Weblog Comments Near and Far Out

Running a weblog with open comments attracts some unusual discussions when people using a search engine find familiar names in an old entry. For two years, Workbench has hosted an ongoing soap opera between the current and former spouses of Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Ron Martz.

The sidebar also will show how much comment spam I have to weed out, even though I refuse comments with three or more links and actively ban senders. In the last six months, I have banned 1,263 IP addresses used by spammers. They haven't gotten the message -- an additional 21,043 attempts have been rejected from those addresses.

Wordzilla · Php · Mysql · 2005/05/12 · 11 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

Rogers,

It has occurred to me that a great blog
has the potential to foster a community
though it's comment system.

Maybe it exists but I'd love to see a
generic blogging platform that values
comments to the extent that the comment
become a forum of threaded comments like
the older bulletin board systems.

Slashdot is the closest community to what I'm thinking and Daily Kos might even be closer.

As you develop Wordzilla please consider
ways to keep interesting comment threads
alive for more than the typical 10 days that the blog post has "face life". After the post rolls away so do the threads of discussion and a lot can be lost. Re-commenting on intersting conversations and pulling the discussion forward to the front page might create this type of community and make a blog more interesting a vital for the reader.

Such a blogging tool would certainly be
a contribution to the art form and drive a lot more adsense revenue through encourging repeated visits because most blogs don't sustain long term conversations... just quick chats that flare and die. Many A-Listers have just
turned off comments.

#1 · McD · 2005/05/12

One big feature I would love to see in a blog.

Integrated full support for vbulletin and invision power board.

#2 · b · 2005/05/12

I've used slash, movable type, and now wordpress for my own weblog. Slash was interesting, but had a lot of features I didn't want or need, and was really overkill. It seemed fairly fragile, too. Movable type was a lot closer to what I wanted, but had scaling problems as the number of posts increased, and then demonstrated the shortcoming of all non-open development projects when the owners dramatically changed the licensing terms in an effort to make money.

Wordpress took a little work to transition to, especially since I'm more familiar with Perl than with PHP, but now that I've made the switch I'm really happy with it. I was getting a fair amount of comment spam, and using different sorts of short-term solutions to try to combat it (short-term because they only worked until enough people were using them that it was worth it to the comment spammers to automate their way around them).

But version 1.5 of Wordpress got some significant attention to the problem, and since upgrading to that several months ago I've had no comment spam whatsoever. The system I'm using (which I believe is the default behavior in wp 1.5) works like this:

* Before you can comment, you must auto-validate with a real email address to get an account.
* Even after auto-validation, your first comment goes in the moderation queue, and has to be explicitly approved by an admin before anyone else can see it.
* Once at least one of your comments has been validated, you can post comments without moderation, as long as they don't contain a (configurable) number of URLs.

You can also maintain a blacklist of regular expressions that can't appear in the comment.

I feel a little bad about the initial barrier to participation represented by the email validation, but after inconveniencing both myself and my regular users for a long time in my efforts to deal with comment spam, I can live with it. If you can't be bothered to validate via email, your comment probably wasn't that big a loss anyway. That's how I rationalize it, at least.

Your realtime comment-preview feature freaked me out the first time I saw it, by the way. Pretty slick.

#3 · John Callender · 2005/05/12

Rogers, as one of your zillions of fans, I'm intrigued that you will release blogware of your own creation. Can you tell us any more about it? How will it be different? Will I need to be a PHP programmer to template or use it? Will you write a book about it? Etc.

#4 · Qatish Yetinsyny · 2005/05/13

My goal for Wordzilla is a template-driven weblog publishing tool that uses HTML-style tags like Movable Type so non-programmers can adapt it to their needs without messing with PHP.

I still need to add a lot of features -- trackback, stories, user authentication, import/export, static pages, and template rendering. Also, the current user interface blows.

I'm probably another 3-6 months from the first release.

#5 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2005/05/13

One big feature I would love to see in a blog.
Integrated full support for vbulletin and invision power board.

#6 · jay · 2005/06/12

I very much like the first comment on Rogers' post, by MCD.

Nice to see something besides flamey rhetoric.

In MCD's egalitarian spirit, I would like to ask,

Just how vulnerable are the Internet's root DNS servers?

Someone said ten dedicated hackers could bring the Internet down.

I don't believe in the Evil Eye, so I'm not afraid to wonder why the Islamic terrorists haven't attacked them.

It seems so obvious. I mean ,if they really want to do some economic damage to the non-Islamic world, why not attack its living brain?

Perhaps the terrorists don't want to destroy their most effective means of communicating, or maybe they simply enjoy playing with those virtual houris too much.

What say ye?

#7 · Vince Williams · 2005/10/07

The content of your show is great, I really enjoy it.

#8 · Cheap ambien · 2006/04/22

good article, it'd be nice if more of the headers linked off to more articles.

#9 · Cheap tramadol · 2006/04/24

Hello this is news? this is bestand cool blog. Tnack you!
phentermine 37.5 mg

#10 · alaska swinger · 2006/12/01

We are legit,and registered company from uk,We are the leading exporter&factory for mobile phone and Portable DVD,Car DVD,MP3,MP4,LCD TV,Plasma TV,IP phone,USB Phone,bluetooth earphone,bluetooth USB dongle,Laptops,etc.

We have all brands of Mobile
Phones,Ipods,xbox
360, Sidekicks,Nextels phone,Laptops for sell at cheap and
affordable prices, they ranges from Nokia/Samsung/LG/Sony
Ericsson/Motorola/Alcatel/panasonic With Bluetooth, all
Brands and Models of Nextel Phones, we want you to get back
to us with your quote so that we can begin a good business
relationship.

So do feel free to contact us or e mail us at...

EMAIL ADDRESS: minetrade@hotmail.com"minetradeltd@yahoo.co.uk

nokia product.................
Nokia n95 for $300usd
nokia n93 for $230usd
Nokia n92 for $200usd
Nokia n91 for $200usd
Nokia n90 for $190usd
Nokia n80 for $180usd
Nokia n73 fof $190usd-
Nokia n71 for $170usd
Nokia n70 for $180usd
Nokia neo for $260
Nokia e60 for $180
Nokia e61 for $190

Sony ericsson product .....................
Sony ericsson w900i for $180usd
Sony ericcson p990 for $180usd
Sony ericsson w600 for $145usd
Sony ericsson p900 for $160usd
sony ericsson v600i for $130usd
Sony ericsson p800 for $140usd

NEXTEL LIEK..............

NEXTEL 1930 FOR...$120USD
NEXTEL i870T FOR..$140usd
NEXTEL i450 FOR...90usd
NEXTEL 1860 FOR..$110USD
NEXTEL i90c FOR.. 95USD
NEXTEL i95cl FOR.. 100USD
NEXTEL i30sx FOR.. 103USD
NEXTEL i850 FOR...105usd

OTHERS LIKE...................
Treo 650 for $150usd
Treo 700 for $180usd
Sick kick for $140usd
Side kick 2 for $130
Side kick 3 for $150
Eten m 500 for $100usd
ETEN G500 Quadband..$290
ETEN G500 PDA ....$270
ETEN G500 GSM GPS PDA...$$280
Blackberry 7290..$150
AT&T Blackberry7280.$180
Blackberry 16MB col.$220
Blackberry 8700c ...$250
Blackberry 7230 ....$220
Blackberry 7290.....$180

GAMES LIKE..................
Play station 3 for $300usd
ice cube for $150usd
X box360 for $140usd.

IPODS LIKE.............................
Apple 60 GB iPod Photo M9830LL/A..........60 USD
Apple 60 GB iPod photo ...................55 USD
Apple 30 GB iPod Photo M9829LL/A..........50 USD
Apple 512 MB iPod Shuffle MP3 Player......40 USD
Apple 4 GB iPod Mini Blue M9436LL/A.......45 USD
Apple 2 GB iPod Nano......................50 USD
Apple 4 GB iPod Nano......................60 USD
Apple 30 GB iPod Vidoe...................110 USD
Apple60 GB iPod Vidoe...................150 USD

LAPTOPS

IBM Thinkpad T42 1.7GHz 512MB 40GB CD-RW/DVD 15" XGA ;;$400
IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet PC 1.5GHz 1.5GB 60GB Bluetooth;;;$500
IBM Thinkpad T43 1.86GHz 2GB 60GB DVD Burner 14.1" SXGA ;;;$650
IBM Thinkpad R52 1.73GHz 768MB 40GB CD-RW/DVD 15" XGA ;;;;$330=
IBM Thinkpad T43 PM 1.86GHz 1GB 40GB CDRW DVD WiFi XP ;;$400
IBM Thinkpad T43 2GHz 1GB 60GB Multiburner ABG WiFi XP ;;;$620
IBM ThinkPad X40 1.5GHz 1.28GB 40GB UltraBase Combo X41;;;$600
IBM Thinkpad X41 PM 1.5GHz 1GB 40GB B/G WiFi Win XP ;;$400
IBM Thinkpad X41 Tablet PM 1.5GHz 512MB 40GB B/G WiFi ;;;$500
IBM Thinkpad T43 2.0GHz 2GB 80GB Bluetooth 14.1" SXGA+ ;;;$550

Dell Inspiron 8500 PIV 2.6GHz 30GB 512MB CDRW-DVD ROM ;;$400
Dell Latitude D600 PM 1.4GHz 40GB 512MB DVD-R Burner;;;; $330
Dell Latitude C600 850MHz Pentium IIl 256MB/20GB CD-RW ;;$300
Dell Latitude C640 Intel Pentium 4-M 2.0GHz 14.1-inch ...;;;$480

SONY VAIO PM 1.86GHz 1GB 40GB CDRW DVD WiFi XP ;;;$350
SONY VAIO T43 2GHz 1GB 60GB Multiburner ABG WiFi XP ;;;$720
SONY VAIO X40 1.5GHz 1.28GB 40GB UltraBase Combo X41;;;$700
SONY VAIO X41 PM 1.5GHz 1GB 40GB B/G WiFi Win XP ;;;;;$450
SONY VAIO X41 Tablet PM 1.5GHz 512MB 40GB B/G WiFi ;;;$480
SONY VAIO T43 2.0GHz 2GB 80GB Bluetooth 14.1" SXGA+ ;;;$500

For more info, and order inquiry,pls feel free to contact us or
Send ur email at minetrade@hotmail.com"minetradeltd@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks for you inquiry,as we look forward in placing your order,and giving you the most competent services.

Best regard

TELL..07024015278 or 07024037015

#11 · jimmy capa · 2007/01/10

Add a Comment

All comments are moderated before publication. These HTML tags are permitted: <p>, <b>, <i>, <a>, and <blockquote>. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA (for which the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply).