I take this opportunity to remind Rob how much I have enjoyed having him around. He and I often come from opposite sides of some problems, but that's the thing. Good faith is good faith. (And funny is funny.)
This site could be so much better if you could filter out the filth (think Slashdot style). Not necessary to remove their posts completely, but at least let people rank their usefulness in contributing to a reasonable discourse about a particular topic. One of the reasons I keep coming back is because of the little nuggets of wisdom certain posters leave here.
It just looks bad when you have posters complaining that American Nazis are worse than German Nazis. Freedom of speech is wonderful, but c'mon, let's keep it reasonable and on-topic and cut with the Scadenfreude.
Please consider some kind of moderation system. Let's keep the posting relevant and informative. There's nothing like a good argument, but who wants to read sissy fits and diatribes especially when crude and vulgar?
And CR, Tanta, if this blog is a business blog, it shouldn't be blocked! (I know it isn't at my employers)
Why is it that halo scan is the only one that people can use at work? What about it makes it unique?
My biggest problem is that their are so many marginally on topic points made that you tend to get worn out by the time your half way down the thread. I would gladly read 100 responses (eventually) if 90% of them were on topic.
There are some blogs where the comments are as good or better then the postings. If that were to happen here, it would be fantastic. If it takes ditching halo scan, so be it.
I would like it if we kept the current comment format (unregistered), but allowed people to rate comments. That way, we could save time and improve quality as well.
Actually, in an ideal world, I would be able to view comments using ratings that I trust (for example, only use ratings from tanta, CR and MP). This would allow readers to have a comment trail that is tailored to their own preferences.
Do not Tanta and CR have the right to delete comments that are not relevant? Perhaps this would take too much of their time? If they would delete offending comments for a while the authors might get the message that they are not welcome.
Perhaps this would take too much of their time? If they would delete offending comments for a while the authors might get the message that they are not welcome.
Yes, we can delete comments and we do.
However, it is unfortunately the case that a certain class of troll takes that as "attention" and escalates.
It is, certainly, a great deal more effective for me to delete problems as soon as I see them if the comments underneath have ignored them. But if they've already become a topic of many follow-up comments, then the thread's off the rails unless I just delete everything.
I am not a fan of "community moderation." It seems like such a wonderful, democratic, Jimmy Stewart kind of idea at first. But my reading of political blogs suggests that this elysian democracy soon falls prey to roving bands of Heathers who giggle with their friends behind their monitors and gang up on all the kidz who aren't kewl enough. Most of us had enough of that in high school, and many, sadly, still live with it in the form of juvenile office politics.
Registration, however, can be helpful, at least insofar as it relieves the problem of having chaotic arguments with Anonymouses of multiple personalities.
You'd expect people to just feel ashamed. CR and Tanta are taking the time to educate us about arcana that have suddenly become of major importance to all of us, yet few of us understand. And neither seem to be doing it for the gloryhounding reasons that undermine many of the big-box blogs. Whatever happened to manners and simple appreciation? Oh, well.
As a regular reader but infrequent commenter, I have seen this huge increase in comments, specially the kind of comments that I prefer to scroll. Then, I have started selecting those from commenters that I read before and appreciate.
This is the only thing that works on works computer because I don't have to sign on we are blocked. Please do what you have to and I can wait until get home to read some the comments minus the trolls of course. Keep up the great work because I sure have learned a lot from owners and commentors.
The race to the bottom continues.
Tanta-You do a great job. However, we need to be careful not to impose political correctnes. I am often in the minority, as I do not believe we are on "The Eve of Destruction", and would not like to be censored for not sharing the majority view.
Do you think part of the problem may be not the lack of registration, but the lack of nesting?
I find Duncan's blog interesting but his Haloscan-powered comments not worth reading. That's because I'm forced to skim all the "Frists!" and "Firsts!" and inside jokes to find anything worthwhile. Personally, I think Haloscan works best on blogs with light traffic.
If comments are nested, it is easier to spot troll posts and replies to them, and simply step over the entire pile of doody.
But my reading of political blogs suggests that this elysian democracy soon falls prey to roving bands of Heathers who giggle with their friends behind their monitors and gang up on all the kidz who aren't kewl enough.
I think it's even worse than that, Markel.
I still think that a lot of what motivates people to leave nuisance comments is the "online poll!" mentality. For whatever reason, some folks are like Pavlov's dogs when they see a "comments" link. Even if they have nothing to say, they have to say something.
Rating systems fall prey to the same mentality: you don't have to rate a comment, but some people will. Not that they thought about it or have any expertise or a mature judgment about it; just because they never miss an opportunity to say "I'm here!"
And I do find it strangely at odds with my apparent mission in life to supply people with the intellectual and practical infrastructure to enable them to draw their own conclusions about finance-related topics, only to then turn around and tell them what comments are worth reading.
Seems to me...with the exception of a very limited set of people things are actually quite good here..and probably the easiest way to deal with this issue would be to ignore the one or two people who add no value...of course that appears to be quite difficult...doing the easy thing...
Im not sure who I am but thank you for that nice story about the others that are getting out of control; I offered a weird solution in the previous post. I do agree that a new trend is in place here related to too many junk posts.
Im as guilty as they come, but nonetheless, too much comment from any one poster is not a good thing here, as that does waste time and makes it too difficult to keep a topic in context and on-track.
You have a good thing going here, so I hope you dont pull a Fed rate cut and over-react too much, and thus keep ahead of the curve and keep it in perspective -- then phase in to what works.
Doc The Addict Holiday
PS have you tried looking for a widget that could shock people via their mousepads?
PPS: Another way out of this jam is to ignore it and not get into the blogs and then just search for content within Halo; its not like you should feel connected to day-to-day blogs that can have 250+ posts X 5 stories, that would be insane, so maybe continue on with high quality stories and forget about your children here and let the boards run wild like Yahoo. That way, you provide the content you want and that drives people to the blogs and thats that.
The blog is attracting more and more of all kinds. It is evolving, that doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Continue your comment patrols deleting obvious crap comments. Attempt to implement a system which allows individuals to 'ignore' certain other posters. This may require a registered system. Community ratings are by definition popularity contests, rationalize it anyway you want.
FYI, I run a blog software company called SoapBlox, which is a online community/blog platform. Users have to register, there's nested (and even AJAX based) commenting systems.
It also allows you the ability to have "user" posts. and a "recommended user" post section, much like Daily Kos (if you've ever been).
I believe I've not fed the trolls in some time; I pledge not to do it.
That said, if you need to go to registration, do so. Somebody said that the problem with the hippie movement was that admission was free. Anybody could climb on board, no matter how bogus. As this blog becomes more popular, you're going to need some low-effort means of moderating the conversations. Registration allows this.
Thank you again, thank you both, for the information you bring to the table, and to the forum you provide for readers to add their own.
I like Haloscan, but if registration is what's needed to keep things sane. . . so be it.
I do think just ignoring trolls and bores does work. Tanta's right though, that means complete and total ignore. I remember trolls here who were ignored, and have returned and get attention now.
Even if they have nothing to say, they have to say something.
There is a common personality flaw among people who can't have a genuine conversation. They're not listening to you; they're just waiting for their next turn to speak. Even worse are those whose default setting is "contradict," since they're just waiting for something to argue against. For some reason, this trait is far more apparent online than it is in the real world.
I got very irritated in the other thread about someone making a strawman out of one of my comments--this is a very common technique in people who just want to hear themselves talk. I've seen you deal with it, too, from posters who write not, "Do you mean..." but instead, "You're saying that...," as if they know, and you don't, and your protests can be waved aside.
I encountered a woman named Tanta.
She was not just some everyday ranter.
Opinions and knowledge she had,
for which many were glad,
but for her democratic spirits
and generous merits
we wish to advance her.
i very much appreciate, first and foremost, CR and Tanta's blogs..it has been and continues to be a great education.
i also value much the comments.
i wish i knew how to keep the standards as high as they were before.
with success comes popularity...i have seen CR noted in many places in print and at other web sites.
All i can say is i know the roster of handles of those who were here long before me and if they tell me to back off i will respect that..i hope we all would.
As Mt. Hood and others and Tanta just said..we must not respond to destructive negative comments.
i pledge not to respond to insults and data dumps..and i promise to accept constructive criticism to pipe down.
Registration is fine for me. I refrain from reading the comments as I feel most comments are a waste of time. I just read your blog which I find very informative.
However, we need to be careful not to impose political correctnes. I am often in the minority, as I do not believe we are on "The Eve of Destruction", and would not like to be censored for not sharing the majority view.
"Political correctness"? Puh-leeze.
Nobody said anything about censoring unpopular points of view.
It is my experience, however, that the ones who whine the loudest about censorship are the ones who don't understand the difference between your having a right to say something and my having an obligation to care about it.
A hallmark of persuasive writing is that it tries to show the reader not just a point of view, but a reason to care about that point of view. That necessarily means that any writer who is truly persuasive is one who can imagine herself in someone else's shoes. A persuasive argument implicitly offers respect to the other side.
Too many people here have just been trying to "win" the argument or get the last word in. It's fun for you and whoever you hooked into to arguing with you, but the rest of us just find it tedious.
So be careful about assuming that you might be subject to censorship because your opinion is unpopular. You might be subject to being ignored because you're repeating yourself.
This is my first post ever to this wonderful blog. I've learned more from this blog in the last 6 months than from any other source. One of the reasons is because of the comments. In fact, this is the only blog where I always read the comments. Despite the occasional troll, there is some great discussion. As I learn more, I hope to be able to contribute to the discussion. Until then, I wanted to thank CR, Tanta, and all of the great commenters on this site.
I have no opinion on Haloscan vs. a registered comment system. I scroll past comments or commentators I don't want to read on lots of blogs.
But, as someone who has attended scores of 'community' meetings, the rules need to be restated quite often.
In businesses, you can more easily fire who you don't want.
In a public community, you have to set some rules, and usually have someone enforce them. I've never seen a way around that.
I think this blog is about as perfect as I'd want it to be. It's a stressful world and if someone can vent on here... what's the harm? Take what ya want and leave the rest?
I find that score-moderated posts (a la slashdot) break the reading flow. Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions. Too many people make anything suck. One button click to ignore and poster name first would be useful. I can recognize the writing style of the commenters I like pretty quickly, otherwise I've been scanning down to the poster name first before reading the comment. The flow is also too fast now to follow-up with replies -- threaded replies are needed for that. Can you strip down the UI flashiness if you do it? I hate most discussion board software... too clunky. Something seductive about haloscan's minimalism.
"you're going to need some low-effort means of moderating the conversations. Registration allows this. "
No, on second thought, registration does not work, just look at Yahoo, Silicon, any blog site. Registration is just bookwork and steals your time to play administrator to chaos, dont go there baby, it will burn your time and the trolls and crap will not go away! You end up with registered trolls that will still piss people off, because they are registered. Not a solution!
DH
When I pop in DH, I really should be forced to have a default name that locks me in....hmmm, how do you not register people but identify them?
I wouldn't object to an Ignore feature. However, if others take the low road and feed a troll for a long thread, you still have to wade through just as much junk unless you ignore the whole community.
Funny, I keep thinking about that site we were talking about, youwalkaway.com. It's always important to remember that if an exploit is available, there's always someone who will not only exploit it, but make a mission or a business model out of exploiting it.
I don't like registrations, but I would do it here if I had to.
I am not a fan of nesting. I think nesting put the last nail in the coffin of the Yahoo boards.
Nesting works OK for social networking sites where people want to have little chats with their friends. It doesn't work on a news driven site unless the person who makes the first comment in the thread does a good job on the subject line and then the people after that really stick with the subject. Even if those conditions are met, I don't come to CR knowing in advance what I want to read about.
Ignoring trolls works if your community members stay the same.
New people will find this blog (I see links to it here and there in news articles) and people will feed the trolls.
Forums are usually moderated by a select few. CR and Tanta could get a couple loyal informative posters on board to help moderate the obscenity. No need to rank all posts and create some kind of competition about who is the most "Informative" or who has the best ranking. Just get rid of the filth.
"Names at the beginning of a comment are an excellent idea."
I agree. I cope now by scrolling to the end of long posts before I read them. It's awkward, but faster than spending 30 seconds reading a troll's rant before you figure out that it's actually just a rant. If it were possible to put names at the beginning, that would be great.
Besides, there are certain posters who I almost always want to read -- quite a number, really -- and this would help me identify them.
albrt, I'm talking about the kind of nesting where you can see the entire posts, not just the subject lines. In fact, nesting works well when even when many posters title their comments "asdf."
I tend to read the name and then the comment. Certain names I just skip completely. It works for me. I think Tanta actually jumped on me for my first comment, but that was back when we had only a subprime problem (ha!) so I forget the specifics.
I don't have an objection to registration but I don't think it does any good for eliminating trolls. They will get their fix some way, somehow. If you don't feed them, they go away.
The future is all about faster paced comments on faster stories, so the key is to force people into smaller spaces and cut the amount of words down.
I know from pasting in lots of crap here & there, that you have a content limit, so I would strongly suggest limiting everyone to far fewer words per post.
One of the first times I came here I was busted for posting a long story, thus the only reason I was able to post a long story, was because of your content allowance.
Just reduce the word count if you can, and that will help manage part of the problem, as there will less data here to screen!
Well, typing 'first' first is the first thing I would get rid of. What Chutzpah! Well, I talked this over with my rich husband you know the blonde none Jew but not really a Christian either and then I called Jas (on his secret red phone)who was like they are American communists and ...so still being confused I found Doc's number and didn't get any satisfaction there so I'm trying to call just a select few others in my small social group but now I've got to run to that Macy's white winter sale for a Natori King coverlet (I'll check house prices in my Benz along the way). Is Suze Orman on Larry King again tonight? I may just watch her instead. (Just an offbeat attempt at humor. disregard it.)Anonymous
"A persuasive argument implicitly offers respect to the other side."
Tanta-I think you will find that many here been occasionally guilty of mockery of those who disagree with them (including myself). Most people are reasonable and will stop if they are called on it. The cop on the highway doesn't have to give everyone a ticket; sometimes just their being there slows everyone down.
No objection to putting names first if that can be done easily.
For a new reader to come into the blog, and scan the the numerous topics and tangents, opens up a world of education that most could only hope to attain if they studied at all the finest institution of the world, simultaneously. This is the beauty of the internet, and the value of a great blog.
When we all get to a bore at the point of saturation on a topic of mortgage schadenfreude, my mind usually drifts to the cui bono part.
that brings me to relevance...
oil.
money.
society.
stability
freedom
tolerance
Why did, at the bottom of the market in 2002, did the mortgage market come to life with new products for mainstream buyer's like i/o?
Why was it really necessary to have a rapid "measured" reduction in interest rates?
Why do we need to build million dollar humvee's for Iraq.
How do we get money for million dollar humvee's for iraq, if everyone is getting a tax rebate?
It all flows, and becomes relevant, thru tangent, becomes it's all money, and effort, and worth, and a life's blood. We must know, and debate it, so that we can understand how we got to the place we'll be at in a few years, a have ideas to create something better.
I'm not a HaloScan expert, but aren't there tools available that let readers use a killfile with HaloScan? Seems like that would solve a lot of the problem.
Barry Ritholz has the ability at his site to block by IP address, if I'm not mistaken. He bans persistent trolls. Now, he doesn't use haloscan, but he also doesn't use registration. I'm sure Barry would share his thoughts and experience.
That said, the comments here are superior to any blog I'm familiar with -- even Barry's. So, I'd hate to mess with a good thing.
I pledge to not feed the troll (my hands are not clean).
Things are not nearly bad enough to make this a necessary step. So inertia argues for remaining inert.
But would it be an improvement? I think so. There are way too many stock/investing comments in long threads. A few of them are actually interesting, but they are rarely on topic. Maybe one of these posters should set up a quick and dirty blog where they could back and forth whenever one gets started? A little more self-discipline from a few folks would go along way.
Just how many posters are there who can post at work with halo but not with other software? I guess I'm seeing a modest benefit to moving to a registration system, but I really don't know the cost.
I'm talking about the kind of nesting where you can see the entire posts
I'll have to respectfully disagree on this. The trouble with nesting, IMHO, is that as the thread grows, it becomes really hard to follow what's new and what isn't. Here, I just zoom to the bottom and pick up where I left off. At blogs like HBB, nested comment threads are virtually impossible to keep up with after a hundred or so comments. FWIW...
Why is it that halo scan is the only one that people can use at work? What about it makes it unique?
It's that efficiency thing again, most companies don't have the resources to maintain lists of good/bad sites so they subscribe to a service and holoscan was on the banned list for a while but there were to many people who accessed the service for "business purposes" so it got unbanned.
All these suggestions for fixing holoscan, while valid, require code and that means owning the server, I'd be willing to donate time/code/money to move this blog to another platform but I'm not sure that the transition would be something that CR and Tanta would be willing to tackle.
I'm not a regular poster, I lurked for months before posting, sometimes something catches my attention and I feel I have something to add. I'd gladly register if that would stop the trolls but there is a dedicated group of trolls that would see that as a challenge and administration becomes a nightmare.
I regularly scroll by posts from posters who I believe to be trolls, but some times it can/does get out of control when others feel compelled to respond, we all have buttons that we just can't seem to ignore.
Even if the regulars stop feeding the trolls this blog is becoming mainstream and that will bring more new readers who will feel the need to feed the trolls.
My longest post and nothing that even resembles a solution
"The trouble with nesting, IMHO, is that as the thread grows, it becomes really hard to follow what's new and what isn't. Here, I just zoom to the bottom and pick up where I left off."
I like the idea of names on top also. That is a weakness in the current Halo layout and also the divisions between comment posts are just that little thin line, which maybe could be configured in some new way to make the name at top part of newer format/look. I also think that thinking of a way to make people post a name should be required as a default. I know when I go to The Big Picture, etc, some people make you put in an email address and name, which "kind of" works, but if you make too many changes too fast you may not like what you create, so go slow.
I also like Naked Capitalism which has a very easy interface like so,e I have seen that make you enter a code before posting; perhaps this is something linked to income, I dont know, but the main reason you are having problems, is because of your success with new traffic and new people posting. Adaption is the key so great to see this debate!
It is ironic that this post appeared as I decided to stop reading the comments last week (so perhaps I missed the latest troll). I used to learn something from the threads but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
The commonality of viewpoint of people visiting here has already been established, there's really nowhere to go on a personal relationship level. That is why people would be better off keeping their individual impressions to a diary or with those they can have face-to-face contact. I tired of reading a bunch of one-way revelations that led to no conclusions and no solutions.
hey how about if names were posted before the comment.
Very much agree with this sentiment. That would at least cue the reader as to the quality of what they are about to read. Combine that with registration would be helpful (because, as I've noticed in the past, certain individuals seem to attract impersonation).
IMHO, this blog is already out of control and too many people (myself included) are going over limits for content.
Force content to be based on shorter messages; limit content! Manage chaos by not letting content expand too rapidly! This is entropy, dont let too many words kill your blog!!!
Another "unintended consequence" of the government getting involved in economics: the comments here have descended into petty politacal bickering and diatribes.
For a new reader to come into the blog, and scan the the numerous topics and tangents, opens up a world of education that most could only hope to attain if they studied at all the finest institution of the world, simultaneously. This is the beauty of the internet, and the value of a great blog.
We are very flattered that you think of us as a common room in a great university.
But we aren't, you know.
The entire internet might fit that description.
But this blog is written by two people and read regularly by many many other people who are actually trying to filter, not to escape the filters.
I personally have about 50 blogs on my Bloglines feed. I don't read every post on every one of those blogs, but I certainly scan them all. I know many of the rest of you also read widely, because it shows in your comments that you do. I have nothing against being Renaissance Chicks.
What I object to is someone trying to make my blog stand in for the entire net. That's the logical implication of most of the "political" posts. They aren't really about the specific political issues around housing and finance. They're just all-purpose political commentary. I really really want people who are into that kind of thing to go find a good political blog and comment there. The rest of us are trying to get away from that.
Please note, by the way, that I might be telling you something you don't want to hear. But the fact that I am responding to you means I do not consider you to be a troll. I just wrote a big post about not feeding trolls. Frankly, if you've got Tanta criticizing your comment, you can at least consider that she thinks you worth responding to. If she thought you were a troll, she'd . . . .
However, it is unfortunately the case that a certain class of troll takes that as "attention" and escalates."
I do not know if it is possible with Haloscan but banning the IP address of the troll is an option on several blog softwares. Worth asking Haloscan's geeks.
Not all of us who comment from work are in the financial industry. We are not necessarily ripping off our employer by reading when we should be doing something else. Some of us get paid to sit patiently and wait until we are needed. Meanwhile, a mind is a terrible thing to waste and we like to make an insightful or funny comment. I learned as much from the comments as I did from the blog.
--
I hope that it has not escaped Tanta's awareness that vast majority of people can't handle when their cherished beliefs are challenged. False beliefs like that in democracy will cause Americans unimaginable misery. And within the lifetime of many here.
False beliefs are root causes of much misery and many conflicts. And we see the conflict here too.
Almost all problems these days, especially, discussed on this blog, are human behavior problems.
FALSE BELIEFS AND BAD HABITS will lead to Americas demise. That is my conclusion.
No, on second thought, registration does not work, just look at Yahoo, Silicon, any blog site.
The concept of registration could become elaborate and cumbersome, but... the point of registration is to separate those who have a proven track record of passing useful information from those who are a new and unknown quantity.
Conveying the status of an 'accepted member' should in no way disparage the new arrivals, but should be obvious to everyone to indicate that this poster is 'new and unknown'. After a period of time, they could be promoted a step. How many steps could exist is an open question. Personally I think 2 or 3 would be enough.
Re: The cop on the highway doesn't have to give everyone a ticket;
The ped does not legally have a right of way in regard to traffic on an open road; the driver and ped are mutually responsible to not create hazards for each other.
Tanta is involved in a mutual benefit exchange here, but every now and then a drunk fool is in control of the system. Put up a barrier today to save things from getting worse!
In a past life I spent several years dealing with abuse of free services such as message boards and web sites. Trolls were a problem in 1996 and they are still a problem today, even on Slashdot, Digg, Yahoo! and other similar public forums that allow users to rate posts.
I don't think a comments system that only requires registration will resolve your problems. All someone needs to do is register for another free email account to register. And some ISPs like SBC and Comcast allow multiple sub accounts. That's the problem with Yahoo! message boards - no way to verify identity. The only way to use a registration system to control the trolls is to require a small fee, and even then you might not resolve your problems.
A rating system is not truly any better in the end, but it does allow the community to down comments that are absolutely horrendous. There is a danger good posts will be lost because of ideologues/trolls who gang up on certain people or beliefs. I've seen it happen first hand as gangs of such ideologues run roughshod over specific forums and message boards. You'll likely spend way too much of your time policing the rating system if that were the case.
An alternative is to utilize a comments system that combines registration with ratings. Since you are both active in the comments area, you can reverse any wrongly downed comments as board dieties. It would be even nicer if you can provide karma points to good posters who you trust the opinion of to also provide a counter balance to the trolls. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any such system, but I'll keep an eye out for one and give a holler if I do.
What about just trying another comment tool and see what happens ?
Personally I've found the comments valuable from time to time but they've gotten so long and community chat-like that it's hard to spare the time to wade thru.
So my vote would be to try a registration-based system and see what happens.
Re: the point of registration is to separate those who have a proven track record
Again, look at Yahoo. Everyone is registered and they have star ratings, some moderation, they even kick you off for a few days if you post too much. No system is perfect, but registration just provides you with a ticket to get in the show, where this whole thing starts over again on a new level!
DH (trying to leave and shut up) That was the last
Trolls have money too. Subscriptions will not change very much. More readers = More moderation. No way around it. If you need help moderating, solicit it. I'm sure many would volunteer.
I really love reading this blog, and especially the comments. A bit of a free-for-all is good. Trolling is not. I think the best moderation is self-moderation. I just skip the posters that I find don't contribute and try not to answer them. Unfortunately, anonymity breed certain anti-social tendencies, but that's the nature of the internets.
So I say keep this format and perhaps we can use community-based rules to keep this the reason we all keep coming here...even when we're supposed to be working. Hmmm...and speaking of which instead of registration or new software, I vote for more pig-based spreadsheets!!!!
ShortCourage- "The point that "dfb" makes above is that a fee discourages trolls from simply re-registering with multiple accounts as they are banished..."
The problem is not bad comments, in my opinion. The problem is that this site has become very popular, so no one can keep up.
Threaded discussions would be better, from my perspective. But I see no benefit in trying to get rid of trolls. This site is remarkably troll free.
Who are these trolls? I can't think of too many that I would want to get rid of.
With regard to politics, I can see the concern, especially in an election year. If you try to eliminate politics, however, you will neuter the site and reduce its impact.
So, I advocate threaded discussions since the real problem is the volume of posts (i.e. the success of the site), not trolls...
Haloscan seems to be the best product so far and we are all acustomed to it. I understand your frustration and Haloscan does not really offer any settings to help. Hopefully we can all pitch in and keep the comments relevant and not flood the board.
i think one evolution here has been that people just like to talk to each other and the end of the threads especially later at night tend to get way off topic and turn into simply a salon-like conversation.
perhaps a forum would give people a place to 'chat' while the comments can stay on topic?
i also second the 'name-first' idea. but then again it seems as though i can usually ID the poster within the first few lines.
Although I never post I have been reading the blog/comments for awhile.
I find myself being less and less interested in the comments because the majority are boring or filled with inside jokes. Personally some sort of system that nests the comments would be best for people that like to browse through the comments but not read them all.
On the other hand moderated communities are horrible. It takes a very special sort of person to not ban
users or remove comments in an ego-free way. I frankly do not think the hosts of this community are such people. Therefore, it would be best to let the users decide who is a troll, what is junk, what is boring etc.
trolls register everywhere else, they'll register here too. You can then ban them and they'll re-register. Ban them by IP and it's not worth the average troll's effort to get around. Banning by IP doesn't require registration.
This blog is getting a lot bigger but there are others still using haloscan that are bigger and still have useful and vibrant comment communities. Just because there's new people doesn't mean it's inevitable that the comments will turn into a version of what's on Duncan's blog. Most of his posts are 30 second spots and what we get here is more like a long format documentary. The ensuing discussion will be determined by that to some degree.
Perhaps we just need a regularly scheduled "come to Jesus" reminder from Tanta for the benefit both newbies and old school Respected Users who might go off the rails in a moment of weakness now and then.
I enjoy the freewheeling comments and it only takes a day or two to realize who to read and who to scroll past.
i think one evolution here has been that people just like to talk to each other and the end of the threads especially later at night tend to get way off topic and turn into simply a salon-like conversation.
Well, yes. And I really don't have a problem with Friday afternoon or late-nite threads turning into Cheers.
But that's also a matter of self-discipline. If someone starts some chatty off-topic side conversation in the middle of the day on a thread that people are very interested in, the rest of you have to ignore it rather than see it as an invitation to give in to it. I know you, dc1000, you've been around for a long time. If you want to shoot the shit on Friday night on some not terribly important thread, nobody minds (at least CR and I don't).
I'm just saying that we all have to manage the ones who can't restrain themselves by ignoring them and not emulating them. There's a time and a place for different kinds of comments. Those of you who do understand intuitively where that is can help me by not encouraging those hopeless incompletely socialized sorts who will never have any idea what is "appropriate" because, as Markel reminds us, they're not here to listen.
It would be great to separate topics. Some posters have pertinent, generally unavailable information such as remittance info. Some posters offer a valuable, inside perspective regarding the events. Some posters provide links to news I might not take the time to find on my own. These posts collectively are the most valuable. I have to admit, I can't go through all the comments anymore looking for the jewel posts.
One last free comment then you have to pay for analysis, but, the most interesting about a blog is its news story-related content that links a breaking story to immediate posts and reactions, where people are in the process of digesting and thinking on -the-fly. This is a much faster media experience -- in regard to a Yahoo stock board, where during a day, you may have a popular stock like Oracle that has a message board that might get 2000 hits and 95% of the content is junk, while another slower stock like Moody's may only get 5 posts a day. Thus, the point here is the dynamic value of on-th-fly commenting, where Tanta uploads a story and then gets 100 reactions in an hour on-the-fly.
I just think you have to look at this new media and adapt to the on-the-fly content and not become a place that is unused just because a few people add dumb content, because its the story that drives this machine; the mechanism is the on-the-fly content....if you kill that or make it less dynamic, you dont get the punch that drives this to the next quantum leap -- instead you get a dead board that doesnt flow, you need cowbell baby!
"Frankly, if you've got Tanta criticizing your comment, you can at least consider that she thinks you worth responding to. If she thought you were a troll, she'd . . . ."
OMG, I remember the first time Tanta commented positively on something I'd written...I stopped breathing. But, alas, some don't get it when the editors say something about keeping on point. But, again, I think that self-moderation is the only thing that actually works. If attention is what is craved, then no attention will get the quickest response, as hard as that is to do. Everything else is just a pain for everyone.
Now, didn't something interesting happen today that we can get a thread going about? It's cold out here, and I was hoping for something pithy to read
Switching to a registration-based system is annoying and wrong. Trolls are bad, but with global registration-sharing systems like bugmenot (bugmenot.com), any logins will be shared or reused by trolls.
The only way to avoid that is to bring money into the picture somehow, as with having each user pony up a small amount.
If we do go to a fee based system, please make sure that Conjure Bag pays his own way. CB is a classic troll, freeloading on the back of the honest mp...
Thanks Tanta . . . I have an occasional weakness but try to restrain myself.
My thoughts
1. i can live with Haloscan
2. Marcy Wheeler's setup is effective Emptywheel
3. Posting at Barry's place is so onerous I never do it.
4. Don't care for nesting.
Haloscan is an awful blogging environment compared to what, say, theoildrum.com uses. I vote for registration and for a blogging format that allows nested comments as well as the ability of the community to vote on comments. When a comment receives a certain negative level it can disappear except for a topic byline that allows a reader to see it only via explicit expansion.
Nested comments allow an easy way to avoid topics that are of no interest.
There are certain commenters whom I would certainly choose to eliminate. A feature that allows registered users to establish a black list would be most valuable both to the me and also to you and CR. It would give you a real insight into who is intolerable. I'd like to see a white list too. That would allow generation of a list of commenters well-regarded by their fellows.
When a commenter achieves a certain level of negative feedback he (and let's face it, it WILL be a he) can be advised that his account will be suspended if he doesn't clean up his act.
In the same vein, a high positive score might be a basis for allowing a commenter to originate the occasional post, thereby taking some of the content generation load off you and CR.
I would suggest you confer with Super G at theoildrum.com and see if the software he is using would work for you all. I don't know if you read TOD regularly but try their comment section and see what you think. Bunch of great people and I'm sure they think the same of you.
This has always seemed a particularly neat solution to me-- don't argue, don't censor-- just render the offending comment harmless and slightly humorous.
--
There are so many useless and trivial comments on this blog by the "respected members" that it is disgusting that such people will ban someone they don't like primarily because of challenge to their deeply held beliefs.
Further confirmation that America's years are numbered. It requires a confident population to tackle problems not a bunch of cowards. Shame. But not for the shameless.
As a CR addict and occasional commenter, I think the trolls on this site are easily scrolled over. That said, perhaps it would give the economy a productivity boost if many of us were unable to access CR during the workday! Thanks to CR and Tanta, regardless of your decision on how to manage your blog.
What about an FBI most unwanted poster, hey not a bad idea..what if you just tell people to skip comments by the following criminals, kinda like that self disclosure thing for abusive people.
Yah know why that doesnt work? The anon status, if you get rid of the anon feature and make people get a name maybe you can filter them later; but that takes time
I actually like haloscan better than whatever system Mish is using. He used to use haloscan and I liked his site better back in the day.
I know that trolls are annoying but I vote for self-policing for now. I think everyone just needs to be a bit more judicious about comments, as at times the threads can get too long.
I'm not about to start complaining about any of the regulars here as I'm sure I have made a few knucklehead posts myself. What really bothers me are the comment spammers. They are using this blog (and others) as a platform to promote their malware and borderline criminal activities.
The main reason I hesitate to write posts like this is that the people I'm talking about think it must be someone else, and the people I am not talking about think it must be them.
My only suggestion to you, dear, is that you have to remember that the old-timers know who Conjure Bag is and the new readers don't. So maybe you should periodically re-introduce him to the multitudes so they don't think you're speaking in tongues.
I'm as guilty as anyone else of in-jokes. I promise to keep that under control, too.
Otherwise, you know I love every dog ball and toad bone in your bag.
I don't like Haloscan. It's impossible to follow a comment thread. That's just reason enough for me to ask you to ditch it. Also, trolls and bores can really destroy the quality of a site. You need more control. I agree with that.
I apologize for feeding the trolls.To my mind having the posters name at the top would be a real help,there are some posters who always have something to add,and their links while sometimes tangenital to the original thread have certainly deepened my understanding.
Sharing some poetry from my site to break the gloomy cycle of blogger confessionals:
Benoit said...
There once was a guy named Bernanke
When the dollar goes south, he gets cranky
He doesn't want thanks
When bailing out banks
In finance, there's no hanky-panky
And:
This guy who we all know as Benny
Of the dollar he cares not a penny
The banks are his bosses
The rest? We take loses..
His victims? Oh there are many.
--
I have nothing but thanks for all you guys and gals here for letting me get a peek at what Americans are really about.
You confirm my observations every single day. I would love to be disproved but that hasn't happened once. But, I keep an open mind so necessary not to fall in love with ones conclusions.
People come here to have their beliefs validated, not challenged. There has never been greater need for Americans to be validated by others like them.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
More trolls here might suggest that the quality content on this blog may be hitting a bit too close to home for some vested interests.
I have no problem with Halo scan or trolls here. To me, they are tame compared to other places.
What I like about this site is the potential to learn and WIN. By win, I guess I mean apply what I learn in the game of finance and life to making good decisions that can be rewarding.
I know that I go off topic a lot on investment stuff like rogue trader. But to me, the rogue trader situation has parallels with things that have happened in mortgages and real estate. I don't have too many mortgage or real estate situations to make now, but I have made some nice money in SRS mainly because of this site and talented people here.
I do intend to put a portion of my winnings (if any) in the tip jar in appreciation. I hope others will, too. That way, we could make it worthwhile for the bloggers to encourage lively open discussion.
It would be a shame to have the comment section of this site Yahooified as Tanta puts it. I personally don't care for registration and as several commenters already stated, it doesn't work at Yahoo.
The one popular site that appears to have the ability to limit and control trolls is craigslist. Readers can flag postings. I don't know if their algorithm is based on the number of people who flag it as inappropriate, or somehow give higher weight to certain designated flaggers. Maybe some smart people on this site can help come up with an algorithm.
Anyway, it would be nice to have less draconian solution but in the end it is your site. I just think it would be a shame to have a few bad apples ruin this for everyone.
I asked who Conjure Bag was recently. The silence was defeaning. I thought, hell, this is a replay than highschool with a clique and inside jokes.
I will say I don't really think anyone meant to give the silent treatment to the newbie.
Hell, most of the time, you ask a question around here and ten different people answer it at the same time.
Unfortunately, your question might have gotten lost in the sea of tripe we're talking about today. I use my scroll wheel a lot, and every know and again I go too fast.
Someone also might have thought you were joking in turn. (Conjure Bag is a creation of mp's, and frankly the question "Who the hell is Conjure Bag?" is, in certain contexts, kind of funny.)
All of that notwithstanding, if you think we're acting like a clique, let us know. Even troll infestations aren't as pernicious as cliques.
--
Americans are horrible at dealing with the certain decline that has already begun. They are very bad losers.
They will get violent when things get a bit worse. It is so easy to see the reactionary behavior. They will be looking for scapegoats. Right now the scapegoats are outside American border but the problem will come home with a vengeance.
I know that at work I cannot access the registration type comments. I do see your point about trying to keep things on track and without too much crud. I think the comment folks here do a good job of policing the discussion themselves, but I support whatever decision Cr and Tanta make.
"I came for the wonkiness but have stayed for the humor." Tolerance is great. Intentional, ignorant disruption is... not productive. First and foremost it is CR and Tanta that I want to read, but if someone PROVES valuable assists, great. Because of the growing tendency of many in making the blog owners responsible for the blog's comments whether they control them or not and because whomever might feel "censored" can very well open his/her own Blogspot account and PROVE a valuable POV to share, I raise my hand for registered commenting by those whose POV I've come to read, CR and Tanta.
I'm no expert and I probably bug people with dopey contributions, but I have learned a lot here and have appreciated the replies to my questions. Thanks to CR, I now know what commercial paper is and why I should care. I know what monolines are, and even managed to bang out a story for my newspaper about how the monoline problem was affecting local municipal finance (it wasn't much...)
That Payday loan thing on the comment section annoys me way more than the trolls. What's up with that?
Carl,
You gotta hit the advertisements at least once every time you show up, because it generates revenue for the blog. When you hit payday lending, you'll see it's a really great deal. They send you money right away, and you just send them two pay stubs and your Social Security card as collateral. What's wrong with that?
Registration does not help anything. If anything, registration lets people feel entitled to be a-holes.
Haloscan is not threaded, but it is not supposed to be - there is already one thread per CR post on the blog.
CR, Tanta, and a few of the more erudite posters rule. My honest appreciation to you for helping educate me in such arcane topics. I earned an MBA from a top school and yet found I had much to learn when I started reading what people write here.
I've only commented a couple of times since discovering this blog. I don't comment because compared to most here, I have nothing worthwhile to contribute. I know when to keep silent and learn. I have noticed lately that there is an increase in gumflappers posting inane or vitriolic or quasi-intellectual or off-topic or convoluted or self-serving (insert more adjectives here) comments. I would appreciate registration so that postings would have a greater probability of staying impersonal and on topic.
This is exactly what I like to do - there are names I look for and some I do not give the time of day. Some roll over my posts some maybe read them. Dont think I have ever been pulled into a fight of verbal (by-way-of-keyboard tapping) diarrhea being tmepted to when a yahoo will post way off topic political bla-bla; but I have posted some off topic items like my vehicle purchase two weeks ago. There are occasions, too, that the Comments says, for example, "214" and at times I will pass all together as it seems to be a lot of work to get the golden nuggets.
Being good means being popular which means people follow. I like the diversity on this blog.
Anon- Conjure Bag was created in 1299 by infusing a leather bag with toad bones and ground-up dog balls, shortly after the Battle of Hastings.
Over time, Conjure became a depository of memories, then finally developed into a self-aware entity. That was sometime around 1780, shortly before the French revolution.
Conjure is now 27 inches tall, has long brown hair, and is proud of it. He is a hellion with the ladies, who are endlessly fascinated by his repartee and wad of euros. He is mp's sidekick, goes out only at night, is a cunning poker player, racconteur and stock market operator. He subsists on Martel XO, Macanudo Duke of Devon Maduros and dog balls, pickled or braised. He communicates only through me.
Is Conjure just some mythological figure predicting financial armageddon? I know the clock usually accompanies mention of him.
Conjure Bag actually started out life as just another ironic comment on what passes for economic expertise in this nutsy world of ours. He's sort of a throw-back to the olden days, before the quants and the program traders and the talking heads on CNBC ruled the world. He's basically a cross between a canny old expert and your grandfather's bad knee that predicts thunderstorms.
Then he got delusions of grandeur and started this clock shit.
mp is a wise commenter and knows a lot. I always profit from reading his comments.
Every now and again Conjure Bag gets out of hand and needs to be smacked. But nobody knows that more than mp, who lives with him all the time.
I like the funny stuff. I like the way the conversation develops. It seems that there are troll attracting subjects--such as walking away from a mortgage.
I just start posting and reading ANY blog a few months ago. I didn't know what a troll was. Some of the off-tread stuff is very insightful. If you limit the conversation to much, a lot would be cut out.
Irvine Housing Blog nests, and sometimes it's nice and sometimes it's confusing. That said, it might be that you can get too successful, with too much traffic. Don't know what could be done about that.
I'm self employed, so the only one who gets mad at me for surfing during working hours is my secretary.
--
I might as well share my opinion of Tanta over the past few months, other than the fact that she is intelligent, a good writer, and knows her subject quite well.
Tanta -- Narrow-minded, conceited and a coward. I hope that she takes it as a constructive comment and works on her shortcomings.
CR Despite my disagreements with CR, I have very high opinion of him. He is a man I respect. He is merely wrong, which applies to all of us. He is too bogged down in details to think in-depth on some important subjects on housing and the economy.
I hope that no one is offended by honest opinion. I could be wrong, you know. Hitting back is a fair game, I suppose.
I think that this very thread shows us that CR's readers vary in all sorts of ways. You throw all of those various ingredients into the pot and viola a delicious gumbo is born. Just be careful how finely you screen things. The big chunks can easily be spooned out. The other little annoyances can be swallowed with little inconvenience or harm to the pallet.
I am a utility engineer whose work includes load/growth forecasting (for which this site is perfect background.) I read the posts everyday (THANK YOU), the comments not so much, I almost never comment:
As long as we're talking about format changes and accessability on corporate IT network, I should mention that at my company (10000 employee) every blogspot.com blog was recently blocked EXCEPT this one (I'm guessing a bigger fish than me got it specifically exempted). However, all of your blogger.com graphs ARE now blocked. Is there any way you'd consider looking for a way to post graphs so those of us behind the mindless IT veil can still see them?
BTW, I am often on the road for work, most of the time my only hi-speed web connection is corporate--your attention to avoiding the broad-brush blocking of the site resources including comments is important to some of us.
Until today, I really, really thought that conjure bag was a real person. Sorry, the Battle of Hastings was in 1066. I suppose that is a troll like remark. . .
I read regularly and have noticed the wheel on the mouse getting a workout lately with the growing number of comments. I agree with a previous poster that a nested comment system works better. Then if someone asks a question it is easy to tell if someone has responded already and respond if it is appropriate.
With nesting you can select who to have a conversation with. Without nesting it is like everyone talking at once. That is fine if you are in a small room without a lot of people, but rather annoying if you are in a large crowded room. The comment section has recently become a much larger room.
I always feel the need to add an analogy, its compulsive, please forgive me.
my thoughts:
1) I agree with others. Names on top so that we can more easily scroll past whoever we don't personally want to read
2) BAN ANONYMOUS posters. I tire of the many anonymous people I can't tell if it's one or many people posting.
3) registration will not solve trolling... but it can "authenticate" our chosen identities.
I get very irritated by the identity thieves... the identity theft of Sebastian comes to mind...
the only reason I'd like registration would be so that everyone would know that Tanta is Tanta (remember tenta?), and that Sebastian is Sebastian....
often the posters with "unpopular" beliefs are identity attacked.
4) perhaps add an "OT" thread each day. That way, every day people could restrict OT comments to the OT thread. One could also have 2 OT threads... first OT thread for "new" economic highlights (which I learn a LOT from) and maybe a second one for all the other stuff like jokes, political issues, investment advice etc...
as others have said, the ONLY way to deal with trolls is to ignore them. thus, it is our civic duty to ignore.
Ne nourissez jamais les trolls!
the line is sometimes thin... and so it may be up to others to remind the newbees or those who get sucked in that they're feeding the trolls?
Before knowing this post was up, along with 157 comments already, I just commented on the last thread that I get annoyed only by two posters and that my solution was always to look at the name of the commenter before reading the comment. Some I skip each and every time. That way I never respond to trolls.
--
Rich: "What I like about this site is the potential to learn and WIN. By win, I guess I mean apply what I learn in the game of finance and life to making good decisions that can be rewarding."
Rich,
You would have won big had you listened to my call on Fraudentials, aka financials, and Hopebuilders before that. I must warn you that I am early, but that is necessary to accumulate long-term puts.
I look for Crooks and bet against them, long-term. I have been the biggest bulls on long-term USTs, gold and Swissie. I think that most people should avoid Scams, aka stocks, altogether.
Only a born-and-bred American dope has not yet figured out the scam nature of the US stock market since 1995. It has been exported to most of the world by now.
Does anyone on this blog know that the UK stock market was practically shut down for several decades during 1700s following the 1720s bubble burst? I predict a permanent shut down of the US Scam Market within the next 20 years. Things unimaginable today will happen in the US before 2030.
One more thing - I would recommend a commenting sstem that would allow me to block certain users and boldface (or otherwise highlight) others that I like. Aneee of them offer such functions?
No to registration - just don't like it. I think comment groups become boring when they are a closed circle. The ability to post anonymously invites the occasional lurker who may having something worthwhile to contribute.
No to nesting - it's annoying.
Eye-tracking studies have shown that individuals have become adept at disregarding banner ads and pop-up ads, compulsive internet surfers have also become adept at scanning over trolls.
One thing to do is simply close the comments for the post if a thread runs off topic and shows no hint of getting back on course. Collective punishment....kind of like forcing jumbo rates on fly-over country conventional borrowers.
until just now i thought conjure bag was mp's significant other.
John Stark | 01.26.08 - 6:35 pm | #
Oh, John, that is just so wrong. I don't want to think about that anymore.
BTW, as a mostly lurker, I like the semi-heated comments as long as they stay away from ad hominem attacks. Several people I disagree with their comments but I listen even closer to their arguments because echo chambers do me no good.
The personal stuff is okay, even welcome. The subject matter can get depressing and levity keeps me sane. As for trolls, the scroll wheel works well for me.
CR/tanta, I'm with Markel - Nested comments work best for me. If it takes registration I don't mind a bit. Just like my mother used to say - Everything, with moderation.
Re: Nesting--AFAIK, most platforms that do threading allow you to turn the feature off and display an uninterrupted pile of comments, if that's more your speed.
Cutting comment length is interesting, as several folks above pointed out. Online fora are kind of like highways--making them wider and bigger never makes them less congested. The opposite may be true.
How 'bout shorter comment lengths, PLUS the comment thread turning off automatically after 75 or so comments? I think that would be cool, especially if it were easy for Tanta or CR to push the snooze button if they were participating and wanted it to linger longer.
To request civility and to dislay it the way CR does shows remarkable restraint. There is also an authenticity and bravery when someone says "cut the crap"
Personally, I like the idea of having the poster's name at the top; I scroll for certain people and ignore a lot of others. I could live without the discussions of "investment advice"; I don't really care who's shorting who. Aren't there other boards for that sort of thing?
Another suggestion - Set up a thread all on its own from the sidebar where jas can post sour comments for himself to read. That bitterness needs a hole of its own to bury itself in where no one would notice.
The comment section is just too long anymore because the site is so good. the commenters are a big part of the success.
Is there a way to put a more social comment thread on the site where we can banter a little more openly and socially and save the comment threads for more on topic discussion? Personally, I like hearing comments from rich, mp, CobraDriver, Misean and many others that may be off topic but very good or just fun.
Me too.
Let 'em talk ... but who's speaking? Too many
very valuable posts here to have to wade even a
few sentences in to the infrequent but inevitable junk.
America has gotten so far off base that we are having to understand what the truth is again. To me this blog is an attempt to uncover the truth, as in science. True science is a clash of ideas.
A real scientist has little ego and is willing to say, "Well, we just shot that hypothesis all to hell."
I've been lurking here for months learning from both CR/Tanta and the comments. Scrolling past trolls works well for me. If you go to registration, no doubt I'll get more work done at work. Whatever happens I'm in. Totally addicted now.
Thanks to CR and Tanta, as well as all the regular posters here.
I avidly read CR's and Tanta's posts, but rarely feel like diving in to read something long like this one's "COMMENTS (180)", and even less like commenting, presuming one would get lost in the flood.
Is it just an unavoidable result of so many readers?
Thank you for this blog, and the depth of insight you provide.
Commenters
Thank you for the erudite, eloquent, educated, sometimes slightly sardonic, and always humorous ways you find to illuminate the subject at hand. Thank you for the many links, even the cardiac arresting ones, that add further depth to the conversation.
As several have said, both the blog and the comments have been a real education. When the Student is ready, the Master will appear . . . for all of you willing to share, there will always be those of us willing to listen . . . and learn.
Tanta, perhaps CR will relinquish a small spot of sidebar to publish a short piece on etiquette and rules of the road for commenting on your blog. There have been some nice tools offered today (Greasemonkey / killfile, etc.) that can be mentioned as TMDs (Troll Management Devices). Whichever direction you choose to pursue, I will follow.
The popularity of this blog, and the coinciding influx of trolls, will fluctuate. Currently, it seems like there's a lot of new posters.
A word of caution - Mike Shedlock's page (Blogger: Page not found switched to a quasi-registration format, and the number of posters dropped significantly, and many who remained were the trolls.
Some sort of permanent off-topic 'lounge' area might be the solution.
The trouble with that, Shnaps, is that if the Problem Children understood what a lounge is for, they wouldn't be Problem Children.
I once worked for a company that had actually a really nice employee lounge setup, and was quite generous with people taking unscheduled "sanity breaks."
Did I still get people trimming their toenails while making loud personal phone calls in their cubicles and driving their fellow employees batshit insane? Yep.
Vader, reluctantly sides with registration. Ignoring the trolls is a far better solution and registration, in my experience often leads to suppression of ideas far more often that suppression of trolls, but in this case, regulation is best.
BTW, I do respect the older generations of Americans. Since the Baby Doomers we have been breeding sissies and dopes. It is all part of the Great American Dope Factory, run by the propagandists that are paid by the economic elite.
Evil nature of the moneybags is not obvious to most Americans. Moneybags held a lower status and were held in low esteem thru most of history until after the WW II. They were considered neech (beneath, or equivalent to untouchables as far as morals are concerned). They are money whores amd that is an insult to whores.
Tanta has not figured out the real source of mortgage lending debacle.
I'm agreeing with 'Yearning to learn' on the following: my thoughts:
1) I agree with others. Names on top so that we can more easily scroll past whoever we don't personally want to read
2) BAN ANONYMOUS posters. I tire of the many anonymous people I can't tell if it's one or many people posting.
However, I understand waiting to ban anon. We always want fresh non-Troll opinions, but the number of people who like to hide behind anon...
As to registration... I'm 50/50, so I will go with the majority.
Folks, dissenting views are part and parcel of what makes this blog great. Don't be so mentally fragile that you can't hear what others are saying. Come here to learn and share ideas. As others have said, the ratio of good comments to trolls is heavily skewed towards the good comments.
I second (or third) that Slashdot is the best model. I'm not sure if you have the volume of comments to warrant it, but that is your decision. Slashcode is open source and available at:
I also agree with MR: all in all, the signal to noise ratio is quite high. And even the noise is often useful in that it serves to illuminate the tenor and tone of the stream of conversation.
With all due respect to our fantastic hosts, I find that anxious concern about the direction of online discourse to betray a lack of familiarity with today's information media. It is extremely difficult to maintain order in such a democratic forum. In my humble opinion, the best one can hope for is to reward good behavior with compliments and responses (i.e., ignore the trolls).
One last suggestion, Tanta. Slashdot uses a point system whereby readers assign points for intelligent comments. If your comments receive points, then you can rate other comments, and so on. Readers can then filter the comments by the point system so as to separate the wheat from the chaff. I'm not sure if there is an off-the-shelf blog software package that provides this functionality, but it might be worth checking out.
I think we just need to grow up and follow Tanta's advice. After a while, one can tell who is a troll and who isn't.
I pledge to behave. And since I can't always follow all the comments, if someone has behaved in a way that qualifies him or her as a troll I would appreciate it if someone would notify me if I am feeding one. I'm either misbehaving or ignorant.
I don't have a problem with Haloscan, and I do think that the information and discussion in the comments on this blog is great. I would hate to waste Tanta's or CR's time moderating, and I think a registration system is counterproductive. There are a lot of comments from people who mostly lurk but occasionally have a very good point to make, and I'd hate to see those suppressed.
I'm very fond of the DailyKos commenting system for large commenting group. CR has become a significant blog, because the principals provide superb content, plus a number of regulars add significant information. So you have to deal with large comment threads in some way.
Unthreaded comments become very unwieldy with hundreds of comments. Large threads inevitably spin off tangents and with threading you can just ignore the whole tangent. Figuring out what's new is a problem, but if you can flag comments as "read' and "unread" (like dKos) that's manageable. Threading + read marking is a great solution and I'll dive into a 600 comment thread at dKos without flinching. 150 on eschaton and forget it. I tolerate the big threads here for the moment because there can be some very juicy stuff.
Registration + community rating fixes trolls. Combine them and the trolls go away. As Tanta says, clique wars can cause trouble with community rating, but I don't think this blog is subject to clique wars because we all have a similar enough view of things and most have a financial interest in getting broad information. Admittedly, board optimists like O-Joe and Sebastian might get trolled out. I think that would be bad as a certain amount of disagreement helps prevent this from becoming a disaterbation echo chamber.
I do think these elements work together. I don't see much point in registration without active moderation. Likewise threading minus read marking is only a marginal gain. And, of course, I'm aware that scoop/soapblox/whathaveyou cost money. I'd be willing to pay for this blog but I understand that's a hard business model.
If you enforce registration then the volume of comments will drop precipitously because a lot of us don't want the hassle of maintaining a fully authenticated login. We've enough logins and passwords in our life already.
A simple ignore function would be good. As far as I can tell the current chaotic comment situation is one guy - Anonymous - who just dumps random stuff over and over into a discussion. I think he is responsible for a dozen comments in this topic alone and the percentage is usually higher than that.
Because of the blog's increasing popularity, I think you will need short and frequent reminders of the comment "rules" for the newbies to see. Perhaps Tanta or CR should put the first comment in on every post, something like "As a reminder, please keep the comments on topic and retrain from feeding trolls".
I have been reading this blog for at least 2 years and have learned a lot. Thank you CR & Tanta. PS: Tanta, I wish good health. I hope you made a full recovery.
I don't have a problem with Haloscan, and I do think that the information and discussion in the comments on this blog is great. I would hate to waste Tanta's or CR's time moderating, and I think a registration system is counterproductive. There are a lot of comments from people who mostly lurk but occasionally have a very good point to make, and I'd hate to see those suppressed.
MaxedOutMama
Exactly! For those of us who have less time
than we would prefer though, let us know w/o scrolling who
might be making such ( typically from MoM )
intelligent, elucidating, interesting comments!
If nothing else, reading this comment thread has revealed the E! True Hollywood Story of Conjure Bag -- which I see I have not been alone in wondering about.
I am a big fan of mp's comments and hold Conjure Bag in the highest esteem along with Mortgage Pig(TM). They make me smile.
Stereotypes not only define and place others as inferior, but also implicitly affirm and legitimate those who stereotype in their own position and identity.
.
A buddy in San Fernando Valley, one of the seven kids of a working-class devout German Catholic parents (people I respect), called to give reports (he is a handyman and does odd jobs):
Economy is in depression. Very short lines at Wal-Mart and the supermarkets.
His younger brother, with some mental issues and on welfare for life, got a ticket "Walking Violation" in Lancaster. He has no car so walks for necessities, etc. BTW, he and his girlfriend were able to buy a 5-BR home in 2005 with no money down that they lost last years after 17 months. His family paid the $120 fine for the Walking Violation.
Another friend of his, out of job, got two parking tickets for $25 and $50. He couldn't pay. He was in jail for a week or two. Cops impounded his $2,300 car.
Seems like a lot better than a Nazi-type govt.?
Most of the ills of corrupt American system fall on the poor and unfortunate victims of circumstance. Most of the victims of the BFNYCs housing finance scams were single women, blacks and Hispanic. Financial Nazis anyone? Capitalist Crooks rule in America and working-class Americans get screwed every minute of the day. Let us see hoe long this sort of exploitation by money whores can be sustained. The Crooks have doped Americans from birth as a part of the Plan.
I've only posted a handful of times. Mostly I like playing lurk and learn because, as someone else mentioned 80 or so posts above, I rarely feel like I have much to contribute. But since I've had to endure the comments section ballooning with way too much chaff and troll baiting I feel obliged to give my 2 cents.
THe greasemonkey idea sounds helpful. I'm gonna try it.
I don't like the idea of nesting.
I don't mind registering nor even paying a small fee. I heard an interview with the guy who created metafilter and he mentioned how the charging of an small fee (like $5) for the privilege of joining the community did wonders for cutting out much of the crap posters. That's a different sort of forum, but maybe it would help here. Also, I imagine there might be some trolls/haters so offended by the idea that they might just "walk away".
Ample restraint in responding might just take care of the rest. Thanks to CR, Tanta and the rest of you for a great resource.
--
"I think we just need to grow up and follow Tanta's advice."
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
You guys are hilarious. Advice from a narrow-minded I-know-it-all? Shows you the level of desperation helpless people feel. Yes, Americans are helpless and they need a leader to guide them. Reminds you of any era outside of the US?
Americans will be awaiting the arrival of the Grand Leader once the depression is in full swing. And dont expect CR to warn you of the depression ahead of time.
Update on greasemonkey/killfile: I just installed them and blocked a certain bore. Seems to work just fine. I'm probably going to block anonymous, too, since a certain OCD individual uses it regularly.
Firefox + greasemonkey + killfile fixed this issue concerning the troll(s) (for me). I'm extremely pleased (thanks again TCA). This won't help those at work who don't have admin rights for their computer at work or those places where Firefox isn't an option. But it's a great step forward.
I think CR and Tanta should capitalize on the community and open up some sort of subscription. I'd easily pay $15-$20 a month for use of comments, forums, the CR4RE newsletter and some other tidbits (what about community gatherings/"parties"??).
maybe those that purchase your newsletter could be part of the comments section, I don't understand why the comments need to run into the hundreds. Overall limiting comments by registration or part of your newsletter could provide a good forum. I havn't signed up yet for the newsletter but I plan to in the future, waiting for my stimulus check you know!
--
Now I do understand why Americans like big govt with big tits to suck on for all the crybabies.
American econo-political system is a true reflection of the majority of Americans corrupt and crybabies. And it couldnt be otherwise in a democracy.
Monarchy corrupts the monarchs, theocracy corrupts the priests and the pope, and democracy corrupts the population! (An original insight some 20 years ago)
Tanta - Whatever you and CR decide to do about this situation, I just wanted you to know, if you're still reading this (or if you haven't skipped this) that I have learned from and enjoyed almost every post and comment I've read. I would hate for you to feel you need to police the site too much. Even the OT comments are interesting or humorous most times. There are some people who obviously need extra love in their lives, who probably missed out on any familial affection when they were little tots, but they have their stories too, and I for one feel I can skip them without it ruining my day. Maybe you could set guidelines that say outright hate/threatening speech will not be tolerated. But even the stock comments I find interesting. You and CR get the discussion started with your great posts, but the soul of the blog really lies in the wonderful commenters you have here, and I'd hate to see them squeezed or be afraid to say what's on their minds. Just my 2c.
I go to a lot of message boards and participate in a few of them, mostly NFL football boards. I really like your comments section. It is civil, generally intelligent, and of course, pretty much in sync with my feelings and thoughts. I haven't been lurking around here that long, but I wouldn't change a thing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
You make for a good follower. 95%+ are nothing more than followers or imitators.
It is always a challenge for a follower as to whom to follow and 95% of the followers choose bad leaders because they feel safety in propaganda.
Propagandists attract far more followers than the truth-tellers. Truth-tellers scare people. Poor Socrates was sentenced to death by a democratic mob not unlike what we see here in a different context.
Installed the killfile add-on and it worked like a charm on the obvious test-subject. tee-hee! Next on the hit-list, Anonymous and anyone who's posted "first!". When that started cropping up it was a real jump-the-shark moment for this comment forum.
Having been reading this blog for awhile seems that when serious financial information which heavily affects markets is put into reasonably plain english with possible and likely outcomes predicted. trolls and garbage are thrown into the mix as brittany is thrown into television news to discourage people from reading through chaff...thank you for this portal and it's clarity
I'd be fine with registration for a fee. Kills two birds with one stone.
Alternatively, if there are comment systems out there that allow readers to rate writers, that might work. I am thinking of a system that would give extra points if the rater was himself or herself highly rated. Kind of like the chess rating system. Tanta and CR get 1000 pts, and anonymously rate a few of the best commenters at less than 1000pts, who in turn rate others as they see fit, with each person's rating of others weighted by their own rating. New people start at one point. Comments are indented more if they have lower points, or somehow made less prominent.
I don't know anything about blogs, so I don't know if software to run a blogs site this way is commercially available. Best of luck, CR and Tanta, with making any improvements.
--
"I think people respond more favorably to someone who is nice to them."
Conmen are very nice to their future victims! This is definitely not applicable to CR and Tanta, but just an important general advisement. Don't get sucked in by what feels good!
The Confidence Game is to suck people in and take advantage of them. Only dopes have confidence in the Fed. Why? Fed doesnt give a damn as to what happens to an honest working-class American.
Dale Carnegie died a bitter death. The Feel Good theology among Americans is idiotic to an extreme.
Thank you to CR and Tanta for this excellent blog. I'm a longtime reader, but very, very infrequent commenter.
I prefer the linear style of Haloscan to nested comments. I agree with those who note that comment rating, while appealing in concept, falls apart in practice for some of the same reasons that have prompted this discussion. Some of us are in a position to determine the content filter settings at work, but most probably aren't, so I'd prefer those folks not get shut out during the day. All of this adds up to a vote for leaving things as they are.
Greasemonkey with killfile script works well for Firefox users who get to a point where they want to ignore certain commenters. Should you ever decide to set up a comments FAQ, you might want to include info on the Greasemonkey solution.
PS I read but rarely post at blogs that are monitored. They are a pain. It takes a very long time for comments to appear which means that it is very difficult for a dialog to occur.
--
Americans are too weak to live up to their principles, or ideals. That was also part of the doping process make the population mentally weak and easy to dope. Turn them into good followers looking for guidance, help and protection.
Mama, protect me from this bully!
Success of the Great American Dope Factory is undeniable and easily observable here.
My feelings are as follows, haloscan, good, registration, bad, understand your concern, but, do not understand why you do not just hit the delete button or block the address.
--
"I am starting to have a problem with Jas' comments. If he believes that CR and Tanta are wrong then he should start his own blog and get off this one."
Did I say CR and Tanta are wrong except for occasionally? Everyone is wrong at times, but he, or she, doesn't know it. Why are people so defensive to criticism or challenge to their deeply held beliefs?
I'd rather read posts by CR and Tanta than have them spending their time moderating comments or doing admin chores on a commenter registration system. I'm not opposed to moderation or a registration system, it just seems like the opportunity costs are too high.
I think the problem might be self correcting as the crowd moves on to the "next big thing". The housing and credit problems are going to be around for a good long while but I imagine a lot of folks are going to lose interest after the news cycle turns.
Markos has spent a pile of money on the technology of Daily Kos. He's still not solved all the problems, but he's addressed many of them with ratings systems, troll ratings, nested comments, etc.
My sense is that CR and Tanta are just beginning to deal with the side effects of bloggy success.
Among those side effects is that this all becomes very complex and at some point in time (see Josh Marshall) you end up having to hire real techies and get serious about customizing your blog's software.
Duncan has avoided this problem by...refusing to go there and sticking with Blogspot. But my suspicion is that CR is going to have to evaluate and ultimately embrace a customized software solution.
Americas intellectual weaklings have a bad habit of discrediting someone whose ideas, or conclusions, they don't like, or successfully challenge. They turn into a pack of attack dogs. Also very common among politicians.
The behavior here is all too predictable. Who made me a subject of debate?
The real trolls who cant seem to control themselves!
Like so many disgusting Americans people here blame someone else for their own problems. There is a reason why so many Europeans hate America Americans and their Crooked leaders.
Keep Haloscan, this blog is head and shoulders above most in terms of comments and it's the comments that add so much value to an already value rich environment. That said, I wouldn't pay.
Too many places for too few dollars to go with that policy.
Log in?? Password fatigue. Sorry. Even with 'remember me' capability.
Names first??? YES! YES! YES!
Maximum number of posts under about 100??? YES! but with a Tanta/CR Snooze button.
However, short of $$$, I'll go along with whatever the solution is deemed to be.
Meanwhile, thank you so much CR & Tanta for your work AND for your frequent articles everyday!
I am starting to have a problem with Jas' comments. If he believes that CR and Tanta are wrong then he should start his own blog and get off this one.
Tom Servo | 01.26.08 - 7:56 pm |"
Generally Halo works ok for me, however you might want to look at the system they have over at Economists View. There the name of the poster is put on top, so if you know it is someone who you know to be pointless you can skip right over him/her. As for the use at work issue, I consider CR (the blog, certianly including the person, but not limited to) to be one of the key resources that helps me do my job, esp the wonderful graphs which I often use in my work (fully footnoted). I would think that most employers who want their employees to make good decisions would be delighted to know their employees spend time here. I have encouraged many of those that report to me, both here and in India, to read CR.
in the interest of brainstorming...(yeah this may not be a real good idea...)
not mentioned on this thread so far;
all posts could be "moderated" before they appear. (ie pre screened by a person)
obviously because of time constraints CR and Tanta would want to consider deputizing 5 or ten of their faithful who could take turns filtering all posts...using very generous standards that only weed out the worst of the worst.
and hey you don't have to filter or moderate all the time...the trolls wouldn't know going in if "moderating" was on or off.
and hey the offed comments could be put in comment purgatory,(separate thread) where those who want to suffer could go and read them
-
My feelings are as follows, haloscan, good, registration, bad, understand your concern, but, do not understand why you do not just hit the delete button or block the address.
risk capital
come on rc, put on the thinkin cap... requires a full time real time monitor....that's spensive
Jas, you just do not get it. People are on your side on most of your thoughts but you keep digging to the point of insulting the great hosts and the posters.
Enough is enough already....
By all the comments you write you should be able to start your own blog. Seems like you have enough free time to get the job done.
Good luck with it, we will all miss you for about 10 minutes.
Last post for me on this thread and then I'll shut up.
Please, please, please give Firefox + Greasemonkey + Killfile a chance.
It's beautiful.
If you haven't seen it (which I hadn't until tonight), once you install the two pieces, it adds "kill" and "hide comment" links next to the poster's name.
You come across a troll, click "kill" and all of the troll's posts are hidden. You can unhide them if you choose.
It's empowering. It's democratic. It's great.
Imagine you're standing in line at the grocery store, and someone is yakking away on their cell phone. Killfile allows you to silence their conversation to your ears (and your ears only) while you can listen to anyone else who may choose to speak.
Everyone else can choose to listen to the cell phone yakker, and the cell phone yakker can choose to keep talking.
It's a free country.
But for someone who has family that died in the holocaust, it's very helpful to tune out someone who makes Nazi references.
If someone else wants to listen to that, feel free. It's just not for me.
I'm onboard with Greasemonkey and Killfile. It's great, and I'm sure that it will enhance my comment-viewing immeasurably. Thanks for explaining it, MtHood.
I think I can get it to work on my work machine, too; the IT department at Slacker University isn't what you'd call a tight ship.
Self-restraint is the best way to deal with disruptive commentators. A reminder somewhere on each page - asking people to think, really think before responding to an obviously inane, or flame generating post when THAT is the intent may reduce the feeding of the trolls.
Its really important to avoid registration software. - invisible cookies may be ok so long as people are told that "registration" IS in place, and they are allowed to opt out. It can tune out one time, first time commentators who may one day become regulars and have a lot to teach us. The principle of "let a 1000 guilty go free to save one innocent person" should apply.
An open forum (I'm reminded of the long-lived, never banned, say ANYTHING, SOAPBOX notes conference at DEC ) is a great ideal to aspire to and live up to.
I still prefer Haloscan to other comments software.
I've just installed Greasemonkey and the kill script. Please leave things as they are while I see if it works in removing the two banes of my commenting world from my gaze.
I guess there is a big difference between chat board software and blog software. I spend a fair amount of time on Flyertalk - eGullet - and AVS (I like to travel - eat - and play with A/V equipment - not necessarily in that order). The software on those "chat" sites is a lot more sophisticated than what I see on most blog sites. And I've never seen problems - not even in places like the Omni section on Flyertalk - which is devoted to very contentious political issues.
One place I have seen problems as bad as I have seen here is Weather Underground (where I go to get hurricane information). And it's not so much an issue of content as the nature of postings. The comments there are basically endless conversations. Perhaps some comments say things that are useful - but they are so lost in the chatter that they're useless.
It was mentioned up thread that Haloscan allows people to use the site at work. I really don't know if people here are home - or at work - but it seems like more than a few use this as a place to have continuous conversations with other people - like the people on Weather Underground. Which leads to hundreds and hundreds of fairly meaningless messages. I don't know what all of you do all day - but - even though I'm retired - I have plenty to keep me occupied. When I work on a chat board - I like to read through the initial post - and the responses - and then usually write perhaps one or two messages. You may not agree with what I say - but I don't usually get involved in any running conversations.
Perhaps the people here who post dozens of messages a day ought to stop doing that - collect their thoughts - and reduce their volume.
If that doesn't happen - then basically the comment section will wind up being a running conversation among a couple of dozen people who seem to have too much time on their hands.
Wish there was software that charged a quarter a message - but I don't think there is anything like that. Roby
Although I seldom comment, I'd be happy to pay a registration fee for the privilege, just to know that any time a troll is banned and tries to re-register that they'll have to stuff another fin in the tip jar. Yes, there's a risk in changing the type of community, but anything is better than Yahoo-ification. The Yahoo boards are beyond useless.
Crazy idea- ask some of the regulars here to be moderators and give 'em kickbacks from the registrations.
I'm also more than happy to volunteer technical help if y'all want to set up a different commenting system. It'd be a real treat to give something back to you two after all I've learned here. (Thanks!)
Isn't part of the problem mostly on weekends when there may be only or two posts per day and the comments some times decay into jokes and arguments only a couple people are interested in?
During the week there are many more posts and especially when there is some kind of perceived "crisis" the number of comments on each one seem more relevant.
Maybe if nothing else you could turn off the comments after so many hours on a topic, or hire a monitor. As don't you still need one occasionally even with registration?
Registration is fine with me. I read this blog every day at work, but I almost never post from there b/c I'm just paranoid, both of being identified/monitored internally and/or being identified or associated or somehow being taken for "speaking for" my employer, since surely the IP is identifiable.
I am against nested comments. They only work for people who do nothing except monitor the comments all day.
I'm also against ratings that alter the order of the comments.
I have few corn nibblets here for any trolls if they want to follow along:
Lower the word count per post and keep people focused on short and easy to follow logic, versus long drugged out rambles and rants about how the kids played soccer today...? If you cant say it under about 50 words, you get your rant rejected.
Perhaps the people here who post dozens of messages a day ought to stop doing that - collect their thoughts - and reduce their volume.]
It'd be interesting if the comment software allowed the mod to limit the number of posts per day or perhaps better per thread. E.g., 4 posts per thread, max, so you better spend them wisely!
(Uh oh, that's two posts for me in 3 minutes already...)
I pledge to stop feeding the trolls.
I also pledge to starve the trolls...
btw...Haloscan works fine for me nearly all the time....
I take this opportunity to remind Rob how much I have enjoyed having him around. He and I often come from opposite sides of some problems, but that's the thing. Good faith is good faith. (And funny is funny.)
So here's to the Dawg.
This site could be so much better if you could filter out the filth (think Slashdot style). Not necessary to remove their posts completely, but at least let people rank their usefulness in contributing to a reasonable discourse about a particular topic. One of the reasons I keep coming back is because of the little nuggets of wisdom certain posters leave here.
It just looks bad when you have posters complaining that American Nazis are worse than German Nazis. Freedom of speech is wonderful, but c'mon, let's keep it reasonable and on-topic and cut with the Scadenfreude.
Please consider some kind of moderation system. Let's keep the posting relevant and informative. There's nothing like a good argument, but who wants to read sissy fits and diatribes especially when crude and vulgar?
And CR, Tanta, if this blog is a business blog, it shouldn't be blocked! (I know it isn't at my employers)
Great post, one of your best. Keep up the good work.
[blushes]...
Why is it that halo scan is the only one that people can use at work? What about it makes it unique?
My biggest problem is that their are so many marginally on topic points made that you tend to get worn out by the time your half way down the thread. I would gladly read 100 responses (eventually) if 90% of them were on topic.
There are some blogs where the comments are as good or better then the postings. If that were to happen here, it would be fantastic. If it takes ditching halo scan, so be it.
I would like it if we kept the current comment format (unregistered), but allowed people to rate comments. That way, we could save time and improve quality as well.
Actually, in an ideal world, I would be able to view comments using ratings that I trust (for example, only use ratings from tanta, CR and MP). This would allow readers to have a comment trail that is tailored to their own preferences.
Do not Tanta and CR have the right to delete comments that are not relevant? Perhaps this would take too much of their time? If they would delete offending comments for a while the authors might get the message that they are not welcome.
i like holo. i send money. i am at my limit with jas
Perhaps this would take too much of their time? If they would delete offending comments for a while the authors might get the message that they are not welcome.
Yes, we can delete comments and we do.
However, it is unfortunately the case that a certain class of troll takes that as "attention" and escalates.
It is, certainly, a great deal more effective for me to delete problems as soon as I see them if the comments underneath have ignored them. But if they've already become a topic of many follow-up comments, then the thread's off the rails unless I just delete everything.
Which I have been tempted to do.
I am not a fan of "community moderation." It seems like such a wonderful, democratic, Jimmy Stewart kind of idea at first. But my reading of political blogs suggests that this elysian democracy soon falls prey to roving bands of Heathers who giggle with their friends behind their monitors and gang up on all the kidz who aren't kewl enough. Most of us had enough of that in high school, and many, sadly, still live with it in the form of juvenile office politics.
Registration, however, can be helpful, at least insofar as it relieves the problem of having chaotic arguments with Anonymouses of multiple personalities.
You'd expect people to just feel ashamed. CR and Tanta are taking the time to educate us about arcana that have suddenly become of major importance to all of us, yet few of us understand. And neither seem to be doing it for the gloryhounding reasons that undermine many of the big-box blogs. Whatever happened to manners and simple appreciation? Oh, well.
Either way, I'll be here. And if I ever feed a troll, may I be drug out into the street and shot.
Why is it that halo scan is the only one that people can use at work? What about it makes it unique?
I actually have no idea why that is.
As a regular reader but infrequent commenter, I have seen this huge increase in comments, specially the kind of comments that I prefer to scroll. Then, I have started selecting those from commenters that I read before and appreciate.
This is the only thing that works on works computer because I don't have to sign on we are blocked. Please do what you have to and I can wait until get home to read some the comments minus the trolls of course. Keep up the great work because I sure have learned a lot from owners and commentors.
The race to the bottom continues.
Tanta-You do a great job. However, we need to be careful not to impose political correctnes. I am often in the minority, as I do not believe we are on "The Eve of Destruction", and would not like to be censored for not sharing the majority view.
Do you think part of the problem may be not the lack of registration, but the lack of nesting?
I find Duncan's blog interesting but his Haloscan-powered comments not worth reading. That's because I'm forced to skim all the "Frists!" and "Firsts!" and inside jokes to find anything worthwhile. Personally, I think Haloscan works best on blogs with light traffic.
If comments are nested, it is easier to spot troll posts and replies to them, and simply step over the entire pile of doody.
But my reading of political blogs suggests that this elysian democracy soon falls prey to roving bands of Heathers who giggle with their friends behind their monitors and gang up on all the kidz who aren't kewl enough.
I think it's even worse than that, Markel.
I still think that a lot of what motivates people to leave nuisance comments is the "online poll!" mentality. For whatever reason, some folks are like Pavlov's dogs when they see a "comments" link. Even if they have nothing to say, they have to say something.
Rating systems fall prey to the same mentality: you don't have to rate a comment, but some people will. Not that they thought about it or have any expertise or a mature judgment about it; just because they never miss an opportunity to say "I'm here!"
And I do find it strangely at odds with my apparent mission in life to supply people with the intellectual and practical infrastructure to enable them to draw their own conclusions about finance-related topics, only to then turn around and tell them what comments are worth reading.
Brevity is overrated.
Keep haloscan.
Seems to me...with the exception of a very limited set of people things are actually quite good here..and probably the easiest way to deal with this issue would be to ignore the one or two people who add no value...of course that appears to be quite difficult...doing the easy thing...
rt
Im not sure who I am but thank you for that nice story about the others that are getting out of control; I offered a weird solution in the previous post. I do agree that a new trend is in place here related to too many junk posts.
Im as guilty as they come, but nonetheless, too much comment from any one poster is not a good thing here, as that does waste time and makes it too difficult to keep a topic in context and on-track.
You have a good thing going here, so I hope you dont pull a Fed rate cut and over-react too much, and thus keep ahead of the curve and keep it in perspective -- then phase in to what works.
Doc The Addict Holiday
PS have you tried looking for a widget that could shock people via their mousepads?
PPS: Another way out of this jam is to ignore it and not get into the blogs and then just search for content within Halo; its not like you should feel connected to day-to-day blogs that can have 250+ posts X 5 stories, that would be insane, so maybe continue on with high quality stories and forget about your children here and let the boards run wild like Yahoo. That way, you provide the content you want and that drives people to the blogs and thats that.
Hope Im not pissing you off!
The blog is attracting more and more of all kinds. It is evolving, that doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Continue your comment patrols deleting obvious crap comments. Attempt to implement a system which allows individuals to 'ignore' certain other posters. This may require a registered system. Community ratings are by definition popularity contests, rationalize it anyway you want.
Mo money, mo problems.
I think I fed the troll first. Sorry everyone, it won't happen again.
FYI, I run a blog software company called SoapBlox, which is a online community/blog platform. Users have to register, there's nested (and even AJAX based) commenting systems.
It also allows you the ability to have "user" posts. and a "recommended user" post section, much like Daily Kos (if you've ever been).
I'd be honored to help y'all. I love this site.
SoapBlox - Building Online Communities - SoapBlox Network, Inc.
//salesman off
I believe I've not fed the trolls in some time; I pledge not to do it.
That said, if you need to go to registration, do so. Somebody said that the problem with the hippie movement was that admission was free. Anybody could climb on board, no matter how bogus. As this blog becomes more popular, you're going to need some low-effort means of moderating the conversations. Registration allows this.
Thank you again, thank you both, for the information you bring to the table, and to the forum you provide for readers to add their own.
I like Haloscan, but if registration is what's needed to keep things sane. . . so be it.
I do think just ignoring trolls and bores does work. Tanta's right though, that means complete and total ignore. I remember trolls here who were ignored, and have returned and get attention now.
Put 'em back on ignore and they'll leave.
Even if they have nothing to say, they have to say something.
There is a common personality flaw among people who can't have a genuine conversation. They're not listening to you; they're just waiting for their next turn to speak. Even worse are those whose default setting is "contradict," since they're just waiting for something to argue against. For some reason, this trait is far more apparent online than it is in the real world.
I got very irritated in the other thread about someone making a strawman out of one of my comments--this is a very common technique in people who just want to hear themselves talk. I've seen you deal with it, too, from posters who write not, "Do you mean..." but instead, "You're saying that...," as if they know, and you don't, and your protests can be waved aside.
Perhaps we need a blog motto: Here, We Listen.
(Wow. Is this the first CR meta-thread?)
I encountered a woman named Tanta.
She was not just some everyday ranter.
Opinions and knowledge she had,
for which many were glad,
but for her democratic spirits
and generous merits
we wish to advance her.
Cheers and thanks
Joe
i very much appreciate, first and foremost, CR and Tanta's blogs..it has been and continues to be a great education.
i also value much the comments.
i wish i knew how to keep the standards as high as they were before.
with success comes popularity...i have seen CR noted in many places in print and at other web sites.
All i can say is i know the roster of handles of those who were here long before me and if they tell me to back off i will respect that..i hope we all would.
As Mt. Hood and others and Tanta just said..we must not respond to destructive negative comments.
i pledge not to respond to insults and data dumps..and i promise to accept constructive criticism to pipe down.
Registration is fine for me. I refrain from reading the comments as I feel most comments are a waste of time. I just read your blog which I find very informative.
However, we need to be careful not to impose political correctnes. I am often in the minority, as I do not believe we are on "The Eve of Destruction", and would not like to be censored for not sharing the majority view.
"Political correctness"? Puh-leeze.
Nobody said anything about censoring unpopular points of view.
It is my experience, however, that the ones who whine the loudest about censorship are the ones who don't understand the difference between your having a right to say something and my having an obligation to care about it.
A hallmark of persuasive writing is that it tries to show the reader not just a point of view, but a reason to care about that point of view. That necessarily means that any writer who is truly persuasive is one who can imagine herself in someone else's shoes. A persuasive argument implicitly offers respect to the other side.
Too many people here have just been trying to "win" the argument or get the last word in. It's fun for you and whoever you hooked into to arguing with you, but the rest of us just find it tedious.
So be careful about assuming that you might be subject to censorship because your opinion is unpopular. You might be subject to being ignored because you're repeating yourself.
adding registration and letting us ignore certain posters would be helpful. There's no perfect automatic solution, just steps in the right direction.
This is my first post ever to this wonderful blog. I've learned more from this blog in the last 6 months than from any other source. One of the reasons is because of the comments. In fact, this is the only blog where I always read the comments. Despite the occasional troll, there is some great discussion. As I learn more, I hope to be able to contribute to the discussion. Until then, I wanted to thank CR, Tanta, and all of the great commenters on this site.
I heard starving sucks
I have no opinion on Haloscan vs. a registered comment system. I scroll past comments or commentators I don't want to read on lots of blogs.
But, as someone who has attended scores of 'community' meetings, the rules need to be restated quite often.
In businesses, you can more easily fire who you don't want.
In a public community, you have to set some rules, and usually have someone enforce them. I've never seen a way around that.
Tanta,
I have an idea (only one
and boy is it lonely
hey how about if names were posted before the comment.
posters develop reputations and your reputation determines if you get scrolled past or read!!
I think this blog is about as perfect as I'd want it to be. It's a stressful world and if someone can vent on here... what's the harm? Take what ya want and leave the rest?
I find that score-moderated posts (a la slashdot) break the reading flow. Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions. Too many people make anything suck. One button click to ignore and poster name first would be useful. I can recognize the writing style of the commenters I like pretty quickly, otherwise I've been scanning down to the poster name first before reading the comment. The flow is also too fast now to follow-up with replies -- threaded replies are needed for that. Can you strip down the UI flashiness if you do it? I hate most discussion board software... too clunky. Something seductive about haloscan's minimalism.
Names at the beginning of a comment are an excellent idea.
May I humbly second mock turtles motion.
I read more than I post, but would be
happy to be an 'assistant mod' and do
some occasional housecleaning to help
out.
Sheesh, I have to jump in again, Re:
"you're going to need some low-effort means of moderating the conversations. Registration allows this. "
No, on second thought, registration does not work, just look at Yahoo, Silicon, any blog site. Registration is just bookwork and steals your time to play administrator to chaos, dont go there baby, it will burn your time and the trolls and crap will not go away! You end up with registered trolls that will still piss people off, because they are registered. Not a solution!
DH
When I pop in DH, I really should be forced to have a default name that locks me in....hmmm, how do you not register people but identify them?
I wouldn't object to an Ignore feature. However, if others take the low road and feed a troll for a long thread, you still have to wade through just as much junk unless you ignore the whole community.
Funny, I keep thinking about that site we were talking about, youwalkaway.com. It's always important to remember that if an exploit is available, there's always someone who will not only exploit it, but make a mission or a business model out of exploiting it.
I don't like registrations, but I would do it here if I had to.
I am not a fan of nesting. I think nesting put the last nail in the coffin of the Yahoo boards.
Nesting works OK for social networking sites where people want to have little chats with their friends. It doesn't work on a news driven site unless the person who makes the first comment in the thread does a good job on the subject line and then the people after that really stick with the subject. Even if those conditions are met, I don't come to CR knowing in advance what I want to read about.
Ignoring trolls works if your community members stay the same.
New people will find this blog (I see links to it here and there in news articles) and people will feed the trolls.
Forums are usually moderated by a select few. CR and Tanta could get a couple loyal informative posters on board to help moderate the obscenity. No need to rank all posts and create some kind of competition about who is the most "Informative" or who has the best ranking. Just get rid of the filth.
Someone suggested many months ago that
if monikers preceded posts, rather than follow them,
easier to ignore the rants & ravers.
Names first is a great idea if Haloscan can do it.
"Names at the beginning of a comment are an excellent idea."
I agree. I cope now by scrolling to the end of long posts before I read them. It's awkward, but faster than spending 30 seconds reading a troll's rant before you figure out that it's actually just a rant. If it were possible to put names at the beginning, that would be great.
Besides, there are certain posters who I almost always want to read -- quite a number, really -- and this would help me identify them.
albrt, I'm talking about the kind of nesting where you can see the entire posts, not just the subject lines. In fact, nesting works well when even when many posters title their comments "asdf."
I tend to read the name and then the comment. Certain names I just skip completely. It works for me. I think Tanta actually jumped on me for my first comment, but that was back when we had only a subprime problem (ha!) so I forget the specifics.
I don't have an objection to registration but I don't think it does any good for eliminating trolls. They will get their fix some way, somehow. If you don't feed them, they go away.
The future is all about faster paced comments on faster stories, so the key is to force people into smaller spaces and cut the amount of words down.
I know from pasting in lots of crap here & there, that you have a content limit, so I would strongly suggest limiting everyone to far fewer words per post.
One of the first times I came here I was busted for posting a long story, thus the only reason I was able to post a long story, was because of your content allowance.
Just reduce the word count if you can, and that will help manage part of the problem, as there will less data here to screen!
DH (dah)
Well, typing 'first' first is the first thing I would get rid of. What Chutzpah! Well, I talked this over with my rich husband you know the blonde none Jew but not really a Christian either and then I called Jas (on his secret red phone)who was like they are American communists and ...so still being confused I found Doc's number and didn't get any satisfaction there so I'm trying to call just a select few others in my small social group but now I've got to run to that Macy's white winter sale for a Natori King coverlet (I'll check house prices in my Benz along the way). Is Suze Orman on Larry King again tonight? I may just watch her instead. (Just an offbeat attempt at humor. disregard it.)Anonymous
"A persuasive argument implicitly offers respect to the other side."
Tanta-I think you will find that many here been occasionally guilty of mockery of those who disagree with them (including myself). Most people are reasonable and will stop if they are called on it. The cop on the highway doesn't have to give everyone a ticket; sometimes just their being there slows everyone down.
No objection to putting names first if that can be done easily.
On the issue of relevance...
I think it's all relevant...
For a new reader to come into the blog, and scan the the numerous topics and tangents, opens up a world of education that most could only hope to attain if they studied at all the finest institution of the world, simultaneously. This is the beauty of the internet, and the value of a great blog.
When we all get to a bore at the point of saturation on a topic of mortgage schadenfreude, my mind usually drifts to the cui bono part.
that brings me to relevance...
oil.
money.
society.
stability
freedom
tolerance
Why did, at the bottom of the market in 2002, did the mortgage market come to life with new products for mainstream buyer's like i/o?
Why was it really necessary to have a rapid "measured" reduction in interest rates?
Why do we need to build million dollar humvee's for Iraq.
How do we get money for million dollar humvee's for iraq, if everyone is getting a tax rebate?
It all flows, and becomes relevant, thru tangent, becomes it's all money, and effort, and worth, and a life's blood. We must know, and debate it, so that we can understand how we got to the place we'll be at in a few years, a have ideas to create something better.
I'm not a HaloScan expert, but aren't there tools available that let readers use a killfile with HaloScan? Seems like that would solve a lot of the problem.
you guys are providing us with a great service here. For free. So, do whatever you feel makes life easier for you.
Things are not nearly bad enough to make this a necessary step. So inertia argues for remaining inert.
But would it be an improvement? I think so. There are way too many stock/investing comments in long threads. A few of them are actually interesting, but they are rarely on topic. Maybe one of these posters should set up a quick and dirty blog where they could back and forth whenever one gets started? A little more self-discipline from a few folks would go along way.
Just how many posters are there who can post at work with halo but not with other software? I guess I'm seeing a modest benefit to moving to a registration system, but I really don't know the cost.
I'm talking about the kind of nesting where you can see the entire posts
I'll have to respectfully disagree on this. The trouble with nesting, IMHO, is that as the thread grows, it becomes really hard to follow what's new and what isn't. Here, I just zoom to the bottom and pick up where I left off. At blogs like HBB, nested comment threads are virtually impossible to keep up with after a hundred or so comments. FWIW...
Why is it that halo scan is the only one that people can use at work? What about it makes it unique?
It's that efficiency thing again, most companies don't have the resources to maintain lists of good/bad sites so they subscribe to a service and holoscan was on the banned list for a while but there were to many people who accessed the service for "business purposes" so it got unbanned.
All these suggestions for fixing holoscan, while valid, require code and that means owning the server, I'd be willing to donate time/code/money to move this blog to another platform but I'm not sure that the transition would be something that CR and Tanta would be willing to tackle.
I'm not a regular poster, I lurked for months before posting, sometimes something catches my attention and I feel I have something to add. I'd gladly register if that would stop the trolls but there is a dedicated group of trolls that would see that as a challenge and administration becomes a nightmare.
I regularly scroll by posts from posters who I believe to be trolls, but some times it can/does get out of control when others feel compelled to respond, we all have buttons that we just can't seem to ignore.
Even if the regulars stop feeding the trolls this blog is becoming mainstream and that will bring more new readers who will feel the need to feed the trolls.
My longest post and nothing that even resembles a solution
Names first is a great idea if Haloscan can do it.
Haloscan, like all of us, can do anything if enough leverage is applied.
Masochist to sadist: "Hurt me! Please hurt me!"
Sadist to masochist: "No I won't" "Muuuhahahaha!"
I shall do the same to the trolls.
evil grin
thank you, Tanta.
"The trouble with nesting, IMHO, is that as the thread grows, it becomes really hard to follow what's new and what isn't. Here, I just zoom to the bottom and pick up where I left off."
I second this with emphasis.
One last comment from me; just trying to help:
I like the idea of names on top also. That is a weakness in the current Halo layout and also the divisions between comment posts are just that little thin line, which maybe could be configured in some new way to make the name at top part of newer format/look. I also think that thinking of a way to make people post a name should be required as a default. I know when I go to The Big Picture, etc, some people make you put in an email address and name, which "kind of" works, but if you make too many changes too fast you may not like what you create, so go slow.
I also like Naked Capitalism which has a very easy interface like so,e I have seen that make you enter a code before posting; perhaps this is something linked to income, I dont know, but the main reason you are having problems, is because of your success with new traffic and new people posting. Adaption is the key so great to see this debate!
XXXXX (DH)
It is ironic that this post appeared as I decided to stop reading the comments last week (so perhaps I missed the latest troll). I used to learn something from the threads but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
The commonality of viewpoint of people visiting here has already been established, there's really nowhere to go on a personal relationship level. That is why people would be better off keeping their individual impressions to a diary or with those they can have face-to-face contact. I tired of reading a bunch of one-way revelations that led to no conclusions and no solutions.
hey how about if names were posted before the comment.
Very much agree with this sentiment. That would at least cue the reader as to the quality of what they are about to read. Combine that with registration would be helpful (because, as I've noticed in the past, certain individuals seem to attract impersonation).
IMHO, this blog is already out of control and too many people (myself included) are going over limits for content.
Force content to be based on shorter messages; limit content! Manage chaos by not letting content expand too rapidly! This is entropy, dont let too many words kill your blog!!!
Tanta, I will apologize again for my earlier rant. It wasn't my intent to offend anyone. Whatever you want to do is fine with Conjure and me.
Another "unintended consequence" of the government getting involved in economics: the comments here have descended into petty politacal bickering and diatribes.
For a new reader to come into the blog, and scan the the numerous topics and tangents, opens up a world of education that most could only hope to attain if they studied at all the finest institution of the world, simultaneously. This is the beauty of the internet, and the value of a great blog.
We are very flattered that you think of us as a common room in a great university.
But we aren't, you know.
The entire internet might fit that description.
But this blog is written by two people and read regularly by many many other people who are actually trying to filter, not to escape the filters.
I personally have about 50 blogs on my Bloglines feed. I don't read every post on every one of those blogs, but I certainly scan them all. I know many of the rest of you also read widely, because it shows in your comments that you do. I have nothing against being Renaissance Chicks.
What I object to is someone trying to make my blog stand in for the entire net. That's the logical implication of most of the "political" posts. They aren't really about the specific political issues around housing and finance. They're just all-purpose political commentary. I really really want people who are into that kind of thing to go find a good political blog and comment there. The rest of us are trying to get away from that.
Please note, by the way, that I might be telling you something you don't want to hear. But the fact that I am responding to you means I do not consider you to be a troll. I just wrote a big post about not feeding trolls. Frankly, if you've got Tanta criticizing your comment, you can at least consider that she thinks you worth responding to. If she thought you were a troll, she'd . . . .
Tanta wrote:
"Yes, we can delete comments and we do.
However, it is unfortunately the case that a certain class of troll takes that as "attention" and escalates."
I do not know if it is possible with Haloscan but banning the IP address of the troll is an option on several blog softwares. Worth asking Haloscan's geeks.
Drastic but very effective.
Not all of us who comment from work are in the financial industry. We are not necessarily ripping off our employer by reading when we should be doing something else. Some of us get paid to sit patiently and wait until we are needed. Meanwhile, a mind is a terrible thing to waste and we like to make an insightful or funny comment. I learned as much from the comments as I did from the blog.
IP filtering can be easily circumvented. Very easily. Just flat ignoring works better.
--
I hope that it has not escaped Tanta's awareness that vast majority of people can't handle when their cherished beliefs are challenged. False beliefs like that in democracy will cause Americans unimaginable misery. And within the lifetime of many here.
False beliefs are root causes of much misery and many conflicts. And we see the conflict here too.
Almost all problems these days, especially, discussed on this blog, are human behavior problems.
FALSE BELIEFS AND BAD HABITS will lead to Americas demise. That is my conclusion.
Jas
No, on second thought, registration does not work, just look at Yahoo, Silicon, any blog site.
The concept of registration could become elaborate and cumbersome, but... the point of registration is to separate those who have a proven track record of passing useful information from those who are a new and unknown quantity.
Conveying the status of an 'accepted member' should in no way disparage the new arrivals, but should be obvious to everyone to indicate that this poster is 'new and unknown'. After a period of time, they could be promoted a step. How many steps could exist is an open question. Personally I think 2 or 3 would be enough.
Comment moderation is the best way to limit trolls but keep all the readers engaged that have adult self control
I vote for registration (as long as it's not too cumbersome or costly).
I just don't think such a popular site can effectively self-police itself any longer.
PS> Hope I'm not guilty of feeding the trolls...I do believe in responding to opposing points of view.
Re: The cop on the highway doesn't have to give everyone a ticket;
The ped does not legally have a right of way in regard to traffic on an open road; the driver and ped are mutually responsible to not create hazards for each other.
Tanta is involved in a mutual benefit exchange here, but every now and then a drunk fool is in control of the system. Put up a barrier today to save things from getting worse!
In a past life I spent several years dealing with abuse of free services such as message boards and web sites. Trolls were a problem in 1996 and they are still a problem today, even on Slashdot, Digg, Yahoo! and other similar public forums that allow users to rate posts.
I don't think a comments system that only requires registration will resolve your problems. All someone needs to do is register for another free email account to register. And some ISPs like SBC and Comcast allow multiple sub accounts. That's the problem with Yahoo! message boards - no way to verify identity. The only way to use a registration system to control the trolls is to require a small fee, and even then you might not resolve your problems.
A rating system is not truly any better in the end, but it does allow the community to down comments that are absolutely horrendous. There is a danger good posts will be lost because of ideologues/trolls who gang up on certain people or beliefs. I've seen it happen first hand as gangs of such ideologues run roughshod over specific forums and message boards. You'll likely spend way too much of your time policing the rating system if that were the case.
An alternative is to utilize a comments system that combines registration with ratings. Since you are both active in the comments area, you can reverse any wrongly downed comments as board dieties. It would be even nicer if you can provide karma points to good posters who you trust the opinion of to also provide a counter balance to the trolls. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any such system, but I'll keep an eye out for one and give a holler if I do.
What she means by "troll", I looked at dictionary and still do not get it.
Sorry english is my 3rd language.
What about just trying another comment tool and see what happens ?
Personally I've found the comments valuable from time to time but they've gotten so long and community chat-like that it's hard to spare the time to wade thru.
So my vote would be to try a registration-based system and see what happens.
Why not have people pay a subscription?
Re: the point of registration is to separate those who have a proven track record
Again, look at Yahoo. Everyone is registered and they have star ratings, some moderation, they even kick you off for a few days if you post too much. No system is perfect, but registration just provides you with a ticket to get in the show, where this whole thing starts over again on a new level!
DH (trying to leave and shut up) That was the last
pay per post
Trolls have money too. Subscriptions will not change very much. More readers = More moderation. No way around it. If you need help moderating, solicit it. I'm sure many would volunteer.
Per the comments by "dfb" above, I would have no problem with a small fee for use of the comment board.
Geez, the information available here is worth a fee! And the money would go to CR and Tanta, who deserve it most.
The point that "dfb" makes above is that a fee discourages trolls from simply re-registering with multiple accounts as they are banished...
Registration, yes!
I really love reading this blog, and especially the comments. A bit of a free-for-all is good. Trolling is not. I think the best moderation is self-moderation. I just skip the posters that I find don't contribute and try not to answer them. Unfortunately, anonymity breed certain anti-social tendencies, but that's the nature of the internets.
So I say keep this format and perhaps we can use community-based rules to keep this the reason we all keep coming here...even when we're supposed to be working. Hmmm...and speaking of which instead of registration or new software, I vote for more pig-based spreadsheets!!!!
ShortCourage- "The point that "dfb" makes above is that a fee discourages trolls from simply re-registering with multiple accounts as they are banished..."
It seems to me that's a very good point.
The problem is not bad comments, in my opinion. The problem is that this site has become very popular, so no one can keep up.
Threaded discussions would be better, from my perspective. But I see no benefit in trying to get rid of trolls. This site is remarkably troll free.
Who are these trolls? I can't think of too many that I would want to get rid of.
With regard to politics, I can see the concern, especially in an election year. If you try to eliminate politics, however, you will neuter the site and reduce its impact.
So, I advocate threaded discussions since the real problem is the volume of posts (i.e. the success of the site), not trolls...
Haloscan seems to be the best product so far and we are all acustomed to it. I understand your frustration and Haloscan does not really offer any settings to help. Hopefully we can all pitch in and keep the comments relevant and not flood the board.
i'm as guilty as anyone of getting off topic.
i think one evolution here has been that people just like to talk to each other and the end of the threads especially later at night tend to get way off topic and turn into simply a salon-like conversation.
perhaps a forum would give people a place to 'chat' while the comments can stay on topic?
i also second the 'name-first' idea. but then again it seems as though i can usually ID the poster within the first few lines.
that's my .02 cents
How about a voluntary code of conduct?
I will not bore the rest of the readers with comments solely emphasizing:
I'm not saying everyone would adhere to it, but if the vast majority recognizes those topics as better served by other blogs . . . .
Although I never post I have been reading the blog/comments for awhile.
I find myself being less and less interested in the comments because the majority are boring or filled with inside jokes. Personally some sort of system that nests the comments would be best for people that like to browse through the comments but not read them all.
On the other hand moderated communities are horrible. It takes a very special sort of person to not ban
users or remove comments in an ego-free way. I frankly do not think the hosts of this community are such people. Therefore, it would be best to let the users decide who is a troll, what is junk, what is boring etc.
Have a daily "open thread" for people to yak--hopefully about economics-financial related stuff.
For those that use Firefox:
1) Install Greasemonkey
.
2) Install Haloscan killfile.
Problem solved.
If you use Internet Explorer, you're on your own.
How about creating a CR chat room for discusions outside of the post?
--
Bigots are characterized by their sense of self-superiority. Nothing new for Americans, is it?
Oh, Americans are better now? LOL!
Jas
trolls register everywhere else, they'll register here too. You can then ban them and they'll re-register. Ban them by IP and it's not worth the average troll's effort to get around. Banning by IP doesn't require registration.
This blog is getting a lot bigger but there are others still using haloscan that are bigger and still have useful and vibrant comment communities. Just because there's new people doesn't mean it's inevitable that the comments will turn into a version of what's on Duncan's blog. Most of his posts are 30 second spots and what we get here is more like a long format documentary. The ensuing discussion will be determined by that to some degree.
Perhaps we just need a regularly scheduled "come to Jesus" reminder from Tanta for the benefit both newbies and old school Respected Users who might go off the rails in a moment of weakness now and then.
I enjoy the freewheeling comments and it only takes a day or two to realize who to read and who to scroll past.
i think one evolution here has been that people just like to talk to each other and the end of the threads especially later at night tend to get way off topic and turn into simply a salon-like conversation.
Well, yes. And I really don't have a problem with Friday afternoon or late-nite threads turning into Cheers.
But that's also a matter of self-discipline. If someone starts some chatty off-topic side conversation in the middle of the day on a thread that people are very interested in, the rest of you have to ignore it rather than see it as an invitation to give in to it. I know you, dc1000, you've been around for a long time. If you want to shoot the shit on Friday night on some not terribly important thread, nobody minds (at least CR and I don't).
I'm just saying that we all have to manage the ones who can't restrain themselves by ignoring them and not emulating them. There's a time and a place for different kinds of comments. Those of you who do understand intuitively where that is can help me by not encouraging those hopeless incompletely socialized sorts who will never have any idea what is "appropriate" because, as Markel reminds us, they're not here to listen.
The thingy TCA is proposing sounds interesting. From looking at his links, it's something I'd like to know more about.
It would be great to separate topics. Some posters have pertinent, generally unavailable information such as remittance info. Some posters offer a valuable, inside perspective regarding the events. Some posters provide links to news I might not take the time to find on my own. These posts collectively are the most valuable. I have to admit, I can't go through all the comments anymore looking for the jewel posts.
One last free comment then you have to pay for analysis, but, the most interesting about a blog is its news story-related content that links a breaking story to immediate posts and reactions, where people are in the process of digesting and thinking on -the-fly. This is a much faster media experience -- in regard to a Yahoo stock board, where during a day, you may have a popular stock like Oracle that has a message board that might get 2000 hits and 95% of the content is junk, while another slower stock like Moody's may only get 5 posts a day. Thus, the point here is the dynamic value of on-th-fly commenting, where Tanta uploads a story and then gets 100 reactions in an hour on-the-fly.
I just think you have to look at this new media and adapt to the on-the-fly content and not become a place that is unused just because a few people add dumb content, because its the story that drives this machine; the mechanism is the on-the-fly content....if you kill that or make it less dynamic, you dont get the punch that drives this to the next quantum leap -- instead you get a dead board that doesnt flow, you need cowbell baby!
"Frankly, if you've got Tanta criticizing your comment, you can at least consider that she thinks you worth responding to. If she thought you were a troll, she'd . . . ."
OMG, I remember the first time Tanta commented positively on something I'd written...I stopped breathing. But, alas, some don't get it when the editors say something about keeping on point. But, again, I think that self-moderation is the only thing that actually works. If attention is what is craved, then no attention will get the quickest response, as hard as that is to do. Everything else is just a pain for everyone.
Now, didn't something interesting happen today that we can get a thread going about? It's cold out here, and I was hoping for something pithy to read
What's the downside to a registration/moderation system?
It's your blog, do what you want to do. I appreciate it's mere existance on the worldwide web.
Switching to a registration-based system is annoying and wrong. Trolls are bad, but with global registration-sharing systems like bugmenot (bugmenot.com), any logins will be shared or reused by trolls.
The only way to avoid that is to bring money into the picture somehow, as with having each user pony up a small amount.
If we do go to a fee based system, please make sure that Conjure Bag pays his own way. CB is a classic troll, freeloading on the back of the honest mp...
Thanks Tanta . . . I have an occasional weakness but try to restrain myself.
My thoughts
1. i can live with Haloscan
2. Marcy Wheeler's setup is effective
Emptywheel
3. Posting at Barry's place is so onerous I never do it.
4. Don't care for nesting.
Thanks again!
Haloscan is an awful blogging environment compared to what, say, theoildrum.com uses. I vote for registration and for a blogging format that allows nested comments as well as the ability of the community to vote on comments. When a comment receives a certain negative level it can disappear except for a topic byline that allows a reader to see it only via explicit expansion.
Nested comments allow an easy way to avoid topics that are of no interest.
There are certain commenters whom I would certainly choose to eliminate. A feature that allows registered users to establish a black list would be most valuable both to the me and also to you and CR. It would give you a real insight into who is intolerable. I'd like to see a white list too. That would allow generation of a list of commenters well-regarded by their fellows.
When a commenter achieves a certain level of negative feedback he (and let's face it, it WILL be a he) can be advised that his account will be suspended if he doesn't clean up his act.
In the same vein, a high positive score might be a basis for allowing a commenter to originate the occasional post, thereby taking some of the content generation load off you and CR.
I would suggest you confer with Super G at theoildrum.com and see if the software he is using would work for you all. I don't know if you read TOD regularly but try their comment section and see what you think. Bunch of great people and I'm sure they think the same of you.
Conjure asks, "Tanta, have I been bad?"
Conjure is ready to pay.
I suggest disemvowelling, the tool developed by Teresa Nielsen Hayden (otherwise known as the 'Troll Whisperer') to keep her community healthy.
Here's a link to a free disemvoweller that lets you disemvowel individual posts: Making Light: Autodisemvowelling
She also has a thirteen point list for comment moderation that is the best I've seen on the net. It's here:
Making Light: Virtual panel participation
This has always seemed a particularly neat solution to me-- don't argue, don't censor-- just render the offending comment harmless and slightly humorous.
Oh, yeah, thanks to FFDIC for bringing the snark above. That's classic.
--
There are so many useless and trivial comments on this blog by the "respected members" that it is disgusting that such people will ban someone they don't like primarily because of challenge to their deeply held beliefs.
Further confirmation that America's years are numbered. It requires a confident population to tackle problems not a bunch of cowards. Shame. But not for the shameless.
The Fatal Conceit! (Title of a book by Hayek).
Jas
As a CR addict and occasional commenter, I think the trolls on this site are easily scrolled over. That said, perhaps it would give the economy a productivity boost if many of us were unable to access CR during the workday! Thanks to CR and Tanta, regardless of your decision on how to manage your blog.
What about an FBI most unwanted poster, hey not a bad idea..what if you just tell people to skip comments by the following criminals, kinda like that self disclosure thing for abusive people.
Yah know why that doesnt work? The anon status, if you get rid of the anon feature and make people get a name maybe you can filter them later; but that takes time
Can you past a header to each comment thread that states REMEMBER NOT TO FEED THE TROLLS?
I like the comments when I have time to read them.
Im scrolling over jas right now
The back and forth between Mish and a few posters regarding deflation awhile back was extremely interesting and fun to read.
OTOH learning that Dryfly's son knocked up his girlfriend was another matter. What do I care?
Maybe there should be a chat room.
I actually like haloscan better than whatever system Mish is using. He used to use haloscan and I liked his site better back in the day.
I know that trolls are annoying but I vote for self-policing for now. I think everyone just needs to be a bit more judicious about comments, as at times the threads can get too long.
I'm not about to start complaining about any of the regulars here as I'm sure I have made a few knucklehead posts myself. What really bothers me are the comment spammers. They are using this blog (and others) as a platform to promote their malware and borderline criminal activities.
Conjure asks, "Tanta, have I been bad?"
Well, you haven't been any worse than I am.
The main reason I hesitate to write posts like this is that the people I'm talking about think it must be someone else, and the people I am not talking about think it must be them.
My only suggestion to you, dear, is that you have to remember that the old-timers know who Conjure Bag is and the new readers don't. So maybe you should periodically re-introduce him to the multitudes so they don't think you're speaking in tongues.
I'm as guilty as anyone else of in-jokes. I promise to keep that under control, too.
Otherwise, you know I love every dog ball and toad bone in your bag.
I don't like Haloscan. It's impossible to follow a comment thread. That's just reason enough for me to ask you to ditch it. Also, trolls and bores can really destroy the quality of a site. You need more control. I agree with that.
TCA | 01.26.08 - 5:39 pm | #
THANK YOU!
Greasemonkey and killfile. Holy moly this is great!
I apologize for feeding the trolls.To my mind having the posters name at the top would be a real help,there are some posters who always have something to add,and their links while sometimes tangenital to the original thread have certainly deepened my understanding.
i just installed greasemonkey & haloscan killfile. it's working. and thanks to CR and Tanta for the great blog!!!
Finuance, TCA, how do Conjure and I do that grease wrench thingy?
1984
I asked who Conjure Bag was recently. The silence was defeaning. I thought, hell, this is a replay than highschool with a clique and inside jokes.
--
Anonymous: "Im scrolling over jas right now"
I have always respected the right of anyone here to remain ignorant and to his, or her, prejudices. It is as American as the Apple-Pie.
We don't have saints here, do we? Ignorant people always go after the innocent to prove their manhood, or womanhood!
Jas
Firefox you old timers!! To know it, is to love it. Take the plunge!
"The cool thing about the internet is that you can just scroll down to the next comment without being "rude." So take advantage of the medium."
Tanta
This simple advice, if followed by everyone, would solve the problem without a lengthy discussion in a thread with well over 100 messages!
That Payday loan thing on the comment section annoys me way more than the trolls. What's up with that?
Sharing some poetry from my site to break the gloomy cycle of blogger confessionals:
Benoit said...
There once was a guy named Bernanke
When the dollar goes south, he gets cranky
He doesn't want thanks
When bailing out banks
In finance, there's no hanky-panky
And:
This guy who we all know as Benny
Of the dollar he cares not a penny
The banks are his bosses
The rest? We take loses..
His victims? Oh there are many.
--
I have nothing but thanks for all you guys and gals here for letting me get a peek at what Americans are really about.
You confirm my observations every single day. I would love to be disproved but that hasn't happened once. But, I keep an open mind so necessary not to fall in love with ones conclusions.
People come here to have their beliefs validated, not challenged. There has never been greater need for Americans to be validated by others like them.
Jas
Feed Me.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
More trolls here might suggest that the quality content on this blog may be hitting a bit too close to home for some vested interests.
I have no problem with Halo scan or trolls here. To me, they are tame compared to other places.
What I like about this site is the potential to learn and WIN. By win, I guess I mean apply what I learn in the game of finance and life to making good decisions that can be rewarding.
I know that I go off topic a lot on investment stuff like rogue trader. But to me, the rogue trader situation has parallels with things that have happened in mortgages and real estate. I don't have too many mortgage or real estate situations to make now, but I have made some nice money in SRS mainly because of this site and talented people here.
I do intend to put a portion of my winnings (if any) in the tip jar in appreciation. I hope others will, too. That way, we could make it worthwhile for the bloggers to encourage lively open discussion.
"Ne nourissez jamais les trolls
(never feed the trolls)
Yearning to Learn | 01.26.08 - 5:50 pm | #"
It would be a shame to have the comment section of this site Yahooified as Tanta puts it. I personally don't care for registration and as several commenters already stated, it doesn't work at Yahoo.
The one popular site that appears to have the ability to limit and control trolls is craigslist. Readers can flag postings. I don't know if their algorithm is based on the number of people who flag it as inappropriate, or somehow give higher weight to certain designated flaggers. Maybe some smart people on this site can help come up with an algorithm.
Anyway, it would be nice to have less draconian solution but in the end it is your site. I just think it would be a shame to have a few bad apples ruin this for everyone.
Regards,
pc
I asked who Conjure Bag was recently. The silence was defeaning. I thought, hell, this is a replay than highschool with a clique and inside jokes.
I will say I don't really think anyone meant to give the silent treatment to the newbie.
Hell, most of the time, you ask a question around here and ten different people answer it at the same time.
Unfortunately, your question might have gotten lost in the sea of tripe we're talking about today. I use my scroll wheel a lot, and every know and again I go too fast.
Someone also might have thought you were joking in turn. (Conjure Bag is a creation of mp's, and frankly the question "Who the hell is Conjure Bag?" is, in certain contexts, kind of funny.)
All of that notwithstanding, if you think we're acting like a clique, let us know. Even troll infestations aren't as pernicious as cliques.
Rich, just for the record, you are on of the posters I always enjoy reading. Even about investments.
--
Americans are horrible at dealing with the certain decline that has already begun. They are very bad losers.
They will get violent when things get a bit worse. It is so easy to see the reactionary behavior. They will be looking for scapegoats. Right now the scapegoats are outside American border but the problem will come home with a vengeance.
Ja
Starve a troll - feed a blog.
Self restraint is probably the best path.
I know that at work I cannot access the registration type comments. I do see your point about trying to keep things on track and without too much crud. I think the comment folks here do a good job of policing the discussion themselves, but I support whatever decision Cr and Tanta make.
"I came for the wonkiness but have stayed for the humor." Tolerance is great. Intentional, ignorant disruption is... not productive. First and foremost it is CR and Tanta that I want to read, but if someone PROVES valuable assists, great. Because of the growing tendency of many in making the blog owners responsible for the blog's comments whether they control them or not and because whomever might feel "censored" can very well open his/her own Blogspot account and PROVE a valuable POV to share, I raise my hand for registered commenting by those whose POV I've come to read, CR and Tanta.
I'm no expert and I probably bug people with dopey contributions, but I have learned a lot here and have appreciated the replies to my questions. Thanks to CR, I now know what commercial paper is and why I should care. I know what monolines are, and even managed to bang out a story for my newspaper about how the monoline problem was affecting local municipal finance (it wasn't much...)
Carl,
You gotta hit the advertisements at least once every time you show up, because it generates revenue for the blog. When you hit payday lending, you'll see it's a really great deal. They send you money right away, and you just send them two pay stubs and your Social Security card as collateral. What's wrong with that?
Dear comrades, those boys in the back are from the KGB and are here to protect your freedom of speach.
Thanks Tanta. Is Conjure just some mythological figure predicting financial armageddon? I know the clock usually accompanies mention of him.
i think conjure is going to get a spanking from Tanta...
and he's going to like it
ok ok ok im sorry i just couldn't help myself
Rich,
Thanks, I know my duty now. You think I should just post my SSN on the net and be done with it? Everybody seems to want it for some reason
Firefox + Greasemonkey + Haloscan killfile rules!
Registration does not help anything. If anything, registration lets people feel entitled to be a-holes.
Haloscan is not threaded, but it is not supposed to be - there is already one thread per CR post on the blog.
CR, Tanta, and a few of the more erudite posters rule. My honest appreciation to you for helping educate me in such arcane topics. I earned an MBA from a top school and yet found I had much to learn when I started reading what people write here.
Conjure Bag, I'll admit, made me question mp's sanity the first time he was introduced.
But conjure bag is now one of my favorite fixtures in the comments, and the salty CB gags are often priceless.
See, e.g., "MSFT Kicks Conjure Bag In The Gonads".
Aniee wai we could do a test drive/trial run with whichever alternative u propose.
P.S. Mai whaii kee isn't working. I'm calling room serivice. But just F-wai-I
I've only commented a couple of times since discovering this blog. I don't comment because compared to most here, I have nothing worthwhile to contribute. I know when to keep silent and learn. I have noticed lately that there is an increase in gumflappers posting inane or vitriolic or quasi-intellectual or off-topic or convoluted or self-serving (insert more adjectives here) comments. I would appreciate registration so that postings would have a greater probability of staying impersonal and on topic.
"So take advantage of the medium"
This is exactly what I like to do - there are names I look for and some I do not give the time of day. Some roll over my posts some maybe read them. Dont think I have ever been pulled into a fight of verbal (by-way-of-keyboard tapping) diarrhea being tmepted to when a yahoo will post way off topic political bla-bla; but I have posted some off topic items like my vehicle purchase two weeks ago. There are occasions, too, that the Comments says, for example, "214" and at times I will pass all together as it seems to be a lot of work to get the golden nuggets.
Being good means being popular which means people follow. I like the diversity on this blog.
To me, the thing that most blog software lacks is the "ignore" feature.
We could all choose which trolls we do not want to listen to.
A bonus might be a tag which tells the troll that 347 people have you on ignore
But that's a bit tricky to implement.
The ignore feature is a piece of cake, however. Assuming that the coders of the comment software have been out of school for more than a year
Anon- Conjure Bag was created in 1299 by infusing a leather bag with toad bones and ground-up dog balls, shortly after the Battle of Hastings.
Over time, Conjure became a depository of memories, then finally developed into a self-aware entity. That was sometime around 1780, shortly before the French revolution.
Conjure is now 27 inches tall, has long brown hair, and is proud of it. He is a hellion with the ladies, who are endlessly fascinated by his repartee and wad of euros. He is mp's sidekick, goes out only at night, is a cunning poker player, racconteur and stock market operator. He subsists on Martel XO, Macanudo Duke of Devon Maduros and dog balls, pickled or braised. He communicates only through me.
Does that answer your question?
"1984". Revro that`s one of the most brilliant comments I have ever read. Thank you.
Is Conjure just some mythological figure predicting financial armageddon? I know the clock usually accompanies mention of him.
Conjure Bag actually started out life as just another ironic comment on what passes for economic expertise in this nutsy world of ours. He's sort of a throw-back to the olden days, before the quants and the program traders and the talking heads on CNBC ruled the world. He's basically a cross between a canny old expert and your grandfather's bad knee that predicts thunderstorms.
Then he got delusions of grandeur and started this clock shit.
mp is a wise commenter and knows a lot. I always profit from reading his comments.
Every now and again Conjure Bag gets out of hand and needs to be smacked. But nobody knows that more than mp, who lives with him all the time.
I like the funny stuff. I like the way the conversation develops. It seems that there are troll attracting subjects--such as walking away from a mortgage.
I just start posting and reading ANY blog a few months ago. I didn't know what a troll was. Some of the off-tread stuff is very insightful. If you limit the conversation to much, a lot would be cut out.
Irvine Housing Blog nests, and sometimes it's nice and sometimes it's confusing. That said, it might be that you can get too successful, with too much traffic. Don't know what could be done about that.
I'm self employed, so the only one who gets mad at me for surfing during working hours is my secretary.
--
I might as well share my opinion of Tanta over the past few months, other than the fact that she is intelligent, a good writer, and knows her subject quite well.
Tanta -- Narrow-minded, conceited and a coward. I hope that she takes it as a constructive comment and works on her shortcomings.
CR Despite my disagreements with CR, I have very high opinion of him. He is a man I respect. He is merely wrong, which applies to all of us. He is too bogged down in details to think in-depth on some important subjects on housing and the economy.
I hope that no one is offended by honest opinion. I could be wrong, you know. Hitting back is a fair game, I suppose.
Jas
I think that this very thread shows us that CR's readers vary in all sorts of ways. You throw all of those various ingredients into the pot and viola a delicious gumbo is born. Just be careful how finely you screen things. The big chunks can easily be spooned out. The other little annoyances can be swallowed with little inconvenience or harm to the pallet.
I am a utility engineer whose work includes load/growth forecasting (for which this site is perfect background.) I read the posts everyday (THANK YOU), the comments not so much, I almost never comment:
As long as we're talking about format changes and accessability on corporate IT network, I should mention that at my company (10000 employee) every blogspot.com blog was recently blocked EXCEPT this one (I'm guessing a bigger fish than me got it specifically exempted). However, all of your blogger.com graphs ARE now blocked. Is there any way you'd consider looking for a way to post graphs so those of us behind the mindless IT veil can still see them?
BTW, I am often on the road for work, most of the time my only hi-speed web connection is corporate--your attention to avoiding the broad-brush blocking of the site resources including comments is important to some of us.
we've come full circle, again.
"shortly after the Battle of Hastings."
Well, 'shortly' in Conjure Bag time. Quite a few generations to us mere mortals.
until just now i thought conjure bag was mp's significant other.
Until today, I really, really thought that conjure bag was a real person. Sorry, the Battle of Hastings was in 1066. I suppose that is a troll like remark. . .
I read regularly and have noticed the wheel on the mouse getting a workout lately with the growing number of comments. I agree with a previous poster that a nested comment system works better. Then if someone asks a question it is easy to tell if someone has responded already and respond if it is appropriate.
With nesting you can select who to have a conversation with. Without nesting it is like everyone talking at once. That is fine if you are in a small room without a lot of people, but rather annoying if you are in a large crowded room. The comment section has recently become a much larger room.
I always feel the need to add an analogy, its compulsive, please forgive me.
Full circle.
If I could tell who's ranting w/o scrolling ...
This is all I ask, this is all I ... need.
Thanks for the blog.
Putting names before comments is a good idea.
In my experience, comment rating leaves us open to a whole new round of comments where people demand to know why they received a bad rating...
I'll try the firefox thing thanks for the suggestion.
sorry, I haven't read all the posts yet:
my thoughts:
1) I agree with others. Names on top so that we can more easily scroll past whoever we don't personally want to read
2) BAN ANONYMOUS posters. I tire of the many anonymous people I can't tell if it's one or many people posting.
3) registration will not solve trolling... but it can "authenticate" our chosen identities.
I get very irritated by the identity thieves... the identity theft of Sebastian comes to mind...
the only reason I'd like registration would be so that everyone would know that Tanta is Tanta (remember tenta?), and that Sebastian is Sebastian....
often the posters with "unpopular" beliefs are identity attacked.
4) perhaps add an "OT" thread each day. That way, every day people could restrict OT comments to the OT thread. One could also have 2 OT threads... first OT thread for "new" economic highlights (which I learn a LOT from) and maybe a second one for all the other stuff like jokes, political issues, investment advice etc...
as others have said, the ONLY way to deal with trolls is to ignore them. thus, it is our civic duty to ignore.
Ne nourissez jamais les trolls!
the line is sometimes thin... and so it may be up to others to remind the newbees or those who get sucked in that they're feeding the trolls?
Before knowing this post was up, along with 157 comments already, I just commented on the last thread that I get annoyed only by two posters and that my solution was always to look at the name of the commenter before reading the comment. Some I skip each and every time. That way I never respond to trolls.
starve them all
--
Rich: "What I like about this site is the potential to learn and WIN. By win, I guess I mean apply what I learn in the game of finance and life to making good decisions that can be rewarding."
Rich,
You would have won big had you listened to my call on Fraudentials, aka financials, and Hopebuilders before that. I must warn you that I am early, but that is necessary to accumulate long-term puts.
I look for Crooks and bet against them, long-term. I have been the biggest bulls on long-term USTs, gold and Swissie. I think that most people should avoid Scams, aka stocks, altogether.
Only a born-and-bred American dope has not yet figured out the scam nature of the US stock market since 1995. It has been exported to most of the world by now.
Does anyone on this blog know that the UK stock market was practically shut down for several decades during 1700s following the 1720s bubble burst? I predict a permanent shut down of the US Scam Market within the next 20 years. Things unimaginable today will happen in the US before 2030.
Jas
One more thing - I would recommend a commenting sstem that would allow me to block certain users and boldface (or otherwise highlight) others that I like. Aneee of them offer such functions?
Greasemonkey/killfile seems like a good solution...thanks...
No to registration - just don't like it. I think comment groups become boring when they are a closed circle. The ability to post anonymously invites the occasional lurker who may having something worthwhile to contribute.
No to nesting - it's annoying.
Eye-tracking studies have shown that individuals have become adept at disregarding banner ads and pop-up ads, compulsive internet surfers have also become adept at scanning over trolls.
One thing to do is simply close the comments for the post if a thread runs off topic and shows no hint of getting back on course. Collective punishment....kind of like forcing jumbo rates on fly-over country conventional borrowers.
until just now i thought conjure bag was mp's significant other.
John Stark | 01.26.08 - 6:35 pm | #
Oh, John, that is just so wrong. I don't want to think about that anymore.
BTW, as a mostly lurker, I like the semi-heated comments as long as they stay away from ad hominem attacks. Several people I disagree with their comments but I listen even closer to their arguments because echo chambers do me no good.
The personal stuff is okay, even welcome. The subject matter can get depressing and levity keeps me sane. As for trolls, the scroll wheel works well for me.
My two pennies.
CR/tanta, I'm with Markel - Nested comments work best for me. If it takes registration I don't mind a bit. Just like my mother used to say - Everything, with moderation.
Re: Nesting--AFAIK, most platforms that do threading allow you to turn the feature off and display an uninterrupted pile of comments, if that's more your speed.
Cutting comment length is interesting, as several folks above pointed out. Online fora are kind of like highways--making them wider and bigger never makes them less congested. The opposite may be true.
How 'bout shorter comment lengths, PLUS the comment thread turning off automatically after 75 or so comments? I think that would be cool, especially if it were easy for Tanta or CR to push the snooze button if they were participating and wanted it to linger longer.
Just like my mother used to say - Everything, with moderation.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
--William Blake
Self-righteous people will be disrespected.
Self-centred people will be unloved.
Glory seekers don't attract followers.
-Lao Tzu
I simply skip the posts I don't like. Keep haloscan. Some fart jokes are funny.
Broker: ""1984". Revro that`s one of the most brilliant comments I have ever read. Thank you."
I agree. Some people on this blog like the security of the official protection. Someone in authority must do the thinking, AND SCREENING, for them.
Jas
Or, as my father used to say:
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
That was a REAL American.
We are here to learn. Thanks Tanta, and CR. You are troopers.
To request civility and to dislay it the way CR does shows remarkable restraint. There is also an authenticity and bravery when someone says "cut the crap"
Democracy, especially electro-democracy, is messy.
Personally, I like the idea of having the poster's name at the top; I scroll for certain people and ignore a lot of others. I could live without the discussions of "investment advice"; I don't really care who's shorting who. Aren't there other boards for that sort of thing?
Another suggestion - Set up a thread all on its own from the sidebar where jas can post sour comments for himself to read. That bitterness needs a hole of its own to bury itself in where no one would notice.
The comment section is just too long anymore because the site is so good. the commenters are a big part of the success.
Is there a way to put a more social comment thread on the site where we can banter a little more openly and socially and save the comment threads for more on topic discussion? Personally, I like hearing comments from rich, mp, CobraDriver, Misean and many others that may be off topic but very good or just fun.
I simply skip the posts I don't like.
Me too.
Let 'em talk ... but who's speaking? Too many
very valuable posts here to have to wade even a
few sentences in to the infrequent but inevitable junk.
America has gotten so far off base that we are having to understand what the truth is again. To me this blog is an attempt to uncover the truth, as in science. True science is a clash of ideas.
A real scientist has little ego and is willing to say, "Well, we just shot that hypothesis all to hell."
"barely | 01.26.08 - 6:54 pm | #"
Troll chow.
w
I'd second that. Except that u didn't put shnaps in ur top five.
Some sort of permanent off-topic 'lounge' area might be the solution.
I've been lurking here for months learning from both CR/Tanta and the comments. Scrolling past trolls works well for me. If you go to registration, no doubt I'll get more work done at work. Whatever happens I'm in. Totally addicted now.
Thanks to CR and Tanta, as well as all the regular posters here.
Any way of just blocking their IPs so they can't post those non-sense anymore? i am not a techie...
I avidly read CR's and Tanta's posts, but rarely feel like diving in to read something long like this one's "COMMENTS (180)", and even less like commenting, presuming one would get lost in the flood.
Is it just an unavoidable result of so many readers?
How about if you install a trap door, and if someone gets out of line the door opens and they fall into a moat filled with hungry hungry hippos?
Dive on in, the water here is fine.
Tanta / CR
Thank you for this blog, and the depth of insight you provide.
Commenters
Thank you for the erudite, eloquent, educated, sometimes slightly sardonic, and always humorous ways you find to illuminate the subject at hand. Thank you for the many links, even the cardiac arresting ones, that add further depth to the conversation.
As several have said, both the blog and the comments have been a real education. When the Student is ready, the Master will appear . . . for all of you willing to share, there will always be those of us willing to listen . . . and learn.
Tanta, perhaps CR will relinquish a small spot of sidebar to publish a short piece on etiquette and rules of the road for commenting on your blog. There have been some nice tools offered today (Greasemonkey / killfile, etc.) that can be mentioned as TMDs (Troll Management Devices). Whichever direction you choose to pursue, I will follow.
Again, all, thank you.
199 comments and counting!!!
If you look around you and can't figure out who the troll is...
The popularity of this blog, and the coinciding influx of trolls, will fluctuate. Currently, it seems like there's a lot of new posters.
A word of caution - Mike Shedlock's page (Blogger: Page not found switched to a quasi-registration format, and the number of posters dropped significantly, and many who remained were the trolls.
Retroactively first.
My vote is to just ignore the trolls.
I've never understood how the trolls are able to engage so many of the posters on this site who otherwise have so much to offer.
If any group of people could be expected to ignore trolls, it would be this group.
So it's very puzzling that people don't exercise the self control to do so.
Respond to the posters who are offering something worthy of discussion and ignore the rest.
It can't be that hard for this group to do so! It just can't! Why let someone drag you down into the hole they're in?!
Come on people, we can do this!
Some sort of permanent off-topic 'lounge' area might be the solution.
The trouble with that, Shnaps, is that if the Problem Children understood what a lounge is for, they wouldn't be Problem Children.
I once worked for a company that had actually a really nice employee lounge setup, and was quite generous with people taking unscheduled "sanity breaks."
Did I still get people trimming their toenails while making loud personal phone calls in their cubicles and driving their fellow employees batshit insane? Yep.
Repeat after me. The beast you feed is the one that grows. The beast you feed...
I don't like the inside jokes either--they're too crisp.
Vader, reluctantly sides with registration. Ignoring the trolls is a far better solution and registration, in my experience often leads to suppression of ideas far more often that suppression of trolls, but in this case, regulation is best.
Tanta - I agree with your post, but if you stop acting like a turd yourself, we wouldn't have all these problem posters.
--
NSA: "That was a REAL American."
BTW, I do respect the older generations of Americans. Since the Baby Doomers we have been breeding sissies and dopes. It is all part of the Great American Dope Factory, run by the propagandists that are paid by the economic elite.
Evil nature of the moneybags is not obvious to most Americans. Moneybags held a lower status and were held in low esteem thru most of history until after the WW II. They were considered neech (beneath, or equivalent to untouchables as far as morals are concerned). They are money whores amd that is an insult to whores.
Tanta has not figured out the real source of mortgage lending debacle.
Jas
LawyerLiz- "Until today, I really, really thought that conjure bag was a real person. Sorry, the Battle of Hastings was in 1066."
Conjure has been lying about his age. Obviously.
Ask dryfly to screen the posts!
I'm agreeing with 'Yearning to learn' on the following:
my thoughts:
1) I agree with others. Names on top so that we can more easily scroll past whoever we don't personally want to read
2) BAN ANONYMOUS posters. I tire of the many anonymous people I can't tell if it's one or many people posting.
However, I understand waiting to ban anon. We always want fresh non-Troll opinions, but the number of people who like to hide behind anon...
As to registration... I'm 50/50, so I will go with the majority.
Got popcorn?
Neil
I'm naked under my clothes
mp,
I hope Conjure has been lying about more than his age, but I fear that he hasn't.
LawyerLiz, you may or may not be aware that Conjure's family motto was conferred upon him by none other than Tanta The Great:
"Extremism in the search for correlation is no vice."
TCA | 01.26.08 - 5:39 pm | #
Thanks for the Greasemonkey + killfile tip!
I pledge to ignore the trolls (and hopefully not be one).
Please stick with Haloscan unless you go to a proprietary platform like Scoop.
Thanks to Tanta for an elegantly written essay on the subject of trolls.
I will refrain from feeding them.
The ratio of useful comments to rants is quite good on this site. Besides, even the comments that annoy me are educational.
I think things are fine as they are.
Michael
Regarding OT posts: I find the so-called "bits bucket" over at Ben Jones's Housing Bubble Blog to be useful at corralling wayward posts.
Tanta, perhaps you can include a similar "bits bucket" blog entry every day so that random OT conversations can exist but not be distracting.
Folks, dissenting views are part and parcel of what makes this blog great. Don't be so mentally fragile that you can't hear what others are saying. Come here to learn and share ideas. As others have said, the ratio of good comments to trolls is heavily skewed towards the good comments.
P.S. More cowbell.
I second (or third) that Slashdot is the best model. I'm not sure if you have the volume of comments to warrant it, but that is your decision. Slashcode is open source and available at:
Slashcode: Slash Open Source Project
I also agree with MR: all in all, the signal to noise ratio is quite high. And even the noise is often useful in that it serves to illuminate the tenor and tone of the stream of conversation.
With all due respect to our fantastic hosts, I find that anxious concern about the direction of online discourse to betray a lack of familiarity with today's information media. It is extremely difficult to maintain order in such a democratic forum. In my humble opinion, the best one can hope for is to reward good behavior with compliments and responses (i.e., ignore the trolls).
One last suggestion, Tanta. Slashdot uses a point system whereby readers assign points for intelligent comments. If your comments receive points, then you can rate other comments, and so on. Readers can then filter the comments by the point system so as to separate the wheat from the chaff. I'm not sure if there is an off-the-shelf blog software package that provides this functionality, but it might be worth checking out.
I thought Conjure bag was mp's dog or something along that line.
I respect the technical knowledge on the blog.
My ex wife was a ultra liberal also so I learned not to mention my point of view too often long ago.
I think we just need to grow up and follow Tanta's advice. After a while, one can tell who is a troll and who isn't.
I pledge to behave. And since I can't always follow all the comments, if someone has behaved in a way that qualifies him or her as a troll I would appreciate it if someone would notify me if I am feeding one. I'm either misbehaving or ignorant.
I don't have a problem with Haloscan, and I do think that the information and discussion in the comments on this blog is great. I would hate to waste Tanta's or CR's time moderating, and I think a registration system is counterproductive. There are a lot of comments from people who mostly lurk but occasionally have a very good point to make, and I'd hate to see those suppressed.
PS: I think the new trend of "a lot of junk comments" is related to the high level of anxiety about finances. I think that may die down all of itself.
I think we just need to grow up and follow Tanta's advice.
yep.
I'm very fond of the DailyKos commenting system for large commenting group. CR has become a significant blog, because the principals provide superb content, plus a number of regulars add significant information. So you have to deal with large comment threads in some way.
Unthreaded comments become very unwieldy with hundreds of comments. Large threads inevitably spin off tangents and with threading you can just ignore the whole tangent. Figuring out what's new is a problem, but if you can flag comments as "read' and "unread" (like dKos) that's manageable. Threading + read marking is a great solution and I'll dive into a 600 comment thread at dKos without flinching. 150 on eschaton and forget it. I tolerate the big threads here for the moment because there can be some very juicy stuff.
Registration + community rating fixes trolls. Combine them and the trolls go away. As Tanta says, clique wars can cause trouble with community rating, but I don't think this blog is subject to clique wars because we all have a similar enough view of things and most have a financial interest in getting broad information. Admittedly, board optimists like O-Joe and Sebastian might get trolled out. I think that would be bad as a certain amount of disagreement helps prevent this from becoming a disaterbation echo chamber.
I do think these elements work together. I don't see much point in registration without active moderation. Likewise threading minus read marking is only a marginal gain. And, of course, I'm aware that scoop/soapblox/whathaveyou cost money. I'd be willing to pay for this blog but I understand that's a hard business model.
Regarding OT posts: I find the so-called "bits bucket" over at Ben Jones's Housing Bubble Blog to be useful at corralling wayward posts.
Why, thank you. I invented the bits bucket and suggested it to him as Ben will confirm.
If you enforce registration then the volume of comments will drop precipitously because a lot of us don't want the hassle of maintaining a fully authenticated login. We've enough logins and passwords in our life already.
A simple ignore function would be good. As far as I can tell the current chaotic comment situation is one guy - Anonymous - who just dumps random stuff over and over into a discussion. I think he is responsible for a dozen comments in this topic alone and the percentage is usually higher than that.
Because of the blog's increasing popularity, I think you will need short and frequent reminders of the comment "rules" for the newbies to see. Perhaps Tanta or CR should put the first comment in on every post, something like "As a reminder, please keep the comments on topic and retrain from feeding trolls".
I have been reading this blog for at least 2 years and have learned a lot. Thank you CR & Tanta. PS: Tanta, I wish good health. I hope you made a full recovery.
I don't have a problem with Haloscan, and I do think that the information and discussion in the comments on this blog is great. I would hate to waste Tanta's or CR's time moderating, and I think a registration system is counterproductive. There are a lot of comments from people who mostly lurk but occasionally have a very good point to make, and I'd hate to see those suppressed.
MaxedOutMama
Exactly! For those of us who have less time
than we would prefer though, let us know w/o scrolling who
might be making such ( typically from MoM )
intelligent, elucidating, interesting comments!
If nothing else, reading this comment thread has revealed the E! True Hollywood Story of Conjure Bag -- which I see I have not been alone in wondering about.
I am a big fan of mp's comments and hold Conjure Bag in the highest esteem along with Mortgage Pig(TM). They make me smile.
Stereotypes not only define and place others as inferior, but also implicitly affirm and legitimate those who stereotype in their own position and identity.
.
--
OT, but says a lot about America's system.
A buddy in San Fernando Valley, one of the seven kids of a working-class devout German Catholic parents (people I respect), called to give reports (he is a handyman and does odd jobs):
Seems like a lot better than a Nazi-type govt.?
Most of the ills of corrupt American system fall on the poor and unfortunate victims of circumstance. Most of the victims of the BFNYCs housing finance scams were single women, blacks and Hispanic. Financial Nazis anyone? Capitalist Crooks rule in America and working-class Americans get screwed every minute of the day. Let us see hoe long this sort of exploitation by money whores can be sustained. The Crooks have doped Americans from birth as a part of the Plan.
Jas
I've only posted a handful of times. Mostly I like playing lurk and learn because, as someone else mentioned 80 or so posts above, I rarely feel like I have much to contribute. But since I've had to endure the comments section ballooning with way too much chaff and troll baiting I feel obliged to give my 2 cents.
THe greasemonkey idea sounds helpful. I'm gonna try it.
I don't like the idea of nesting.
I don't mind registering nor even paying a small fee. I heard an interview with the guy who created metafilter and he mentioned how the charging of an small fee (like $5) for the privilege of joining the community did wonders for cutting out much of the crap posters. That's a different sort of forum, but maybe it would help here. Also, I imagine there might be some trolls/haters so offended by the idea that they might just "walk away".
Ample restraint in responding might just take care of the rest. Thanks to CR, Tanta and the rest of you for a great resource.
I like the idea of placing names at the top.
I am starting to have a problem with Jas' comments. If he believes that CR and Tanta are wrong then he should start his own blog and get off this one.
--
"I think we just need to grow up and follow Tanta's advice."
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
You guys are hilarious. Advice from a narrow-minded I-know-it-all? Shows you the level of desperation helpless people feel. Yes, Americans are helpless and they need a leader to guide them. Reminds you of any era outside of the US?
Americans will be awaiting the arrival of the Grand Leader once the depression is in full swing. And dont expect CR to warn you of the depression ahead of time.
Jas
Update on greasemonkey/killfile: I just installed them and blocked a certain bore. Seems to work just fine. I'm probably going to block anonymous, too, since a certain OCD individual uses it regularly.
Firefox + greasemonkey + killfile fixed this issue concerning the troll(s) (for me). I'm extremely pleased (thanks again TCA). This won't help those at work who don't have admin rights for their computer at work or those places where Firefox isn't an option. But it's a great step forward.
I think CR and Tanta should capitalize on the community and open up some sort of subscription. I'd easily pay $15-$20 a month for use of comments, forums, the CR4RE newsletter and some other tidbits (what about community gatherings/"parties"??).
The possibilities...
maybe those that purchase your newsletter could be part of the comments section, I don't understand why the comments need to run into the hundreds. Overall limiting comments by registration or part of your newsletter could provide a good forum. I havn't signed up yet for the newsletter but I plan to in the future, waiting for my stimulus check you know!
Commenter's name at the top of the comment would be great.
Ignore button would be very useful.
Registration - whatever you want to do.
Pay to play - whatever you want to do.
I follow many of the OT comments from people I respect because I learn things I wouldn't otherwise learn.
Well said.
I advise to set up a comments filer.
It's like locking your car doors.
If someone really wants your car, they'll just break the window.
--
Now I do understand why Americans like big govt with big tits to suck on for all the crybabies.
American econo-political system is a true reflection of the majority of Americans corrupt and crybabies. And it couldnt be otherwise in a democracy.
Monarchy corrupts the monarchs, theocracy corrupts the priests and the pope, and democracy corrupts the population! (An original insight some 20 years ago)
Jas
Tanta - Whatever you and CR decide to do about this situation, I just wanted you to know, if you're still reading this (or if you haven't skipped this) that I have learned from and enjoyed almost every post and comment I've read. I would hate for you to feel you need to police the site too much. Even the OT comments are interesting or humorous most times. There are some people who obviously need extra love in their lives, who probably missed out on any familial affection when they were little tots, but they have their stories too, and I for one feel I can skip them without it ruining my day. Maybe you could set guidelines that say outright hate/threatening speech will not be tolerated. But even the stock comments I find interesting. You and CR get the discussion started with your great posts, but the soul of the blog really lies in the wonderful commenters you have here, and I'd hate to see them squeezed or be afraid to say what's on their minds. Just my 2c.
I appreciate how polite and professional CR has always been. He never gets mad at anyone, he is always nice, and always ends with "Best to all", etc.
I think CR should make the first comment to every post by briefly reminding people to keep the comments on topic, etc.
I think people respond more favorably to someone who is nice to them.
I go to a lot of message boards and participate in a few of them, mostly NFL football boards. I really like your comments section. It is civil, generally intelligent, and of course, pretty much in sync with my feelings and thoughts. I haven't been lurking around here that long, but I wouldn't change a thing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
--
Michael,
You make for a good follower. 95%+ are nothing more than followers or imitators.
It is always a challenge for a follower as to whom to follow and 95% of the followers choose bad leaders because they feel safety in propaganda.
Propagandists attract far more followers than the truth-tellers. Truth-tellers scare people. Poor Socrates was sentenced to death by a democratic mob not unlike what we see here in a different context.
Jas
Installed the killfile add-on and it worked like a charm on the obvious test-subject. tee-hee! Next on the hit-list, Anonymous and anyone who's posted "first!". When that started cropping up it was a real jump-the-shark moment for this comment forum.
Having been reading this blog for awhile seems that when serious financial information which heavily affects markets is put into reasonably plain english with possible and likely outcomes predicted. trolls and garbage are thrown into the mix as brittany is thrown into television news to discourage people from reading through chaff...thank you for this portal and it's clarity
I'd be fine with registration for a fee. Kills two birds with one stone.
Alternatively, if there are comment systems out there that allow readers to rate writers, that might work. I am thinking of a system that would give extra points if the rater was himself or herself highly rated. Kind of like the chess rating system. Tanta and CR get 1000 pts, and anonymously rate a few of the best commenters at less than 1000pts, who in turn rate others as they see fit, with each person's rating of others weighted by their own rating. New people start at one point. Comments are indented more if they have lower points, or somehow made less prominent.
I don't know anything about blogs, so I don't know if software to run a blogs site this way is commercially available. Best of luck, CR and Tanta, with making any improvements.
--
"I think people respond more favorably to someone who is nice to them."
Conmen are very nice to their future victims! This is definitely not applicable to CR and Tanta, but just an important general advisement. Don't get sucked in by what feels good!
The Confidence Game is to suck people in and take advantage of them. Only dopes have confidence in the Fed. Why? Fed doesnt give a damn as to what happens to an honest working-class American.
Dale Carnegie died a bitter death. The Feel Good theology among Americans is idiotic to an extreme.
Be tough!
Jas
The current system is fine. I appreciate having the comments available as the events are occurring during the day.
I am not interested in losing some of the work day posters.
If I see a troll, I ignore. As for the long winded, I skim the comments and often find something useful.
Thank you to CR and Tanta for this excellent blog. I'm a longtime reader, but very, very infrequent commenter.
I prefer the linear style of Haloscan to nested comments. I agree with those who note that comment rating, while appealing in concept, falls apart in practice for some of the same reasons that have prompted this discussion. Some of us are in a position to determine the content filter settings at work, but most probably aren't, so I'd prefer those folks not get shut out during the day. All of this adds up to a vote for leaving things as they are.
Greasemonkey with killfile script works well for Firefox users who get to a point where they want to ignore certain commenters. Should you ever decide to set up a comments FAQ, you might want to include info on the Greasemonkey solution.
Thanks again and best wishes.
PS I read but rarely post at blogs that are monitored. They are a pain. It takes a very long time for comments to appear which means that it is very difficult for a dialog to occur.
I enjoy this blog because of the various dialogs.
Feed Me.
Mr. Troll | 01.26.08 - 6:12 pm |
Here ya go , have some . . .
'chinese troll kibble'
then take a 'nap'.
--
Americans are too weak to live up to their principles, or ideals. That was also part of the doping process make the population mentally weak and easy to dope. Turn them into good followers looking for guidance, help and protection.
Mama, protect me from this bully!
Success of the Great American Dope Factory is undeniable and easily observable here.
Jas
My feelings are as follows, haloscan, good, registration, bad, understand your concern, but, do not understand why you do not just hit the delete button or block the address.
I think I see a troll. Is it true Jas Jain?
Here's an idea. Just develop a little icon and tag the troll with it. That way we can ignore them.
--
"I am starting to have a problem with Jas' comments. If he believes that CR and Tanta are wrong then he should start his own blog and get off this one."
Did I say CR and Tanta are wrong except for occasionally? Everyone is wrong at times, but he, or she, doesn't know it. Why are people so defensive to criticism or challenge to their deeply held beliefs?
Jas
How about publishing "terms and conditions" above the publish block -
"This is a financial blog - do not feed the trolls" etc.
I'd rather read posts by CR and Tanta than have them spending their time moderating comments or doing admin chores on a commenter registration system. I'm not opposed to moderation or a registration system, it just seems like the opportunity costs are too high.
I think the problem might be self correcting as the crowd moves on to the "next big thing". The housing and credit problems are going to be around for a good long while but I imagine a lot of folks are going to lose interest after the news cycle turns.
TCA,
Greasemonkey and killfile are awesome! Thanks so much.
I'm troll free! Problem solved.
If you haven't installed them, please take the time. It's worth it.
Jas, make one point, maybe make two points, then give it up.
Your points are spot on.
But, you've devolved to hectoring.
And, be nice to your your host and hostess; use your manners, sir.
I learned long ago that I cannot change change adults' minds. Do your duty by giving them a heads up, then let it go.
I learned that lesson long ago with my brothers, my sister, my wife, my CEOs...
Markos has spent a pile of money on the technology of Daily Kos. He's still not solved all the problems, but he's addressed many of them with ratings systems, troll ratings, nested comments, etc.
My sense is that CR and Tanta are just beginning to deal with the side effects of bloggy success.
Among those side effects is that this all becomes very complex and at some point in time (see Josh Marshall) you end up having to hire real techies and get serious about customizing your blog's software.
Duncan has avoided this problem by...refusing to go there and sticking with Blogspot. But my suspicion is that CR is going to have to evaluate and ultimately embrace a customized software solution.
Skip
Americas intellectual weaklings have a bad habit of discrediting someone whose ideas, or conclusions, they don't like, or successfully challenge. They turn into a pack of attack dogs. Also very common among politicians.
The behavior here is all too predictable. Who made me a subject of debate?
The real trolls who cant seem to control themselves!
Like so many disgusting Americans people here blame someone else for their own problems. There is a reason why so many Europeans hate America Americans and their Crooked leaders.
Just responding in kind.
Jas
Keep Haloscan, this blog is head and shoulders above most in terms of comments and it's the comments that add so much value to an already value rich environment. That said, I wouldn't pay.
Too many places for too few dollars to go with that policy.
Log in?? Password fatigue. Sorry. Even with 'remember me' capability.
Names first??? YES! YES! YES!
Maximum number of posts under about 100??? YES! but with a Tanta/CR Snooze button.
However, short of $$$, I'll go along with whatever the solution is deemed to be.
Meanwhile, thank you so much CR & Tanta for your work AND for your frequent articles everyday!
I'll second this comment.
"I like the idea of placing names at the top.
I am starting to have a problem with Jas' comments. If he believes that CR and Tanta are wrong then he should start his own blog and get off this one.
Tom Servo | 01.26.08 - 7:56 pm |"
mp--hahahahah.
I met my hub at a Barry Goldwater meeting a thousand years ago. Love the allusion.
Generally Halo works ok for me, however you might want to look at the system they have over at Economists View. There the name of the poster is put on top, so if you know it is someone who you know to be pointless you can skip right over him/her. As for the use at work issue, I consider CR (the blog, certianly including the person, but not limited to) to be one of the key resources that helps me do my job, esp the wonderful graphs which I often use in my work (fully footnoted). I would think that most employers who want their employees to make good decisions would be delighted to know their employees spend time here. I have encouraged many of those that report to me, both here and in India, to read CR.
And remember, beginners do not know what a troll is. Hopefully, you will continue to attract beginners!!
TCA, Thank you!!
Greasemonkey and killfile are things of beauty.
hectoring?
in the interest of brainstorming...(yeah this may not be a real good idea...)
not mentioned on this thread so far;
all posts could be "moderated" before they appear. (ie pre screened by a person)
obviously because of time constraints CR and Tanta would want to consider deputizing 5 or ten of their faithful who could take turns filtering all posts...using very generous standards that only weed out the worst of the worst.
and hey you don't have to filter or moderate all the time...the trolls wouldn't know going in if "moderating" was on or off.
and hey the offed comments could be put in comment purgatory,(separate thread) where those who want to suffer could go and read them
,,,just a thought...
-
My feelings are as follows, haloscan, good, registration, bad, understand your concern, but, do not understand why you do not just hit the delete button or block the address.
risk capital
come on rc, put on the thinkin cap... requires a full time real time monitor....that's spensive
Jas, you just do not get it. People are on your side on most of your thoughts but you keep digging to the point of insulting the great hosts and the posters.
Enough is enough already....
By all the comments you write you should be able to start your own blog. Seems like you have enough free time to get the job done.
Good luck with it, we will all miss you for about 10 minutes.
And no, it is not all about you, get used to it.
am i the only one who can't use haloscan at work?
Great Idea...I hate that payday loan spam at the bottom..
Last post for me on this thread and then I'll shut up.
Please, please, please give Firefox + Greasemonkey + Killfile a chance.
It's beautiful.
If you haven't seen it (which I hadn't until tonight), once you install the two pieces, it adds "kill" and "hide comment" links next to the poster's name.
You come across a troll, click "kill" and all of the troll's posts are hidden. You can unhide them if you choose.
It's empowering. It's democratic. It's great.
Imagine you're standing in line at the grocery store, and someone is yakking away on their cell phone. Killfile allows you to silence their conversation to your ears (and your ears only) while you can listen to anyone else who may choose to speak.
Everyone else can choose to listen to the cell phone yakker, and the cell phone yakker can choose to keep talking.
It's a free country.
But for someone who has family that died in the holocaust, it's very helpful to tune out someone who makes Nazi references.
If someone else wants to listen to that, feel free. It's just not for me.
I'm onboard with Greasemonkey and Killfile. It's great, and I'm sure that it will enhance my comment-viewing immeasurably. Thanks for explaining it, MtHood.
I think I can get it to work on my work machine, too; the IT department at Slacker University isn't what you'd call a tight ship.
L-L-, glad to see that you did not turn out like that OTHER other Goldwater Girl...
I reallt don't comment. I have no expertise in banking and really appreciate the education. I think Holoscan is a good idea.
Thanks TCA. Instructions for Killfile and Greasemonkey are probably worth their own post.
We also endorse killfile!
Self-restraint is the best way to deal with disruptive commentators. A reminder somewhere on each page - asking people to think, really think before responding to an obviously inane, or flame generating post when THAT is the intent may reduce the feeding of the trolls.
Its really important to avoid registration software. - invisible cookies may be ok so long as people are told that "registration" IS in place, and they are allowed to opt out. It can tune out one time, first time commentators who may one day become regulars and have a lot to teach us. The principle of "let a 1000 guilty go free to save one innocent person" should apply.
An open forum (I'm reminded of the long-lived, never banned, say ANYTHING, SOAPBOX notes conference at DEC ) is a great ideal to aspire to and live up to.
I still prefer Haloscan to other comments software.
I've just installed Greasemonkey and the kill script. Please leave things as they are while I see if it works in removing the two banes of my commenting world from my gaze.
I'll report back on that.
-K
I guess there is a big difference between chat board software and blog software. I spend a fair amount of time on Flyertalk - eGullet - and AVS (I like to travel - eat - and play with A/V equipment - not necessarily in that order). The software on those "chat" sites is a lot more sophisticated than what I see on most blog sites. And I've never seen problems - not even in places like the Omni section on Flyertalk - which is devoted to very contentious political issues.
One place I have seen problems as bad as I have seen here is Weather Underground (where I go to get hurricane information). And it's not so much an issue of content as the nature of postings. The comments there are basically endless conversations. Perhaps some comments say things that are useful - but they are so lost in the chatter that they're useless.
It was mentioned up thread that Haloscan allows people to use the site at work. I really don't know if people here are home - or at work - but it seems like more than a few use this as a place to have continuous conversations with other people - like the people on Weather Underground. Which leads to hundreds and hundreds of fairly meaningless messages. I don't know what all of you do all day - but - even though I'm retired - I have plenty to keep me occupied. When I work on a chat board - I like to read through the initial post - and the responses - and then usually write perhaps one or two messages. You may not agree with what I say - but I don't usually get involved in any running conversations.
Perhaps the people here who post dozens of messages a day ought to stop doing that - collect their thoughts - and reduce their volume.
If that doesn't happen - then basically the comment section will wind up being a running conversation among a couple of dozen people who seem to have too much time on their hands.
Wish there was software that charged a quarter a message - but I don't think there is anything like that. Roby
That would be Hillary?
Although I seldom comment, I'd be happy to pay a registration fee for the privilege, just to know that any time a troll is banned and tries to re-register that they'll have to stuff another fin in the tip jar. Yes, there's a risk in changing the type of community, but anything is better than Yahoo-ification. The Yahoo boards are beyond useless.
Crazy idea- ask some of the regulars here to be moderators and give 'em kickbacks from the registrations.
I'm also more than happy to volunteer technical help if y'all want to set up a different commenting system. It'd be a real treat to give something back to you two after all I've learned here. (Thanks!)
Isn't part of the problem mostly on weekends when there may be only or two posts per day and the comments some times decay into jokes and arguments only a couple people are interested in?
During the week there are many more posts and especially when there is some kind of perceived "crisis" the number of comments on each one seem more relevant.
Maybe if nothing else you could turn off the comments after so many hours on a topic, or hire a monitor. As don't you still need one occasionally even with registration?
I like the idea of unedited comments. Is it possible to let them post automatically and then later remove the nutty/offensive/trollish ones?
Pete Viles/LA Land blogger at LATimes
PEAK OIL!! PEAK OIL!! I CAN'T STAND JAS!! PEAK OIL!!
I'm glad you have some strength back, Tanta. Be careful about posting while grumpy.
I'd like names to precede posts, so I could skip past Jas Jain and that person who ends every post with "Someday this war's gonna end."
Tom Servo are you brain dead? We have a thread about NOT feeding the trolls and what do you do.......FEED THE TROLLS. Oy!!!!
Registration is fine with me. I read this blog every day at work, but I almost never post from there b/c I'm just paranoid, both of being identified/monitored internally and/or being identified or associated or somehow being taken for "speaking for" my employer, since surely the IP is identifiable.
I am against nested comments. They only work for people who do nothing except monitor the comments all day.
I'm also against ratings that alter the order of the comments.
My 2 cents. Keep up the amazing work!
I have few corn nibblets here for any trolls if they want to follow along:
Lower the word count per post and keep people focused on short and easy to follow logic, versus long drugged out rambles and rants about how the kids played soccer today...? If you cant say it under about 50 words, you get your rant rejected.
Perhaps the people here who post dozens of messages a day ought to stop doing that - collect their thoughts - and reduce their volume.]
It'd be interesting if the comment software allowed the mod to limit the number of posts per day or perhaps better per thread. E.g., 4 posts per thread, max, so you better spend them wisely!
(Uh oh, that's two posts for me in 3 minutes already...)