Click on your avatar to go to your Discus profile page (actually, anyone’s avatar and profile page will work). At the top right you’ll see your avatar and a drop-down arrow; mouseover to expose the Edit Profile link.

Second field in the pop-up, on the first Profile tab.

Several comments that disagreed with the author in the most respectful manner I’ve ever seen were removed. They did not violate any of the rules above or tried to tell the author what to do; in fact, the one comment that directly insulted a fellow commenter remains.

In the interest of getting along here, could you be so kind as to clarify what exactly was so offensive about them?

Thank you very much in advance.

However, following that sequence of events, the “In reply to …” text that should appear above my post is missing.

This is a possible problem or just my misunderstanding of the way things work, I don’t know which.  Most likely the latter.

I thought you might like to know. 

PS – Since this is only tangentially related to moderation policy and I don’t want to do any unintended threadjacking, please tell me if there’s a more appropriate place to post observations such as these.

1) do you really need a menu bar? no one, ever, will use that stuff.
2) the ad/highlight region to the right is WAY too big. Can’t you pick one thing to advertise/highlight and let us read the content with the rest of the screen?
3) the submitterator and comments are hidden. you guys MUST know that user submissions and comments are the stickiest things about the blog. the best stuff in your content is either previously viral or gets reposted to yahoo…get over yourselves and go back to emphasizing USER content.

Thanks for pretending to listen!

It took me a while to figure it out but, in retrospect, it’s obvious that the “If saying it to a
stranger in meatspace might earn you a black eye, please don’t say it in
your comment” portion of the commenting policy is the part that applies.  The person I was replying to was clearly on such a short fuse that any expression of disagreement with him, if it had happened in meatspace, might have earned me a black eye.  Thus, I shouldn’t have even made my initial post.

All in all, I think you did the best thing possible by killing commenting on that thread early, ahead of the usual cutoff. 

Again, thanks.

Is this new?  I haven’t posted much since the changes a few months ago; those changes made BB pretty much unusable to me from my work computer which is where I did most of my reading.  Recently I retired so I’m trying to get back into the BB habit again but if all comments are held for moderation, even when signed in, I’ll have to reconsider how much effort I’m willing to devote to trying to get my words to appear on the site.

And yes, I did read the comment policy page again before I posted this.  I apologize in advance if I’ve missed something obvious.

Added edit – OK, this is weird. My post to this page appeared instantly, with no “being held for moderation” popup. I must have done something wrong in the post that prompted my initial question. Too lengthy, perhaps? Can excessive length cause a post to be held for moderation?

That would be a great idea, except that it’s impossible (for me, on FF at least) to log in OR EVEN TO READ COMMENTS without disabling Ghostery web-blocking for Disqus. Just for boingboing … and then remembering to turn it back on again.

The new system may be easier for some, but it’s a bloody mess (WP -and- Disqus to deal with), and most days I just don’t bother to read the comments … which is a real PITA. It has pretty much spoiled BB for me (even putting aside the 13 different trackers on the site). Oh well … it was real while it lasted… for about a decade in my case.

The rule demands that the commenter supply “some evidence” to support a
“he had it coming to him” claim.  My only issue is that this rule
implies that the evidence contained in the original post does not
contain evidence to support a “he had it coming to him” conclusion and
that the commenter must supply extra-BB evidence to support a “HHICTH”
conclusion.

Two problems:

1) This is squelching honest debate on the role of police and the duty
of civilians in societies.   I assume we have all seen many many videos
where there was a honest disagreement about the amount of force used in
an arrest, etc.  Not being able to take one side for fear of censure or
banning is kind of draconian.

2) It implies that any post on BB about civil rights will always be of
the “this guy didn’t have it coming to him” kind and never of a “Here is
how NOT to interact with cops…boy this guy had it coming to him!”
kind.  Under you policy, even if BB posted an article the latter type,
we couldn’t discuss it at all unless we supplied “some evidence” of our
own.  Odd.

All of this is moot if we can, in fact, use evidence contained in the
original post under discussion.  But, if that were the case, then why
the policy in the first case?   It just smacks of “cops are always
wrong” attitude that is just not in line with the real world of honest
debate.

Perhaps you should clarify it?

I’d still love some way of tracking threads I’ve responded to, at least for the last 5 days. But OK, I guess you’ve gathered that and I’ll shut up saying it now :P

It’d also be nice to have a list of most-liked comments… but that might encourage me to make content-free cultural-reference comments instead of longer, more thoughtful ones. And anyway, it’s an unreliable metric, since not every comment gets the same number of readers. So OK, maybe not.

I’m guessing “soon” means weeks/months rather than hours/days (since you all have day jobs, I think!), so I’ll try to remember to just bookmark any thread I comment on, and check them weekly.

For all my distaste of Disqus, there *are* some good points to this update. Definite improvements from my point of view include:
 - comment editing;
 - image embedding (OK, arguably not a plus, in most cases, but really handy when used well);
 - remembering me for more than 24 hours.
 - (currently unrealised) potential for comment tree view.

Sure, these don’t even begin to outweigh the ghastliness of losing any kind of tracking of my comments and the responses. But they ARE cool, and I can see how this could work out well if the missing functionality is returned.

===

But then there’s their ToS, which is another kettle of fish entirely.

http://docs.disqus.com/help/29/ seems to be the closest I can find to a ToS, though whether it’s aimed at BB or the BB community, I’m not exactly sure, but since it doesn’t say, I’m guessing both:

By accessing the Disqus website (“Site”) or using the services offered
by Disqus (“Services”) you agree and acknowledge to be bound by these
Terms of Service (“Terms”).

Is commenting on a site that runs the system a “use”, or does “use” only cover running it on your site? That’s something for the lawyers, I think.

By posting content, you are granting permission to us and others to
access and use it in connection with the Services, the Site and
otherwise in connection with our business.

That seems to say: commenters (and original BB article posters?) grant Disqus an irrevocable license to use your comment/post in any way they see fit, including to promote things you might personally find objectionable, misrepresent your opinions, etc, so long as they can find a business reason for so doing. Not something I object to, as I consider my comments to be placed in the public domain. But I could see people who care about that kind of thing being a little upset.

Your use of a license in connection with your compilation does not
affect Disqus’s right to access and use it in connection with the
Services, the Site or otherwise in connection with our business.

If you release something (a “compilation”, which isn’t defined) under a specific license, then post that to a Disqus board, Disqus can still ignore that license, and share it with their customers under any license they like, or none, so long as they can find a business reason to do so.