Comments: what just happened (canceled)

I set the dynamite charges and pushed the detonator. In a grand experiment, the commenting system has been replaced with a third-party one, DISQUS. DISQUS is widely used on media web sites to to implement a discussion community, sites such as CNN, The Atlantic and Time.

An advantage to you is that you can login once to DISQUS and use the account in multiple places. You can brand your comment with your personal avatar, you can view your comments and replies across web sites, and you can subscribe to discussions and receive email notifications when someone replies to you. DISQUS also supports comment nesting, editing and the attachment of images, plus you get a “Like” feature.

DISQUS is supposedly in the process of importing all the current comments into its database; they say imports can take up to 24 hours. All comments you make through DISQUS should be stored here in the blog’s database also, so if DISQUS is removed, the comments will still be there.

Update:

Let me leave you with this word of caution. I left a comment on WND, which also uses DISQUS, to which someone replied. I was able to click on that person’s name and see a list of other mostly right-wing web sites where that person had posted like Glenn Beck, plus one other site: Mr. Stiff – Porn Search Engine. Social media is not to be taken lightly.

Here is an article about the HTML markup allowed with DISQUS.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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48 Responses to Comments: what just happened (canceled)

  1. DrConspiracy says:

    I’m thinking another 20 minutes or so to finish importing the comments.

  2. DrConspiracy says:

    About 10% of the comments have been imported so far.

  3. Testing the new system. . .

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  4. Dave B. says:

    This is me trying it out.

  5. DrConspiracy says:

    I see your avatar works.

  6. Hi Dave B!!!

    Hey, I am worried about Dr. C. There is a green box thingie by his name that says “MOD” which means “Missing or Dead.” What happened??? Did he get comment overload??? Or spam poisoning???

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  7. Northland10 says:

    Hmm.. I left a comment in the new system on another thread (HBTY…) and it appears to be missing. [Edit: never mind.. it appears to have returned].

    Squeeky.. MOD is another term for Moderator or, called in earlier times, in some places, the sysop (which really needs an evil music response).

  8. Yes, thank goodness. Avatars make it a lot easier to find yourself in big threads.

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  9. Rickey says:

    There is no quote function? If that is the case, it is a serious drawback.

  10. Rickey says:

    I’ve also noted that the page displays the most recent posts first, so to follow a discussion from the beginning you have to scroll down to the bottom and work your way back up.

  11. LW says:

    Testing… I’m taking the opportunity to switch from “justlw” to just “LW” .

  12. Northland10 says:

    On the Discussion menu above the comments, you can set the order differently.

  13. Rickey says:

    One more observation – the most recent posts are no longer appearing in the sidebar. That’s always been a useful tool for seeing which threads are currently active.

  14. Rickey says:

    Bingo! Thanks, I much prefer it with the oldest posts first.

  15. Rickey says:

    When I entered my e-mail address it automatically found my avatar, which I have used elsewhere.

  16. Rickey says:

    I like the fact that when you click on your own avatar you see a list of your own comments. That’s a very helpful feature.

  17. LW says:

    Pluses so far:

    * Threaded comments
    * What I assume are called “votes” — because, hey, validation
    * Avs

    Minuses:

    * No “most recent” in the side bars, as Rickey mentions
    * No auto quoting

    Can I format things?

    Are there smileys? 🙂 😆

    What does it mean to add a picture?

  18. LW says:

    Hmm, that might make up for the missing sidebar.

    Testing editing

  19. Northland10 says:

    LW:
    Are there smileys? 🙂 😆

    I will miss them if they are not possible, but I think we can vote on comments again.

  20. LW says:

    An understandable mistake. You’re thinking of “OPD”, which is an initialism meaning “Officially Pronounced Dead.” The British are given a patch with this on it to wear when they die.

  21. Dave B. says:

    Do they put it on before they die, or do they wait til after?

  22. Dave B. says:

    The nerve of you already, after we were all so worried about you…

  23. LW says:

    Hmm – did Doc just add this? The sidebar now has a box with posts/comments/tag cloud tabs.

  24. It changes every time I come back. I guess this is to keep everyone on their toes.

  25. justlw says:

    Ack! I’ve become Cathy!

  26. It is a tough decision whether to use comment threading or not. I like some threading but if you allow 3 deep threading or more comments can get really skinny and long.

  27. Arthur says:

    I much prefer the this (the old) format for comments.

  28. Majority Will says:

    Whew. Much better.

  29. Greenfinches says:

    what happened – the old method returns!

    Welcomed, as far as I am concerned and sorry if I come across as a stick in the mud

    blame the Olympics? And the shock, as one of ours beats Federer…..!

  30. justlw says:

    Dang it. Now if I want to share an image, I have to link to it rather than embedding it.

    Anyway, I think this may be a clever forgery, but I’m not entirely certain. I can’t see any layers.

  31. American Mzungu says:

    Doc, any chance you could get the “Obama invents the Telegraph” thread out of the DISQUS mode back into the “old” mode? I’d like to post an update without signing up for DISQUS.

  32. OK. DISQUS all gone. I did turn on Avatars in WordPress. If you want to customize your Avatar, go to gravatar.com.

  33. It should be all reverted to old mode now. I cleared the cache that caused some DISQUS to appear on some articles.

    American Mzungu: Doc, any chance you could get the “Obama invents the Telegraph” thread out of the DISQUS mode back into the “old” mode? I’d like to post an update without signing up for DISQUS.

  34. donna says:

    DOC: it’s not something that works for me here

    it didn’t work for me either and i’m not averse to change

    thanks doc

    wow – where did that avatar come from?

  35. Arthur says:

    Do people get to have an avatar now, or are those things just artifacts of DISQUS? What I mean is, do we get to upload an avatar. Mr. Green Triangle Mustache is nice, but I want to use this cool avatar I made at the South Park site!!!

  36. LW says:

    Testing new av… ack, I’m still Cathy. Does it take a while for the gravatar thing to kick in?

  37. CarlOrcas says:

    The new Avatars are interesting and, fwiw, it loads and runs a lot faster….especially when editing a previously edited comment.

  38. RuhRoh says:

    I would have been quite happy with DISQUS if it had worked. 🙁

  39. You can set an avatar at gravator.com, or one will be defaulted for you, and kept.

    Arthur:
    Do people get to have an avatar now, or are those things just artifacts of DISQUS? What I mean is, do we get to upload an avatar. Mr. Green Triangle Mustache is nice, but I want to use this cool avatar I made at the South Park site!!!

  40. I have seen comments to the effect that it can take a few hours. I don’t really know.

    LW: Testing new av… ack, I’m still Cathy. Does it take a while for the gravatar thing to kick in?

  41. LW says:

    Aha, I figured out what the problem was — it was my fault. I self-rated my av as “PG,” because of its mild violence.

    Apparently, you and John Woodman both run morally upstanding establishments.

    Once I changed its rating to G, my av started appearing on both of your sites.

  42. Keith says:

    I wonder if my Gravatar is working?

    Edit: seems to be!

  43. Ah right. There is an avatar rating setting in WordPress and mine is set to G. You never know what that guy who visits the Mr. Stiff Porn Surf Engine has for his avatar.

    LW: Apparently, you and John Woodman both run morally upstanding establishments.

    Once I changed its rating to G, my av started appearing on both of your sites.

  44. My iron lung is working again.

    Keith: Edit: seems to be!

  45. LW says:

    It’s just this chromium switch…

  46. Thomas Brown says:

    LW:
    It’s just this chromium switch…

    You people are so superstitious!

  47. LW says:

    Some scary shit be going on out there:

    How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking

    Very quick synopsis: guy (Gizmodo columnist!) gets all his online stuff hacked, hard. They intentionally bricked his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook in the process — as collateral damage…

    …because the only reason they targeted him was not because he was a tech columnist — they had no idea — but someone thought his three-letter Twitter account name was cool, and they wanted to post annoying crap from it. So they took everything else down to keep control of the Twitter account while they did it.

    I’m posting to this thread because as all the changes were going on here, the interconnectedness that things like Disqus and Gravatar necessarily facilitate was brought to the foreground for me. It’s what they do.

    And it makes a hacker’s job a lot easier.

    The bad guys were able to do a lot of what they do because so much of our information is public (scary example: if you’ve got a personalized domain, it’s instant access to your home address.), and it’s easy to figure out relationships from one site to the next.

    But the big hole is that there are so many millions of customers that large companies have to support, there has to be an easy way for them to grant access back to your account if you forget your password. And the information they ask from “you” to do that is scary easy to get.

    In the case this article describes, it turns out that Amazon makes a piece of your ID easy to obtain, which a hacker can then give to Apple to “prove” they’re you. And then the wild rumpus begins.

    This is really sobering stuff.

  48. LW says:

    Oops. For the comment in moderation, feel free to change the opening to “Some scary stuff” .

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