believe your brilliance ‘lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age’.
Challenge the status quo, build a system, change the world.
George
Thanks, George. We’ll see how brilliant I am when it comes time to get milk out of our cows!
Hi Kevin,
good move, I have been hoping for a commenting system for quite some time. Hopefully this will even be enhancing the quality of information on this website.
cheers from .de
souls
You might want to the WordPress Captcha Plugin
here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools#Captcha
Hi kevin-
Nice work. I think comments are a great idea, but you may want to discuss what sort of privacy your guests can expect in terms of logs, cookies, etc. Sometimes even paranoids have real enemies. 😉 As you have pinted out numerous times, these are indeed itneresting times, and you may get more forthright commentary if people feel comfortable about the risk of “blowback” someday. (I suppose that anonyminity doesn’t help your problem with spam or trolls, but hopefully some balance can be found.
Helpful cow tip: be sure the cow has at least *two* udders before attempting to extract milk manually.
Best wishes to you and Becky-
I like the new look.
We had to go with registered comments a while back, and ditching phpBB even longer ago. We ended up going with our own program, ditching the prepackaged stuff. While not perfect, it’s allowed me to make lots of changes, and seriously cut down on the spam traffic. Over 90% of our comments were spam. Now, it’s only the ambitious spammers who register an account, where we then disable their account and delete all their postings when we catch them spamming.
If you need any programming help (time allowing), I’d be more than happy to give you a hand. I haven’t messed with WordPress much, but I can help.
I’m absolutely ruthless with spammers on my blog. I ban their IP addresses the first time, from the entire website, not just the blog. Pre-approved comments can help you manage spam, as can akismet plug-in for WordPress, works great! http://akismet.com/
Wow! This looks great! Great job. Is this the reason the forum doesn’t seem to be updating? Or has discussion there just been slow?
Cheers from a longtime lurker,
kermujin
Great new look Kevin. I’m freakin jealous! BTW, the interview with you will be published most likely the Monday after thanksgiving as part of the next issue of the bulletin.
Love the new look. I, too, have a WordPress account, but I’ve yet to switch over to it from Blogspot because it smacks of effort. As a techie by trade, you’d think I’d be up for such a thing. Alas, reading about Rosy and conspiracies is much more to my liking.
P.S. At first glance, I though Impat was advocating “cow tipping”. Would the coriolis effect enter into it down your way? 😉
I like the look, and that was a quick move. Bravo.
One thing… you might want to redirect /index.html for any folks that bookmarked it that way, right now it gives a 404, wouldn’t want to leave anyone behind. 🙂
Apache (on this box) is setup to serve index.html before index.php (when both files are present) when the the domain root is accessed. I didn’t feel like researching how to change this. I’m pretty sure that if anyone 404s on index.html they’d figure it out pretty fast.
I guessed that this is some setting in apache conf that I don’t have permission to change, so I just left it. I’m sure someone out there can and will deliver a dissertation on this matter. 😉
Hey Matt,
That’s great about the interview. Thanks for the update! I hope people like it.
excellent look. diggin it. To where should we submit stuff?
such as: new recreation of M3 supply:
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/
West, just face it, man. You need a site! HA! Seriously, fire one up…
Great move. Hope it works.
One small question, there was no other search than Google for your site? Every search and originating IP address will be saved forever. With Google the government doesn’t need mind reading machines.
Considering myself a TRADER in information and a regular reader of your cryptogon web I find the moment has come to payback your time and effort as a response to your recent medical.– Simply, Medicine is just another corporate scam and you can learn much at orthomed.com about the value of ascorbic acid powder as the most powerful antioxidant known.
Wilfred, your activities online are archived by your ISP, and the NSA is inside many of the hops in between. Google cookie paranoia is misplaced energy at this late stage of the game. That’s an argument about deck chairs on the Titanic, I’m afraid.
Feel free to use some other search engine, if it makes you feel more comfortable. They’ll still know everything you did. Google, or no Google. Nobody hates Google (as a company) more than me. They’ve shafted me up, down, left and right. But their search product is still the best.
The most powerful antioxidant known is ascorbic acid?
More powerful than oligomeric proanthocyanidins?
Better check your math on that one.