Greasemonkey script to mute specific users in Boing Boing comment threads
Crash says:
I noticed that 90% of the noise on BoingBoing comment threads came from 3 of the users, so I wrote myself a little Greasemonkey script that makes specified users disappear from the website like they had never existed. Maybe I should have called it "Winston Smith."LinkUsers who install this script may configure it to ignore whomever they like, and enjoy a BoingBoing experience untroubled by differing points of view.
the latest
latest episodes
"enjoy a BoingBoing experience untroubled by differing points of view"
Seems like an oxymoron.
PS: Am I one of the three?
Do you work for Fox News?
booooo
much enjoyment comes from annoying the prudes
That's an interesting idea. Instead of skipping over a comment or getting angry, just forcibly ignoring. I can see that there might be a use for it, though like any tool, it's not for all jobs.
I choose not to censor myself or others. It seems rather un-BoingBoing to do so.
All one has to do is self-censor. After one learns that a particular person's comments seem uninteresting, one just skips over them. This seems, as #5 says, "rather un-Boing Boing...". God forbid we should invite people to question our ideas. Let's go Dogma hunting!
Santa: It's not censorship to limit what you read, any more than unfriending someone on LiveJournal is censorship. Killfiles have a long and glorious history on Usenet. I didn't like to use them, but sometimes, for certain individuals (and subject lines), it became clear that their "contributions" would never justify the time spent skimming their posts. Free speech and diversity of opinion are fabulous things, but sometimes you need a filter for the pure noise, for the people who aren't even trying to hold a real conversation.
That said, I'm not sure how useful the concept is on a moderated forum, like BoingBoing's. But if people want to use it, it's a fine tool to have.
I'm used to turning off people in my view of forums I frequent.
Don't see it as self-censoring. I just save myself a lot of irritation.
Seems very Boingboing to me: streamline the flow of information to GTD. Save yourself unnecessary headaches.
prfct fr ths tht fl th nd t dvwl thr psts.
Free speech be damned / banished. The new US motto..
Censoring is actually a pretty boing boing thing to do. The site is cool, and i comment almost daily without any issues. But I have been censored in heated arguments before. I had to accept i wasn't the decider even though I disagreed. but then I've also had inexplicable things censored. Or been told they weren't censored by one staff member and then later finding out they were.
Wish I had a script for my brain that would block out annoying conversations at restaurants.
@ #12
I need that for work. oh how lovely that would be.
This tool will actually be useful to users/browsers like me. I tend to avoid the comments areas of a number of sites because I don't have time to wade through a couple of users bickering back-and-forth/making noise to get to those comments I might find interesting or enlightening. I may buy the New York Times but it's not censorship for me to throughout the 1 or 2 sections which don't interest me. Isn't it totalitarian to force me to wade through streams of comments? Many times I've been lead to a great website from a link in someone's comment and i don't want to miss that opporunity and now I don't have to. THANK YOU FOR THIS SCRIPT!!
Myb ths thr srs r smrtr thn th rst nd hv lt f slf-cnfdnc...nd knw hw t cnstrct ntrstng sntncs.
Mrk, s yr scrpt s ssrng ll f s lss ntrstng xprnc hr n th BB cmmnt r. nd tht's nt gd.
I want a script for my brain where i just don't realize i'm at work till i leave.
First!
@#10: it's still free speech if nobody's listening
The Avoidance of disagreement is the highest good? That's a very narrow way of looking at things. Of course, some people offer nothing but noise and nonsense but even stopped clocks are right twice a day. Good moderation can keep things from getting off-topic or simply flaming out.
The tendency to insulate against the disagreeable is something I really don't like about online interaction. A free market of ideas (even terrible ones) does remarkable good.
Calling it Winston Smith would have been very appropriate. Down the memory hole!
#11 said, "...Or been told they weren't censored by one staff member and then later finding out they were."
Seriously? You've been censored on a site like this? I find that idea disturbing. I wish I had been able to block your post, thus avoiding this unpleasent experience I'm now having.
Geez, half the fun with reading posts is that some of them are provocative and maybe a tad "offensive." I'm not talking about crazy talk, just differing view points. What's next, filtering out everything with the "wrong" meme content?
Warren,
perhaps you don't understand: this script doesn't do anything for "all of us". It works only for those who install it.
And I don't think it's Mark's script - it's from the person called "Crash".
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath that dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished, he had won the victory over himself. He loved Boing Boing.
Generally speaking, I tend to put more value on differing points of view. If someone has a legitimate opinion different from mine, I learn something directly. And if I force myself to make a valid, reasonable argument against someone's differing opinion, I teach myself something. Either way, if I manage to remain calm and objective about the situation, I stand to gain.
Practically speaking, however, there are far too many worthless trolls whose arguments are no deeper than instant contradiction and perversity.
@#7Jere7my:
I stand by my statement.
"O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!"
What nice Boing Boing inspired prose. I loved it.
Santa@23: Okay...want to expand on that? As it stands, your statement, while quite possibly true, has little bearing on the discussion, because a content filter isn't a tool for censorship.
Do you read every comment on every BoingBoing post? If not, are you "censoring" the people whose posts you skip? Or are you making a reasoned guess that the posts you skip probably won't interest you?
Relax, folks. Killfiles have been around longer than HTML. Next you'll be telling me I'm censoring Proctor & Gamble by fast-forwarding past the commercials on my DVR....
@#25:
If you think that my post needs expanding, then you should probably add me to your Big Brother 3000 file.
Santa = ++ungood
I don't read enough comment threads on here to find this useful... but in general, my time on the net has learned me that there are certain individuals out there who aren't out there to spread their opinion and be valuable members of the internet society, but rather they prefer to stir shit up and be all-around cockfaces. I like being able to ignore those people when I need to, and pretend like they don't exist. It makes me feel better about the human condition. However, it's not always that useful, since these trolls inevitably garner responses, and then the responses are visible (and nonsensical, due to the original post being hidden). So it's an imperfect system.
I have trained myself to treat people as ignored without having to ignore them - initially I used whatever version of an ignore function was available on whatever discussion forum, but I found that putting the effort into activating an ignore function was more than it was worth; far better to focus on the positive people and recognise the trolls with a rueful smile.
A nice technique is to respond to them with "OH YEAH??? WELL WELCOME TO IGNORE. POPULATION: YOU!!!!!" or similar, and then never pay them the slightest attention again. They'll never seek a response from you either, and will assume that you've used the ignore function.
It's reverse social hacking. They're using techniques to make me draw further into their drama, I use a technique to make them exclude me from it.
I think this plugin should be called Rose-Colored Spectacles. Talk about covering the sky with your hand to pretend it's not there....
Guys, I think that last line is a little tounge-in-cheek. He's obviously very aware of the potential uses for this script and he's poking fun at everyone's (perhaps himself included) natural tendency to want the other side of the debate to just go right the fuck away.
Could you write one for YouTube that lets me ignore 99% of the comments, please? That would be super.
thnk th gnrl ss rnd sch tpcs s n f BngBng bng kpylft rdkl d00dz nd thn trnng rnd nd ctng lk lk sknhds wth shny nw bts whn nythng s sd tht cld pssbl chllng r trnsh thr cllctv Pns.
#27@RyanWaddell
cockfaces...
i'm still chortling.
@#30
YouTube comments are the absolute worst. Sometimes I think they must have a mainframe somewhere generating inane and nonsensical comments.
Cpt. Tim and Jeff -- I'll chime in and say that my comment--the one that said "I love BoingBoing, but I wish you'd stop this deletion and disemvowelling of comments"--was deleted. And then the comments that agreed with mine were deleted. (One that disagreed was left up.) And then my follow up asking why my comment was deleted was, you guessed it, deleted. And then I wasn't allowed to post on that thread any more.
Users are smart enough to skip comments they don't like. This script just gives users another tool (albeit a silly one) to control their own content, just reinforcing the idea: unless violations are egregious, we don't need them moderated. We are smart and scrolling is easy.
what does anyone care what someone else does in the privacy of their own home?
yup me too. in fact, this whole comment thread has been highly entertaining, shame I installed the filter and ignored all of you.
Diversity is an old old wooden ship....
/gets coat
This idea that intellectual honesty and freedom of speech demand that we read and absorb and refute every opposing viewpoint, no matter how puerile, insulting, or irrelevant, is very democratizing — very "internetty" — but ultimately, in a real world of finite free time, it's just not worth the payoff. Sometimes, you decide you just don't want to read what someone writes anymore, because you don't want to waste your time.
Oddly enough, the trolls and drive-by quippers fly into a tizzy whenever the concept of killfiles is floated, because they know they're not contributing anything of value to the conversation, and are desperately afraid that people will acquire the tools to ignore them. Trolls feed on attention; anything that comes between them and their captive audience is, obviously, a jackbooted Orwellian censorship tactic.
good bye Cpt. Tim!!!!!
see you never...
But i know we'll meet again some sunny day.
I have a low tech version of this. If somebody's comment upsets me, I turn off the computer and go have some pie.
And I'm with BShock. I'm much more interested in people who disagree with me.
WTF!!!!!!
oh, I need to restart the browser...
ok, over & out
...Gee, can you hardcode that so *your* posts are automatically blocked? We'd appreciate it a lot, Crash.
a) i like diversity a lot and i have no problem with the existence of a tool like this. seems like a kind of social reverse-rss: excludes only the information you're fairly sure, based on experience and author, you don't want.
(can't see myself using it though.)
b) personally i enjoy the sheer glorious stupidity of youtube comments. like this one i saved a while back:
"i think ur land got fuck by OTTOMAN EMPIRE too thats why r u sad this much:D idiot u dont know anything about history?? or facts??? u go back to ur pity life ur intelligent mind cant understand somethings:D little brain shut ur disgusting chin up WHO CARE WITH FUCKING EUROPE?:DDDDDDDD"
i mean, what the fuck? it's so stupid in so many ways as to transcend stupidity and enter the realm of art..
does it come with electrolytes?
Thank you for the marvelous gift, Crash! I won't use it myself, because I like the noise best of all, but I used to feel vaguely guilty at my own vapid, off-topic ramblings, but now I can post freely, knowing that anyone who reads them does so because they really really want to.
Now make it work for Metafilter.
Takuan, of course, its what plants crave.
Amen, CSBMonkey, and Fark!
Let's see... filtering out Cory, Mark F, Xeni... :)
Dustin (#34):
"YouTube comments are the absolute worst. Sometimes I think they must have a mainframe somewhere generating inane and nonsensical comments."
I really do hope they have that mainframe. Because otherwise, the world is far, far sadder than I would like. Reading YouTube comments is like having your brain pulled out through your peehole.
Grt d! Cn t b ppld t BngBng psts s wll?
Put me in the list of people that appreciate these kinds of tools. One of the great features of DOC BBS back in the day was the enemies list that would kill all posts by anyone on your enemies list. You could choose to have it notify you when those posts were killed too. (Not to mention that "ignore" is a mainstay in IRC.) I never viewed it as ignoring opposing opinions, only as filtering out the noise of trolls and people who ARE so strongly attached to a belief that anything and everything they say is wildly wrapped up in that belief to the point that it isn't worth reading. When you attached "That's not how Jesus would do it! / Jesus would approve of that!" to EVERY post you make and then proceed to explain why, then I'd rather skip it altogether. I'm going to anyway. I can't see how filtering it out is any worse than ignoring it altogether.
It's funny, too, that people do get so uptight about this form of self-directed censorship, but everyone does it anyway in one way or another. We may wander over to some blog or newspaper or video of an opposing view primarily to feel superior to the attitudes held there within, but most of us don't sit down every day and read things we disagree with. Most of us, mind you. Some people do because they like that sort of internal conflict or because it's part of their job. Overall, though, I am guessing the very few people here have a fat stack of bookmarks and RSS feeds of pundits daily espousing the opposite view of their own. We claim to like different point of views, but like everything else, we mean that we like different points of view within reasonable throwing distance of our OWN points of view. We practice this all of the time and never admit it, and now someone just comes out and says it and folks start reeling in their comfy chairs about what kind of bastard goes around not reading their posts about Ron Paul and Jesus and Huckabee and Obama and Clinton and how they will save the world after they are done stealing the election from their competition etc. ad infinitum.
Even stranger is the fact that this could have been kept completely under wraps for personal use only and no one would have known and no one would have cared. Now it's out there, and all the sudden people care? Why? Because you might get your LOLs and FIRST! posts blocked? What a tragedy. Because you might get your persistent never shutting up about Ron Paul posts ignored? More tragedy.
If you don't want to be filtered, try not to be noise.
Crash, I assume this means you're going to stop posting comments, and limit yourself to reading?
...
Some general remarks:
Killfiling was a necessary technology back on the internet, when there was no other way to deal with loud, persistent, or malign crazies. We're not on the internet. If there's someone who's so troublesome and disruptive that they drown out the conversation, it's my job to deal with them.
The only point of Crash's killfile script is to block out people whose opinions he finds uncongenial, in what is supposed to be a general conversation. If he's blocked one or more of the people who are part of a substantive discussion, he can't follow it or participate in it. What he can do is disrupt it. The same goes for anyone else using his script.
I don't know who Crash thinks are the "three commenters who produce 90% of the noise on Boing Boing." My chief suspects are people who post a lot, but also tend to be in the thick of things during substantive discussions.
Suppose someone else was the moderator, and I was a Boing Boing reader who used Crash's script. I can think of a number of users I'd probably have killfiled long ago, on some occasion when I'd been short-tempered and/or they'd been obnoxious. Thing is, every one of them has at later point been the brightest light in a thread, the commenter who makes the remark that sorts everything out. If I'd blocked them, I wouldn't have been able to see that, because I would already have decided that nothing they said would ever be significant.
I'm a little hazy on how to explain this next bit, and yet I feel strongly that it's true: in deciding that the people I'd killfiled were never going to say anything significant, I would have also made that same decision on behalf of the other people in the forum I talk to. Say I talk to Lulu. I like Lulu just fine. I'm a part of Lulu's conversations, and she's a part of mine. But if I've blocked someone out, I've implicitly refused to acknowledge or take notice of the parts of the conversation Lulu shares with the people on my killfile list. Insofar as she's talking to me, I've censored that portion of her conversation.
Have you ever tried to talk around someone who doesn't allow someone in your immediate social circle to be mentioned in his or her presence? It's a lot like that, only less honest.
That's why I disapprove of killfiles for anyone who's doing more than reading.
Back to the discussion proper.
...
Cpt. Tim (11), you got a full and truthful explanation at the time for why your remarks disappeared. If you want me to explain the whole thing to this thread, I will. In detail. If you don't want that to happen, stop pretending you were treated dishonestly. You weren't.
Warren Camishen (15), I ardently agree with that observation.
Jeff (20), Cpt. Tim wasn't. He posted something Xeni found repugnant, and she deleted it so fast I couldn't tell it had ever gone up. This generated some confusion for a few hours, after which it was cleared up and explained in full. Ever since then, Cpt. Tim has been trying to get mileage out of claiming he was deliberately lied to. He wasn't.
Maybe he means well. Maybe he just didn't understand the explanations.
Jere7my (38), of course it doesn't mean that. That's why I'm here.
Lamarlowe (46), don't count on it.
unused muscles atrophy. Depend on filtering tools too much and lose the ability to participate in the greater world.
"Look - I'm here for an argument!"
"Oh ... you want room 12-A, next door."
See? I just KNEW Monty Python was good for something after all .....
Depend on filtering tools too much and lose the ability to participate in the greater world.
Hm. The greater world, perhaps. The real world, not really. This isn't the real world. Think of all the things you've spent time on typing as responses over the years to something you didn't agree with. In your day-to-day life, do any of them matter? Is there really an impact on your life aside from you typing your own thoughts down to be briefly glanced over by other people and then either they are incensed with anger enough to respond or they will start drumming the drum of agreement as loudly as possible, like I have with this thread. (HEAR! HEAR! KILL SCRIPT FOR BOING BOING COMMENTS! ABOUT TIME! HOW ABOUT [insert site you visit/used to visit with high noise ratio from comment post] NEXT?!)
When I think back to all of my own wasted time spent on trying to say something meaningful or convincing in response to something or someone else on the internet, well, I am reminded of two great comics that commented on the nature of the internet: (1)John Grabiel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory from Penny Arcade and (2) The Diesel Sweeties strip with this quote: "I'm not gonna waste my time debating with you. Does this LOOK like the internet?"
If anything, the best you can hope for in spending time typing responses to anything online is to hone your own writing skills or your own line of thought about something. Unless someone basically comes out and makes you feel or look like an ass ("My mother was killed by a pack of feral cats! You bastard!") then the majority of us aren't going to remember much about anything we typed in response to some Internet Fuckwad's Shitcocking except what a Fuckwad that guy was with his Shitcocking.
Someone's right to say something does not interfere with my right to ignore it. It isn't censorship unless you're prevented from saying something. We don't have a name for "requiring someone to listen" (telescreening?) but whatever the name it is easily as offensive as "preventing someone from speaking." And I can't help feeling that people who call me exercising my right to ignore them "censorship" are engaged in telescreening.
That said, I agree with Teresa @54 that killfiling can lead to confusion, especially in an unthreaded discussion like this, although it rarely created confusion back in USENet days. On the other hand, any newsgroup that had low enough signal-to-noise to require killfiling was doomed anyway, and in healthy newgroups it was trivial to blip over the losers and sometimes entertaining to read them.
Furthermore, the extremely low volume of comments on BB, and the very light moderation, would seem to make a kill script unnecessary. A script that would kill stories, though, would be fun, as I'm really not all that interested in the "All Disney, All The Time" aspect of BoingBoing (sorry, Cory!)
the repugnant thing i posted, was xeni posted the burquinis, and i said "fuck that noise" i also said oppression shouldn't be made fashionable. thats how i felt. I wasn't yelling at xeni. I didn't care that SHE liked them. I just said my opinion. other people agreed with me, some didnt, and a lot of people viewing that were disturbed at how unnecessary the censorship was.
She disagreeed with me. deleted my comment, said the comment hadn't bene deleted. She replied to an email directly, saying that something else must have happened. later it came out that it had.
So yeah she disagreed with me because she happened to like the burquinis. This wasn't exactly a flame war.
"Cpt. Tim (11), you got a full and truthful explanation at the time for why your remarks disappeared. If you want me to explain the whole thing to this thread, I will. In detail. If you don't want that to happen, stop pretending you were treated dishonestly. You weren't."
Not really. You do explain. from time to time. Other times you ignore it when you're aware that you didn't really have a good reason other than selective moderation based on your personal whims.
"I don't care if you believe in god, just don't insist that i do too whenever i'm in a pinch." Got censored. I asked about that a few times.
You're very selective. There was a post about Penn Gillette that called him "anarcho-capitalist weenie." that's the kind of constructive comment that goes untouched. I call God an invisible policeman the previous day.. that gets disemboweled. This is ignoring the fact that boing boing has posted videos of Dawkins saying stuff far more critical of this stuff than i ever have. Boing Boing can support a position, its posters obviously can't
"Cpt. Tim (6), should I just give up all hope of getting you to understand that (1.) discussions of religion are relevant in some threads but not others; and (2.) it's less a matter of the subject you're discussing than it is of how well you're discussing it?"
Thats what i'm saying. Look at Gillette's method of discussing it on his rants. You'll see that the way he handled it was far less nice than the discussion in the EDGE question, where i said NOTHING critical about religion you got on my ass about it, and then when i called you out on it because the EDGE QUESTION SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED RELIGION you basically said "haha.. just kidding."
I don't post about religion in every thread. I post about it in the ones where the post is about it, or it HAS COME UP.
I'm sorry, i think you're a selective moderator that deals more with things that annoy you personally. Its surprising what you let slide as long as you agree with someone. We've got a good group of people here on boing boing. I don't see huge flame wars or the kind of stupidity you get in the youtubes comment section.
TNH@54 said, "That's why I'm here."
Yep — as I said @7, I don't think killfiles are all that useful in a moderated forum. But the hue and cry about censorship and Orwellian tactics sounds much the same to my ears, whether it arises over moderation or killfiles.
Oh, those annoying other points of view! Always getting in the way, making you actually use your brain to *THINK* and question what you already know!
*waits to be added to the blocked list*
the universe exists to confirm my prejudices
thght Crsh's scrpt ws bvsly tng-n-chk nd th whl thng ws ctlly jb t Bng Bng's plcy f mdrtng cmmnts. Th sttmnt bt bng ntrbld by dffrng pnts f vw jst strck m s bng clrly srcstc. H prbbly hd cmmnt f hs dltd rcntly nd wrt ths scrpt nd sbmttd t s lnk s sbtl pybck jb.
bringing back that golden oldie hit:
"pprssn cn nt b md fshnbl. ny cmpny tht ttmpts t d s s cptlzng n sd prssn."
"Oppression can not be made fashionable. Any company that attempts to do so is capitalizing on said oppression."
Really. thats my view on Fashionable items that women who have to cover their faces can by. Is it the right view? I think so. but maybe its not.
Is it horrible trolling? Not in the effing slightest.
I, for one, welcome our new Moderator Overlords
perhaps when we get a script that will block all but our own comments, we will finally be happy.
The thing about the disemvowelled comments is that I have to spend 3 times as long reading and deciphering them.
On the other hand, I'm really gonna kick ass on Wheel of Fortune, now.
TNH has referred to her policy for choosing what gets deleted or altered as "not rocket science." In fact, it doesn't seem to be a science at all.
But TNH, I do agree that a killfile is an incredibly un-nuanced way to go about filtering what you read. It takes a sledgehammer to a delicate problem.
i submit the original "holy shit we're being moderated lied to about it, having it conceded, when the discussion happening was doing just fine without moderation." here in its entirety.
complete with me brain farting and calling this engadget, and accidently posting something to that item instead of this one.
It makes for really good reading. considering we stayed mostly on topic despite having our posts deleted and cut up.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/20/burqinis-and-the-new.html
T Jr7my @38, 'd trn tht sttmnt n t's hd: Wht's dd s hw qckly sm ppl trn t th lbl f "trll" jst bcs smn dsgrd wth thm. n my xprnc, "trll" s sd s cnvnnt xcs t vd dbt mrs thn s n ccrt lbl.
ctlly tk th ppst vw nywy: trlls nly hlp m gt my thghts rnd t by gvng m n xcs t rthnk thm nd rphrs thm. Mny tm hv rspndd t trll wth wll thght t rply tht gt vn mr kds frm th rst f th frm thn my rgnl pst dd.
Thr wll lwys b trlls n sm brdgs; th trck sn't gttng rd f thm, th trck s fgrng t hw t mk thm nwttngly wrk fr y.
noticing the noise of others indicates we haven't really got control of our own noise.
Dear CSBMonkey-san:
On occasion, I have changed someone else's mind. It is rare, but real. Perhaps only a little bit and for a short time, but still as real as my own mind.
I have mixed feelings when this does happen; happiness at "convincing" someone, sorrow that it feeds my ego.
CBSmonkey (57), do you never learn anything new in arguments, even from yourself? That's why I don't like arguments I win hands-down: I don't come out of them knowing anything I didn't know going in.
Tom (58), your right to ignore something doesn't amount to censoring it. I object to mechanisms for systematically ignoring a subject or person in advance, if the one using that mechanism is a participant in a general conversation.
Cpt. Tim (59), you're not doing yourself any favors here.
Look: you got moderated, it came as a surprise to you, and you've been ticked about it ever since. That's not my fault; it's just my job. You, god help me, are my responsibility.
The other thing that's going on is that you have a lousy ear for tone and you don't know it. This is guaranteed to leave you feeling that rules are being applied in inexplicable fashions.
On that issue, I'm completely unable to help you. Ask anyone who's taught writing: if someone has any sense of tone, they can get better at it; but if they have none, you can't even get them to believe tone exists.
Jere7my (60), if you know that killfiles are unnecessary in moderated forums, you don't need to wade through the rest of it.
Joellevand (61), look at all the people here. They haven't been banned. Do you seriously think I'm going to ban you?
Whiterwitch (63), I see you're upset about my reply to your bizarre theories about Iran.
Cpt. Tim (64), you're grossly misrepresenting the argument and why you had some of your remarks deleted. I'm still going on the assumption that you mean well, but can't sort out what happened.
You guys are taking this Internet thing waaay too seriously if you can be angered by a post in the comments of a blog.
Sorry teresa, i don't need any favors from you. or was that some kind of threat of future moderation or banning?
reading through that all star post i found your conclusion that i missed.
"I know this is a cliche, but I've come to the conclusion that you like to bully and harass women."
The hilarity of that statement. Now i know you're a kidder. You big kidder you.
but i think you have, and i have, both had our say.
I'll go back to being a bright and shining star of awesomeness in non-religion related discussions.
In fact, Tim, that's what you were doing. It's why Xeni deleted your post so quickly.
Ron Paul!
no. i actually just thought that the outfits themselves were oppression.
I promise i didn't push anyone. My initial comment were along the same lines as the rest of the thread (why wouldn't they be.) if xeni said they had awful awful things it, then she is being just as inaccurate as she is plainly being in the rest of that thread when she claims no change was made.
STF VRYBDY!!! (srry, bt ll th nnty prsnt dsrvs n llcps rspns...)
This Greasemonkey script is NOT censorship. If someone decides that 3 highly dominating voices annoy him/her and doesn't want to even bother glancing over them, then isn't that his/her right do so if they can?
Sometimes, I'm not in the mood for debate. And so during those times I don't go on pages where I know that fundies, trolls, and republicans frequent the comments. Cuz all that's gonna do is annoy me. And sometimes I'm not in the mood to be annoyed.
And even if some fundie decides to block out every single reasonable person who tests their faith, that's their decision to facilitate denial, nt YRS, Y STPD CNCLSN-JMPNG SLF-RGHTS SHP!!!
A fairly crummy script.
If I had written it I would say that if the nodeValue, say v, found with
//div[@class='comment-header']/a[1]/text()
is in
idiots = {'troll': true, 'spaz bot': true}
ie. (idiots[v] == true)
Then the "comment-context"
//div[@class='comment-content']
should be hidden, and an eventListener attached to the comment-id (e.g. "#15")
//span[@class='comment-id']/text()
that toggles display of the hidden comment on and off when clicked.
I guess this would take about one dozen lines of code and be much more intelligible and functional.
And it wouldn't be facist. The comment would be there and you could click to see it if you really want.
Adding functionality to the script to allow it to have Trolls added, deleted, and remembered would probably take another 20 lines.
"This Greasemonkey script is NOT censorship. "
i agree.
@Xiguli
"But TNH, I do agree that a killfile is an incredibly un-nuanced way to go about filtering what you read. It takes a sledgehammer to a delicate problem."
???
A delicate problem? What's so delicate about the issue of "I'm tired and sick of your BS, I wish there was a way for you to not talk to me"?
It's like a pissing contest where only one person is pissing. And his bladder never gets empty.
It's like a pissing contest where only one person is pissing. And his bladder never gets empty.
Note to self: Don't accidentally refresh the "Your Comment Has Been Submitted" page or your comment shows up twice.
Teresa, if my comments so irritate you that you wish I would never come here and post them again, please, please tell me so directly and of course I will respect your wishes. I like you. I respect you. My goal here is not to aggravate you.
My line about "differing points of view" is tongue-in-cheek, as A New Challenger (#31) articulates so much better than I could myself. I come to BoingBoing in order to hear differing points of view; my primary reason for reading here is to see insightful and thoughtful exploration of points that I may oppose very substantively. I disagree with Cory on a lot of things, but he is a talented writer and makes his points very well which makes him even more worth reading than people I agree with.
When I wrote the script I only had trolls in mind, people -- one person, really -- who comment very profusely only to provoke and annoy and obviously without any consistent point of view beyond that. That's not discussion, it's just noise. I'm a big fan of the "MUTE" button on XBox Live too: my life is just easier if people aren't yelling abuse in my ear trying to get a rise out of me, and I don't want to have to quit reading BB altogether to avoid it.
But, I have no illusions about how others may choose to use this tool, so I put in what I thought was a humorous reminder to its user (and to myself) to ask herself whether she was muting someone because they were truly spamming the threads, or simply because she disagreed with him. I hoped that this crowd would pick up on the irony, and for the most part it seems to have!
Look, this is just an automatic way of scrolling past names you think never say anything of interest. It isn't blocking the editors, which I always thought was a little mean-spirited. If someone muted says something that really draws discussion, you'll notice the responses to that person and the noncontinuous comment numbers, and you'll turn the script off and reload the page and see what they had to say. If it was something interesting, I hope you'll take them out of your filter list.
Incongruously, after I wrote this script, I ended up not using it myself. Just writing and posting the thing made me feel like I'd taken back some degree of control over my blood pressure, and that was therapy enough.
Well, Themelonbread, exactly what TNH was talking about--that if you make the comments of one person invisible to yourself, you might miss out on or make unintelligible the conversation of someone you respect.
I've no interest in it myself, being perfectly capable of scrolling past posts I'm not interested in. I'd rather know what people are saying, even if I don't like it. But I do like Monkeyboy's improvements in concept.
Oh, I forgot my individual responses!
First, thank you to everyone who likes this little tool, or felt strongly enough about it to talk about it.
Whiterwitch (#63), I'm not that vindictive. #31 was closer to the truth of it.
Monkeyboy, that is a very good idea. It sounds like you know Javascript much better than I do. Would you like to post your own version of the script? Or, if you send me your improvements, I will gladly update the original.
why does Steve Martin's "I'm wearing a condom right now" come to mind?
Trs, wht y thnk bt my cmmnts n rn s nt mprtnt t m. Wht y d wth yr mdrtr pwrs n wbst tht's lrgly ddctd t prvcy nd fr spch sss s smthng m fr mr ntrstd n hrng bt. f y wld lk t dscss tht, thnk ths sms lk gd tm. Dn't y?
Melonbread, I already wrote a long comment explaining my thoughts on the matter. I didn't say killfiles were censorship per se. If you want to see what I did say, it's still up there.
Crash, you've also a tad confused about what I actually said, though you come a lot closer to the mark than Melonbread.
When one builds a tool and makes it generally available, the users will determine what's done with it. The results will stem from what you build, not what you intend.
I wouldn't have thought Boing Boing's threads were so long that anyone needed help scrolling down them. I know they don't last long enough for most readers to notice an anomaly in a developing conversation, and infer the existence of an important unseen comment.
Whiterwitch (89), if my comments about your beliefs concerning Iran didn't matter to you, you wouldn't be nearly as irritated as you are.
You want to talk about freedom of speech? Fine. Here's Free Speech 101: Freedom of speech means I don't have the right to tell you what you can and can't put on your own website. Mark, Xeni, Cory, David, and Joel don't have the right to tell you that either.
Do you follow me so far?
Freedom of speech also means that you don't have the right to dictate to Mark, Xeni, Cory, David, or Joel what they do or don't have on their website.
I'm here acting on their behalf. I'm their employee. They know what I'm doing. They want me to be doing it.
Any questions?
Teresa, my problem wasn't that it takes too long to scroll down comments. It's that "antisocial actors, 'drive-by trolls,' people for whom dialogue isn't the point" are all too successful in stealing my attention. As much as I wish I could just shrug off such trolls, some of them get so under my skin that they derail my whole day. This way I can enjoy the many thoughtful people in the comment threads without the psychic assault of one or two puerile individuals. I thought others might enjoy that ability as well. Freedom of speech should also come with freedom of listen.
I know there is a potential for abuse, with this as there is with BitTorrent and many other fine technologies, and I tried to allude to it in a wry way. I also didn't publicize it at all other than by submitting it to the editors, thinking that you guys would be better able to decide whether this should "go wide" or not.
If you like, I will take the script down if you so request. I will also stop posting if you ask me to -- you were ambiguous with what I was "closer to the mark" on.
"too successful in stealing my attention"
and that is the nub of it
Can we start burning books yet?
Killfiles were good.
Threaded newsreaders were very good.
Just think of it as virtual reality with subtraction rather than addition, for use when the few people who actually know something and are helping you are all you want to focus on.
Vonnegut reminds us the Tralfamadorians communicated by tap dancing and farting. So do web advertisers.
Does this explain something?
That was some mighty spirited stumping on freedom of speech, but it's beside the point.
The people who comment here are your readership. Comments are a way your readership can communicate with you. It's ridiculous to resent communication from the people that consume your product and support your advertisers, even when that communication consists of critique. Even when it consists of immaturity.
Yes, yes, the editors have every right to control content. They have a right to ignore their readership. I will not be writing to my congresswoman to demand a government response.
But the editors have set this place up as one that welcomes a diversity of ideas, that abhors organizational dishonesty, etc. etc., so why are you so surprised that people question acts of censorship by good ol' activist BB? (In a similar vein, why are you surprised when people want to talk about suicide in a topic about a guy who killed himself? Why did you think a post about vegan survival kits wouldn't spark a volley of comments on vegetarianism? Why does the natural flow of online conversation so annoy you?)
The only comments I would love to put on ignore would be TNH's arrogant remarks as a so-called moderator. Her pontifications and justifications add nothing to the discussion, and I can't skim past them fast enough.
I adore absolutely everything about BoingBoing except for Teresa Nielsen Hayden as moderator.
ya know, if you guys really think Teresa is heavy handed and inconsistent in the moderating, you really need to get out more.
The only way to do it is to be equally unfair to everyone. Since damn near everyone here seems to bitch sooner or later, I guess she is doing her job.
I mean my first remark, try some other discussion boards and honestly compare.
Takuan@98:
Better yet, try to hold an intelligent conversation about a popular YouTube video in the comments. That's a great illustration of what it's like to communicate in a fully unfettered medium — and of the paradox that freedom to say whatever you want sometimes diminishes the ability to communicate.
Kerist, people, get over yourselves. I modestly believe myself to be in the upper echelon of comment content, and I don't believe to date I've been disemvoweled or censored. It's a little trick called "having something relevant to say and knowing when and how to say it." Try a little self-censorship before you bellyache about anyone else doing it. I'm sure you're all precious snowflakes who need to be allowed to express yourselves in the moment and without reservation to truly indulge your muses, but it's pretty obvious you're just parasitically using the high profile of BB as the most visible venue from which to spew your bile. Your senses of entitlement are astonishing; you may be writing from the comfort of your parents' basement but you are in public, children, so put it back in your pants. Go work out your mommy and daddy issues elsewhere.
@ #97 Nepenthe: For someone who supposedly loves everything about BB that your one and only comment to date is to be an utter twat to one of its key players puts lie to your word.
quoting Teresa:
Killfiling was a necessary technology back on the internet, when there was no other way to deal with loud, persistent, or malign crazies. We're not on the internet. If there's someone who's so troublesome and disruptive that they drown out the conversation, it's my job to deal with them.
The only point of Crash's killfile script is to block out people whose opinions he finds uncongenial, in what is supposed to be a general conversation. If he's blocked one or more of the people who are part of a substantive discussion, he can't follow it or participate in it. What he can do is disrupt it. The same goes for anyone else using his script.
Teresa, I am grateful for your services, if for no other reason than that your presence and activities make the Boing Boing contributors willing to enable comments, which I consider a good thing overall.
That said, there's a technical distinction in spam filtering that may be of terminological use here: "spam" is mail that essentially no one wants, and "graymail" is mail (sent to many recipients) for which there is no strong consensus among recipients: some want it, some don't.
These two problems require different solutions. A very crude analogy would suggest that you're the "spam" filter, and Crash's script empowers individuals to filter out "graymail".
There are often multiple threads of discussion in response to any given post. In such cases I could often nuke an entire (tangential) thread and not miss anything of interest to me. (It would be nice if the discussions actually _were_ threaded...but that's another topic.)
Even when there's only a single thread, however, I can think of individuals whose posts don't add anything to the discussion, in my opinion. Yes, there are cases in which removing posts makes it hard to comment coherently in response...but, with all due respect, the worst cases of this are ones in which you deleted the post in question. (Granted, Crash's script wasn't available back then, so you were the only one that could make a post disappear. Nevertheless.)
You seem to suggest (in the same post which I quoted above) that there's something fundamentally wrong with filtering the information to which we expose ourselves. To me it seems clear that we _must_ filter all the time, because we can't possibly read everything everywhere...so the only real question is how we decide what we want to see.
I may not bother to use Crash's script (partially because I usually read BB on Safari) but honestly I don't see that your work makes it unnecessary. In fact, it seems clear that your work gives Crash's a reason for being--in a good way.
the funny thing is, the commentors we most want to block are using this thread to demonstrate exactly why we want to do that. now, if only i were using Firefox instead of Safari...
Kerist, people, get over yourselves. I modestly believe myself to be in the upper echelon of comment content, and I don't believe to date I've been disemvoweled or censored. It's a little trick called "having something relevant to say and knowing when and how to say it." Try a little self-censorship before you bellyache about anyone else doing it. I'm sure you're all precious snowflakes who need to be allowed to express yourselves in the moment and without reservation to truly indulge your muses, but it's pretty obvious you're just parasitically using the high profile of BB as the most visible venue from which to spew your bile. Your senses of entitlement are astonishing; you may be writing from the comfort of your parents' basement but you are in public, children, so put it back in your pants. Go work out your mommy and daddy issues elsewhere.
lmao way to go king internet
Disclaimer: This is not a worthwhile comment in regards to expanding your mind, simply a quip by the author to finish off reading this thread.
But, filtering in an on/off mode is pretty crude. Why not treat comments just like any other piece of content on the web and tag the authors with whatever categories you'd like to group them in.
Sometimes you might want your favourites in social rants highlighted, other times it's more scientific and to the point, where you have tagged other individuals to be more prominent.
Or it's left as it is and I go for a swim...
I've been reading and posting for a few weeks now, and have a feel for the politics here. I tend to think that Good managers manage. BUT, I do think some of the censoring has been heavy handed in some cases and driven by personality differences more than actual content. We just need to play nice and ask questions when we aren't sure why someone posted what they did. For instance, perhaps Cap Tim could have commented without using a few choice naughty words. As moderator I might has said, "Tim, I think you're expressing yourself well, but could you do so with more polite language? Thanks." A little freindly talk can go a long way.
Jeff
Wll, Trs, th rl qstn s why y cnsstntly try t ntgnz thr pstrs. hd t g lk p th rn dscssn t fgr t wht n th wrld y wr tlkng bt. h, s nw tht y clld m "ntcs" n tht thrd jst bcs y ddn't gr wth my rsnng. Clssy.
Pls gv yrslf yr wn brk frm pstng nd cm bck whn y'r wllng t hv dscssn wtht sng msdrctn nd nmcllng. f y stll hv dbt, jst xmn th cntnts f ths thrd nd thnk hrd bt why t hs 105+ psts nd why t's jst bg dl mngst th BB cmmntrs.
#96 "Comments are a way your readership can communicate with you."
[snort] Then you email the folks running Boing Boing. Seems to me that you're wanting to communicate with Boing Boing's readership.
Coca-Cola probably wants to communicate with Boing Boing's readership too, and use Boing Boing to do it........that doesn't mean they're allowed to.
Crash - if you send me an email address maybe I'll work on a better version and send it to you. I'm GibbonJabber SNAIL yahoo PERIOD commercial.
really don't know how many people would use such a script. Maybe if I put in some other blog reading features I have lying around it might become popular.
I think there is a concensus forming with regard to someone's behavior. I'm not going to name names, but I would like to say that this person's behavior has been unfriendly. I know when I've been picked on. I know what a verbal put-down looks like. And I can see it when it happens to other people. Really, I think this place is great, I really like it. I'm here for Cory, and all the rest just makes it the best. BUT, there has been A trouble maker, and YOU know who you are. Calm down already. Make love NOT war.
Can anyone see this?
I can't.
A lot of comments on BB are mean-spirited, there's way too much testosterone and one person has been making the same tedious complaint since Rome expelled the Tarquins, but it's still the best place on the web for lively discussions. The comment areas on most websites with political content are just torrents of unintelligible bile. Teresa keeps it civil and on subject. If she has to duct tape somebody's mouth occasionally to keep them from yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater, I can live with it.
re: #91, Zuzu ....
"African or European swallow?"
re: #110, GaryB50
"Nope, no one can see you, so logically, you do not exist."
everyone else:
Good grief! Lighten up! It's starting to sound more like a semantics convention in here, instead of a themed discussion about the original post .... ("People who use semi-colons on the left side, please ... people more in tune with commas to the right. People who hyphenate - they have a place for you in the hallway.")
IMHO:
"Talk good. Censor bad."
"We'll get along just fine, once you realize I'm God."
(LOL - in case you think I was being serious)
I'm with stupid ^^^^^^^
first sense in a while.
Th fct tht ths thrd s gttng mr cmmnts thn 90% f th psts n BB cnfrms tht my sspcn tht BB s tslf 10% cntnt 90% wnkfst.
Adamda said, "..my suspicion that BB is itself 10% content 90% wankfest."
That's a man's life for you!
glad to see Sturgeons Law upheld
Glad that you read through 114 posts to come up with that tremendous insight Adamda (unless, of course, you were using the Script).
Jeff (105), I had no idea that you'd gone back over the entire history of my interactions with Cpt. Tim, and determined that nothing like that has been tried.
Jeff (109), why didn't you drop me a note? It's one of the things I'm here for.
I'm afraid Adamdma and WhiterWitch have fallen foul of my magic ability to View All By and View IP Address(es).
WhiterWitch has seriously fallen foul of my ability to view IP addresses, and of the rule that says that if your posting privileges have been suspended, and you come back with a sockpuppet, any messages your sockpuppet posts during your suspension will be deleted. (Also, the clock on your suspension is only running when you're sockpuppet-free.)
I may disemvowel the affected comments rather than unpublishing them. The sockpuppets were in the thick of several discussions, and I don't want to falsify the record.
"enjoy a BoingBoing experience untroubled by differing points of view."
Isn't that the ideal? Isn't that why people come here? People who, ironically, consider themselves the preeminent freethinkers of the Internets (and world)?
I won't use the Greasemonkey script because I've tried similar tools (like ignore lists in chat rooms) and they never worked, at least not to my satisfaction. They fail because very often people who you don't want to add to your shitlist will somehow react or refer to a hidden comment, so either you're halfway through their contribution when you realise that you're just wasting your time because you can't make any sense of it, or you do want to make sense of it and have to go back and disinter and read the censored comment after all.
Moderator Teresa has similar problems:
I commend your ambition for preserving the record, and I also fully agree with the sock puppet rule, and am glad that you're making an effort to enforce it. However, the disemvoweling is completely inappropriate. Disemvoweling is an adequate tool for calming down flame wars between a small group of people having a frenetic back-and-forth argument. You greatly slow down the speed with which they can read the comment, and thus delay their reply, which gives everyone an opportunity to think some more before posting, instead of instantly posting a compulsive reply. This discussion does fall into that category. There are many more readers than commenters. Thus, your disemvoweling is mainly harming innocent bystanders. If I may express my frustration with the practice in such an inappropriate context: This fucking sucks. Usually I would have skimmed across Adamdma's comment and forgotten all about it quickly, but I was forced to read it deliberately and I ended up paying more attention than I should have.
Maybe you can convince the tech guys to implement a better solution? E.g. hiding the comment and only showing it to people who insist on reading it? Or maybe continue to use the disemvowelling technique, but wrap those comments in a div tag with class "ungoodthink", so we can use a Greasemonkey script to remove them completely? ;-)
Teresa said, "Jeff (105), I had no idea that you'd gone back over the entire history of my interactions with Cpt. Tim, and determined that nothing like that has been tried."
That's because you didn't ask me what I'd done, and I had no reason to give all the slow details. I moderate all the time, in the real world, face to face with people. And for the most part I think 95% of problems can be nipped in the bud if you just talk nice to people. Maybe your style is more confrontational than most. Maybe it works best for you. Does it?
Knowing history is obviously useful, but if the history is being filtered by censoring, it's not so great. How is any record of interaction going to be clear with the moderator "cleaning" things up from time to time? It's like the White House's house cleaning: "Opps, sorry about all those emails that we just dumped." Or the CIA's missing records...Or....it's like the newest dictator coming in and having elements of photos removed, so as to make history conform to their current version/opinion of reality. Or just killing someone's ability to post. I'm not in favor of flaming lunatics, but I think you can do better. Can't we all? And the answer to that is YES.