by liberal japonicus (image from https://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-soviet-russian-control-panel-rooms/)
A very short post with a few questions
- How many links should be allowed in a comment without being blocked?
- The current period for open comments on a thread is 14 days. OK, shorter or longer?
- What do people think of the ‘subscriber’ option’? Here’s what it means
Limited Capabilities: A user with the Subscriber role can generally only:
- Log in to the website.
- Read all published content (which is typically available to anyone anyway).
- Edit their own profile information (like their name or password).
- Leave comments on posts (without having to enter their name/email each time).
Needless to say, no money is required. If people are opposed to the idea because they want to limit their information in the wild, no problem, but if that isn’t a problem, it appears that some sort of limits can be bypassed with some custom code.
It might seem bizarre to hold up the possibility of doing custom code when I am still trying to get the comments to give an absolute timestamp rather than a relative one, but if people don’t like the idea of being a subscriber, than I won’t worry about figuring out the custom code.
1. I’m amazed that bc got sent to spam with 3 links. I don’t even think 10 is too many.
2. IMO 14 days may be too short. I never counted, but my impression is that some of our best threads at the old site went on for longer than that.
3. I’m not sure what this means, unless the sentence on Limited Capabilities means “Only a user with the subscriber role can generally:”, although frankly I’m not sure what it all means even then! How would any of our information be “in the wild” anyway? Does it mean that all subscribers would be able to see each other’s contact details etc? Don’t underestimate quite how clueless some of us ancient non-tech types are!
Oh, I’ve just tried to see what the +0- at the bottom is for – is it for the equivalent of likes and dislikes?
The limit is set at 3, but it is possible to change it. Boosting it up to 10 is possible, but the reason it is not just open is that it is an easy way to try and identify spam
1 vote for longer than 14 days, any idea how much longer? You don’t want it open forever because then spammers drop comments in (and my anal retentive self gets really angry when I read something and go thru the comments and find one of thos f**king spam posts there)
About information ‘in the wild’, some people prefer not to sign up for things. I’m not going to distribute anyone else’s info, and I try to be careful, but as soon as you are making it so your commenting history can be pulled up by you, something could happen to make them available more widely. I’m not positive how much information can be seen by others, and I’m not going to just open everything up for anyone to sign up, but if people don’t want to subscribe (or don’t know what it means and don’t do it), I don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to add features for subscribers.
With the commenting plugin, there is a system for up/down voting comments. I was planning on removing that, but it is like an appendix or tonsils, where you don’t mess with it unless it is causing problems.
Thank you lj – since bc’s going into spam with 3 seems to show that ATM only 2 is safe, perhaps a limit of 6, which means 5 would be safe? That’s my vote.
On duration, how about 21 days or 28?
On subscribers, I can’t really see the advantage (although being able to see one’s past comments could be useful). On editing one’s profile, would that be like when I changed to GftNC from the full version for weird Typepad cause? Perhaps not necessary here?
Upvote/downvote: IMO totally unnecessary, and an unwelcome development from what is our normal way of dealing with each other.
Thanks GftNC, that’s helpful.
About subscriber superpowers
I’m trying to take out the up/down vote, but it’s built in the plugin, so requires some buk lernin on my part.
1) My opinion is that three links are okay, more are not. Something with more than three links generally deserves to be a top-level post with its own discussion, not a comment.
2) 14 days seems too short. 30? I believe that long open periods don’t stimulate additional discussion because very late comments are almost invisible. The post has long-since scrolled off the front page, and the comment will quickly scroll off the recent-comments list.
3) The most useful feature is probably not having to type your name or e-mail each time, with possible mistyped e-mail address. Avoiding the wrong address benefits people who use an address registered at Gravatar.com. There are a handful of people on the internet who actually recognize my stupid picture of a transistor as a sort-of credential. That feature doesn’t benefit me personally; I have code running in my browser that auto-fills the name and e-mail fields at the few sites where I comment regularly.
Someone should write a post about the pros and cons of concealing your identity.
I maintain a piece of code at another site that provides a comment-centric view of what’s going on. One of the features is a paged, time-ordered list of all the comments associated with a particular name, either for a single post, or across all posts. While I am seldom interested in looking at a history of my own comments, it is occasionally useful to look at part of the history of a specific user’s comments. Eg, if I know GftNC made a comment I’ve been thinking about, but I don’t remember exactly which post it was attached to.
A small complaint about the current comment plugin… When I post a comment, it appears at the top of the comment list, but any comments that have been submitted since I loaded the page and the time my comment is posted do not appear. I have to refresh the page in order to see them.
I’d be fine with boosting the link limit to something like 5. 10 definitely seems excessive — if you have a burning need to share more, putting in multiple comments doesn’t seem that much of a burden.
As for closing comments, I incline to something like 21 days. Anything over a month is just way too long. But 14 is a bit short.
3 links seems too few, 5 seems like a better compromise between overly strict and being exposed to spam.
14 days is probably too short – some threads seem to want to go on longer. 21? A month? But longer than a month seems unnecessary – usually if a thread goes on that long it’s because it’s wandered off onto a different topic that probably deserves its own post.
Don’t know what I think about the subscriber thing. What does it give you that you don’t get by just walking up to the site? Not having to re-enter name and password each time would be handy, but not sure if that alone is worth the extra fuss.
My biggest ask would be to make “Oldest” the default sort order. I (personally) find it confusing to go bottom-up to follow the chronological sequence of posts. But others may prefer the current default.
As always, thank you all for keeping this place alive!
My biggest ask would be to make “Oldest” the default sort order. I (personally) find it confusing to go bottom-up to follow the chronological sequence of posts.
I fully concur.
For the length, I’d say 4 weeks/1 month.
Since I delete cookies before closing the browser, subscribing would not save time for me.
I’d love to get rid of the current avatar images though.
I usually use a photo of this old bronze head in other places.
Here’s an odd request, and I have no idea if the current comment plugin supports it. I’d like to have a “reply” button at the bottom of each comment. Say, on the same line as the -0+ rating thing, but over against the right border. When the button is clicked, the comment box should move to be directly below the comment where reply was clicked. No scrolling up or down to find the box.
I’d love to get rid of the current avatar images though. I usually use a photo of this old bronze head in other places.
WordPress is all in on Gravatar. Subscribers can specify their own profile photo, but I believe that WordPress uses that photo and the subscriber’s e-mail to create a minimal Gravatar profile on their behalf.
I’ve changed it to 5 links and 28 days. I was tempted to change it to either 23 or 29 because they are prime numbers, but opted for the 4 weeks.
I’ve also changed the default order for comments to oldest.
If you become a subscriber, you can choose your own picture as your avatar, I’ve taken the liberty of adding Hartmut as a subscriber so he can show off that fine bust, which I think is Sargon the Great of Akkad.
Speaking of Akkadian, I’ve just discovered some more settings for the comment plugin that seem to written in language… I would like to try and get the comment box at the bottom, but is seems that this is a nod to mobile users. Gemini tells me a way to change the php file, so I’ll give that a go this weekend.
Am I a “subscriber”? Or is it just my Firefox browser that’s filling in my name and email automatically?
–TP
I presume I’m not a subscriber. And my handle and email are also automatically filled in.
Tony P and GftNC, those are cookies from your browser. I’d be happy to make you both subscribers!
I think I’ll pass for now, lj!