BB gets Wordpress, Disqus, new machines

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Working on the too-pale text in these comments right now, mutants!

http://twitter.com/Cowicide Cowicide

The grey is too light and confusing. Add a little Boing Boing red flavor and much easier on the eyes.
Also.. Digg added.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49403380@N00/5970546257/lightbox/
- http://twitter.com/Cowicide Cowicide
  
  Oh man, it not only shows my one picture twice, it grabbed naked photos I took of Newt Gingrich right off my encrypted drive.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Damn. I hope that my goatse photos of Ricky Gervais are safe.

http://twitter.com/tkaraszewski Tyler Karaszewski

I have a question about posting comments by logging in with twitter/facebook/etc:

Where do the comments live?

If Twitter (or Disqus) closes down tomorrow will boing boing still have all the comments that I posted to it? Will they still look like they came from me?

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

You can log in with your old BoingBoing account, which lives on as a separate, unique account. You can also log in with a general disqus account. I think you can also merge the two accounts, if you like (I think!) or keep them separate if you don’t want your BB identity to intermingle with those elsewhere.

We’re able to back-sync Disqus into our own records, so if Disqus ever goes to startup heaven we’ll be able to rescue everything.
- mfrankly
  
  I wonder how that’s gonna work. I have a Disqus account for my Tumblr blog, if I go from there to BoingBoing will I still be logged in to Disqus under my Tumblr account, will I think make many unintentional comments with my Tumblr identity?
  
  (WIll I even notice the button down there that says post as :)
  
  I much prefer to have separate sandboxed accounts out here.
  - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
    
    Your old bb account is unique in Disqus unless you merge it explicitly by choice, I think, with any Disqus account you already have.
- http://domramsey.com/ Dom
  
  But Disqus are still able to track anyone and everyone who reads BB, regardless of how you sign in, right?
  - http://djfoheso.myopenid.com/ oheso
    
    Yes, everyone who signs in, that is.
    - http://domramsey.com/ Dom
      
      You don’t need to be signed in. Disqus sets a cookie for everyone, signed in or not, which can track you across any site that also uses Disqus.
  - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
    
    If you dont sign in, no more so than advertisers or google, social network sharing buttons and so on. If you do sign in, Disqus could track you; however, nothing about BBs comments have ever been private. It’s easy to scape your username and comment history here. So unless Disqus is doing stuff that’s very evil, the big change we’ve initiated here is that it has your email address, too (and anything else you choose to tell it)
    
    We trust it, obviously. If you don’t trust us (or them), sign up with proxied, anonymozed credentials!
    - travtastic
      
      It wouldn’t be a bad idea to shoot up a quick entry some time on how to do that. A lot of people probably aren’t even familiar with the concept.
    - petsounds
      
      Wait, are you saying that even with BB accounts, you’ve preemptively given them all of our e-mail addresses? Or only with Disqus/unified accounts?
    - mfrankly
      
      That’s what scaring me the most. BoingBoing was the only site I used my real email address on because I trusted them. I have a Disqus account under a junk email because I don’t know, understand, or trust them. Now they ended up with it anyway.
      
      I’m kinda peeved at that.
    - petsounds
      
      Yeah, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt right now until they reply, but that would seem to violate their privacy policy (which I had to grab from archive.org) which says they don’t give out personally identifiable info to third parties (and I see e-mail as personally identifiable)
      
      “Personally identifiable information:
      
      We do not share personally identifiable information with third parties,
      with one limited exception: we may disclose personally identifiable
      information about you if we have a good faith belief that doing so is
      required by law, such as pursuant to a subpoena or other judicial or
      administrative order.”
    - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
      
      Disqus has a copy of our user database, but solely as a technical thing to allow our old users to create accounts via a password reset. They may not even know the emails or if it’s just comments and usernames, as it’s wordpress that initiates the reset. But I believe they do. It isn’t personally identifying unless you’ve already identified yourself to disqus under that email already.
      
      Movable Type / 6apart also had also access to our database now and again for similar technical reasons (crash recovery and the like)
    - petsounds
      
      E-mail addresses are personally identifiable in that they are trackable back to an average user. Yes, there are ways to mitigate this, but privacy policies are instituted for a wide swath of users, not for paranoid geek types. This is much different than a random username. If you don’t believe your privacy policy covered e-mail addresses being sent to third parties, then what “personally identifiable” information does it cover?
      
      To say that BB trusts Disqus is not really the issue. It’s about the trust your users placed in BoingBoing. There’s a big difference between Movable Type having a copy of the DB for technical purposes, and Disqus having our e-mails. Movable Type is in the business of creating tools for sites, and creating trust in those tools and the company. They’ve been around for a long time. Disqus is in the business of…well, who knows? And who knows what they’ll be in the business of when Google, FB, et al buy them out and appropriate all of their data?
      
      Considering the number of times BB has been at the vanguard of privacy and corporate digital malfeasance, I’m really surprised by the nonchalant attitude of the privacy of all of your users being violated with a shrug of your collective shoulders.
    - Xof
      
      Movable Type is in the business of creating tools for sites, and creating trust in those tools and the company. They’ve been around for a long time. Disqus is in the business of…
      
      Making tools for sites. I really have no idea why Disqus should be considered more or less trustworthy than MT.
    - petsounds
      
      More trustworthy? Perhaps not. But Movable Type is much less likely to be bought out by Google or Facebook than Disqus is. Disqus is social media in the form of blog posts, and a form of social media that Google and Facebook don’t really have their hands in yet, aside from Like buttons. I expect Disqus to get bought by one of those companies within a year or two. So the worry is not necessarily Disqus (though who knows?), but who our data becomes owned by later on.
      
      But that discussion is really an aside to the point that BoingBoing apparently gave Disqus all of our e-mails, thus violating their privacy policy. And they did this without even giving us a chance to opt out. Would love to hear Cory respond to this, but I imagine they’ll hope people will forget about it. The damage is already done though, both in terms of actual damage (giving our e-mail addresses to a third party), and damage in terms of the trust relationship.
    - http://disqus.com/ Daniel Ha
      
      Hi @boingboing-db1b407c1514de705a12a3d578503d44:disqus , I’m one of the founders of Disqus and, perhaps more importantly, a reader of boing boing from 04/05. I can also see where your worries stem from.
      
      Yeah, Disqus is a third party. But above all else, we’re providing a software solution that this website is using. Just like MT, we are in the business of creating trust through our tools — trust for the websites and for its users. If users don’t trust using Disqus, the websites won’t want to use it.
      
      We place a high bar for privacy concerns (we don’t use your emails for anything but to provide this service) and our software is used on sites from boingboing to CNN to Al Jazeera to President Obama’s campaign website. It’s good to be concerned about privacy on the web; that’s why we’re happy to be very strict about our privacy policy.
      
      I can even go into more detail about anything you want to hone in on. Building Disqus on the web requires a lot of trust from all participants, so we’ll continue to learn about what is unclear to people and what we need to improve over time.
    - http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/0.1/ Paul Laroquod
      
      Thanks, Daniel. I personally don’t have a problem with Disqus, privacy-wise. But I do however have a problem with one site saying, ‘We don’t give out information you tell us privately. We take your privacy seriously.’ And then they give everybody’s email to a third-party site, which then also says, ‘Don’t worry about that first site giving us your private email address. We too take your privacy seriously.’ Not your fault Daniel, but it’s a bit farcical. I’m surprised more Boingers aren’t pissed about this aspect of the changeover.
    - petsounds
      
      hi Daniel,
      
      I appreciate you taking the time to respond to this issue. The most unfortunate issue doesn’t have much to do with Disqus per se, but BB’s violation of the privacy policy and their complete lack of forewarning of this action. I see the point you’re trying to make: that if I wasn’t incensed that MT was given a copy of the DB, why should I make a fuss about Disqus? Well, although arguably yes you’re both in the business of making tools for sites, MT is focused on the architectural side, while you’re focused on the content side. And that puts a different light on what your intentions are with the content you are given.
      
      MT was given a copy of the DB for technical reasons, so Rob explained. This seems fairly reasonable. You were given all of our e-mail addresses for a reason unknown to me. This does not seem like information you should need or have. Usernames, yes. E-mail addresses, no. Perhaps this is an issue of data being scraped with too wide a net.
      
      I had been to your site before, but just went again. I had to use ghostery to bypass your account registration popup initiated by the all-seeing eye of your Disqus cookie. If you’re trying to garner trust, the site seems a bit forceful right off the bat. Even when not logged into Disqus, the site feels very B2B-centric and a bit sterile. So I don’t get a warm feeling that says, “hey denizens of the internet, trust the sites you’re visiting to trust us to keep your social media safe on our platform.” I don’t see assurances front and center about our privacy. Digging down to the privacy policy, I then see this passage in How We Use Personal Information: “(iv) to provide you with information and offers from us or third parties that we believe you may find useful or interesting, including newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information on services and products offered by us or third parties.” Well, that’s not very reassuring at all, Daniel! Without more specific information, I can only take that to mean that our e-mail addresses are now ripe for being put on spam marketing lists, or who knows what else. How deep does the rabbit hole go? Surely you can understand how this looks.
      
      So how can things go forward in a positive manner in terms of changes Disqus can make? Priority one would be a revision of the privacy policy to (iv). Priority two would be to reevaluate how you’re ingesting site DB data into your system, and make sure personal info is stripped out. I haven’t looked into this import process, so I can’t really speak here, aside from the fact that our e-mails were sent to you without permission and that shouldn’t have happened. Priority three would involve making it much more clear on your site how user content is used by you, who owns it, what rights you are claiming on it, and why users should trust Disqus with personal information and their public content. I guess you’ve put most of your efforts into building relationships with site owners, but you need a lot more work on the user side. If other people want to chime in here, please do. I’m probably missing things.
      
      An equally important question is, how can things with BoingBoing go forward in a positive manner? BB’s response to the privacy violation has been lackluster to say the least. In fact, since I called them out on it, they haven’t said a word. This really disappoints and confuses me. I would really like Cory to respond, apologize, and lay out a plan with you to rectify the privacy violation. Hopefully you aren’t using our e-mail addresses in a meaningful way within your system and the addresses can be deleted from your DB. That would be a best-case plan.
      
      Well, I think I’ve given you (and BB, if they care) enough to chew on. Thanks for listening.
    - David Pescovitz
      
      Hey Petsounds, I do appreciate what you’re saying and apologize for any confusion. Disqus are contractors that we pay for their service. The intent of the “third party” language in our privacy policy wasn’t meant to refer to vendors of services we contract with to provide Website functionality. Rather, that we won’t turn over our users’ email addresses to the likes of spammers, lawyers, or the police, unless we’re required by law. Thanks.
    - petsounds
      
      David,
      
      Thanks for the response. You might want to make the language in the privacy policy more clear then. However, Disqus’ privacy policy states that they can take personal information (e-mail addresses being one of the things they define as such) supplied to them and give to third parties for marketing purposes. That falls under my definition of spamming. Did you review their privacy policy before contracting them or have a discussion about how they use the content stored on their system?
      
      I also continue to feel that you should have brought up the site changes with the BB userbase beforehand and given an option to delete accounts that didn’t wish their information on Disqus. That would’ve been a BB thing to do — honest, open communication. But the attitude I’m feeling continues to be a bit cavalier towards privacy and dismissive towards your users.
    - http://domramsey.com/ Dom
      
      Obviously, no more so than Facebook or Google ads. But that in itself is quite a lot, and I’d prefer it if I BB wasn’t helping 3rd parties track me.
      
      The rest of the WordPress stuff is great, but I don’t think Disqus adds any value beyond what WP’s built-in threaded comments offer.
- Cowicide
  
  So, I’ve now set up the WordPress account after using the Disqus account initially after the system change because that popped up at first. I guess I’ll just stick with this? Or is it better to use Disqus? I’m confused about the pros and cons of either.
  
  So far everything seem the same, I’m editing this now without a problem. Not sure I like the grey menubar though… so maybe Disqus is less intrusive on the interface?
http://markjaquith.com/ Mark Jaquith

Disqus offers syncing back into WordPress.
http://deansli.st/ Dean Putney

We maintain a copy of all comments. Should we stop using Disqus for whatever reason, the comments will appear as normal WordPress comments.
http://muddylemon.com/ Lance Kidwell

I don’t know about boingboing’s implementation, but on my wordpress site, the disqus system writes the comments back into wordpress to use in case disqus is down or other apocalyptic incidents have occurred.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

BAM. Comments should be the right color again.

http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson

Bravo on the redesign! I was wondering when you were going to move to Disqus – we use it at work since it involved minimal hacking to get it to tie in with our web framework, and there was no way we’d beat the feature set.

I’ve been commenting with it at Alternet and Wired for a while, and we’ve run it for a year or so on our sites.

BTW – the comments are saved with Disqus.

WhyNoOpenid

Why don’t you have OpenID enabled on discus? Or do you prefer gargantuan companies who hate our privacy to be the gatekeepers of our identities?

P.S. signup @ boingboing is broken.

http://www.flyingmolehill.com/ ronj

Feels like home to me!

Phoc Yu

I posted in a different page, but I see a couple issues.

1) I can’t reset my password because my email address I used to sign up 4 years ago is no longer in existence. Is there a mechanism to change it?

2) Is there any way that we’ll know that a post has been edited? It can easily be abused, especially by trolls and astroturfers.
2a) Is there any way to see post history for commenters again?

3) Can we get read datestamps back instead of relative time? When all the posts are “1 day ago”, it’s not easy to tie it back if there’s any time-sensitive info in the post.

4) The “load recent posts” functionality on FF5/Mac scrolls down to the bottom of the page, meaning I have to scroll back up and figure out (again without comment # or date stamp) what the last comment was before I clicked the link.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

1) You might be out of luck, but if you send me your old account credentials at beschizza at gmail, I will try and update them to your new email so you can perform a password reset.

2) The trick with replying to posts on an editable platform is to quote the relevant text in your answer. However, I’ll see if we can’t set it to forbid edits after a reply, or at least make clear that its been edited at such and such a timestamp.

3) Datestamps instead of relative time is possible. I kind of prefer that myself, I think, and if there’s lots of support for it, we can change it back.

4) Not sure what to do about that, but same as (3)
- http://twitter.com/askjarv Chris Hudson
  
  Can I add a vote for number three- date stamps over relative time for comments please!
  
  As for the rest of it- I too am impressed by the seamless changeover – being a SysAdmin and a part time web-dev I know such things normally involve at least a few sleepless nights so congrats!
- mfrankly
  
  3) Datestamps instead of relative time is possible. I kind of prefer that myself, I think, and if there’s lots of support for it, we can change it back.
  
  I second the motion.

http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan “bytehead” Price

Yeah, now I stay logged in!

mfrankly

Are you then tracked on every site with a Disqus account? That kinda scares me.
- SolaceInRage
  
  I don’t think it keeps track of anything except your comment history on Disqus enabled sites. If people like your commenting they can follow you or add you to show up on their twitter feed, but that’s about it. There may be some form of advertisement catering, but I use a blocking program and wouldn’t know.
- http://djfoheso.myopenid.com/ oheso
  
  If you’re logged in when you visit other sites, yes.

Xof

WordPress? Well, OK. Have fun with it!

GawainLavers

Bah, this looks just like the old site! Clearly nothing major was done…

GawainLavers

Hmmm. Neither “moderation” period nor preview. Frankly I liked both features…in fact I would have preferred if you had to go through the preview before submitting — saved my a number of times from embarrassing grammar/spelling mistakes, but also often gave me a chance to rethink the structure of what I had written. Not sure what the Discus options are there (can I set them for myself, I wonder?)

Otherwise, seriously, congrats on an apparently seamless system transition. I’ve never seen one of those in person before, so I can only fantasize what they look like.
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  You don’t need preview because you can now edit your comments. HUZZAH.
  - GawainLavers
    
    Certainly a big functionality improvement: but just as a process a preview page is good for self-censorship. To be honest, I’ve stopped at that pane a number of times and decided I didn’t really have a comment worth posting.
    
    I suppose with editing I’ll only look like a douchebag _briefly_, assuming I re-read my post carefully after submitting.
    - travtastic
      
      A lot of times I wrote up long comments in a text editor (re: notepad2). Mostly so I didn’t lose them if the browser crashed or something, but it would basically work the way the preview pages used to. Aside from fully rendering the HTML, that is.
  - mfrankly
    
    Great, now everyone can see what a spaz I am on the keyboard. A site as large of BB I’ll be exposing my typos to, er, a bunch of people. I’d prefer to keep that shit nice and private.
    
    How long does a community member have to edit her comment? Will we see a bunch of revisionist history going on?
  - bklynchris
    
    WAIT! WHAT? Do you mean I can go back and correct/remove the things that I posted that keep me up at night or make start moaning in shame in the shower? Oh please say that this is the case.
    
    One time I misquoted a “Reservoir Dogs” that made it appear that I was calling Antinous a dick which I sooooooo was not and had no way of recourse or apology. To this day that still bothers me.
    
    BB comments would probably be a much happier place were this the case ala Youtube (you can delete your past comments).
    - bklynchris
      
      OH JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you can : D

WhyNotOpenid

Why can’t we use OpenID instead of corporate ID?

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

I think we can. Once we’ve got all the little bugs stamped on, we can try activating OpenID and see how it goes.

thebelgianpanda

I’ve seen a couple things

1) missing post on the Battery entry
2) ‘likes’ don’t seem to be displaying the correct number
3) i really miss numbered posts, it helped me remember where i was at

travtastic

If you mean remember after walking away for a while, you should be able to update a bookmark with the permalink for the comment you were at. It’s the link on the timestamp.
- Talia
  
  That hadn’t occurred to me, noted! Thanks!
Ernesto

Miss numbered posts too.

http://littlebigideas.tumblr.com/ JakeMG

Yay, Disqus!

http://www.genocideman.com/ Remus Shepherd

Ugh. I am not fond of Disqus. Oh, well, it seems to be ubiquitous on the net these days.

awjt

why’s that?
- awjt
  
  oooo-wee, lookit that! Threaded comments. *hits like button repeatedly, thinking he’s on Facebook, then remembering he’s bored with Facebook*
  - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
    
    You could reply to comments before! Threading is supposed to be OFF (as it was before) so it will likely go away in juuust a moment.
    - awjt
      
      Dang. It was fun for the 30 seconds it existed.
    - http://isthisreallynecessary.com someToast
      
      Threading was intentionally turned off? That’s the one thing I was glad Disqus would bring to the table. Conversations (especially when an article has many comments, like this one) are nearly impossible to follow on BB.
http://twitter.com/Cowicide Cowicide

I’m not saying I agree or disagree with you, but It might be much more constructive to mention what you don’t like about Disqus specifically and what alternatives you suggest if you have any.

awjt

Rock on. Works fine. I am a happy post-mutation mutant.

http://web.ncf.ca/shawnhcorey/ Shawn H Corey

Looking good.

Talia

Love the real-time updating, editing and the “like” button (Facebook’s spoiled me, what can I say). I too rather miss the numbered posts though. They were particularly useful for larger threads if I had to leave it and come back later, for instance. (I’ll get over it..).

DiscussDIsqus666

Here’s my problem with disqus:
* By posting with disqus I share information with a 3rd party.
* By logging with a 4th party (google, twitter, etc) I share even more information
Essentially my subversive boingboing related activity is being broadcast to other entities.
Even worse, just by reading comments my boingboing usage is being shared.

http://codeflow.org/ Florian Bösch

If you worry about your comments making it (gasp) into the public (where countless search robots will find them), may I suggest a solution? Don’t comment.
Mujokan

Does your BB account link out fully to Disqus? I notice I have my usual avatar appearing from somewhere but the comment count is separate. You could always make a BB unique account using a different email maybe?
mfrankly

Can I double-like this comment?

(And this is Boing-freakin-Boing for effin’sake. BB selling out?)
arketiat

By virtue of being connected to the internet you’re sharing information already.

MackTheAbsurd

Nice to see that I was able to use my Political Wire avatar here.

travtastic

Just out of curiosity: I’m signed in with my old BB account, and I’ve never signed up for Disqus, here or otherwise. Are my comments on their servers?

Edit: I’m not exactly concerned about it, since a google search can pick up every comment I ever made anywhere. Just wondering.

Jamie Craig

Bug: All the comments are missing on the iPhone serial cable/arduino post from earlier.

Design flaw: Disqus isn’t run by boingboing, it’s a 3rd party I’d rather have nothing to do with, thanks.

sermann

Congratulations! Feels like home!

zuludaddy

Squee at update, squirm at 3rd party…

Another vote for timestamps here, too.

Thanks, Rob, Dean and Ken.

http://twitter.com/sud0er Sten Turpin

Is anyone else seeing RSS feeds from BoingBoing getting counted as new a *whole* lot? I just cleared out about 250 re-posts, and they were all BoingBoing. Using rss2email.py to scrape the feed, with TRUST_GUID = 1 so I should only ever get one post.

Daemonworks

Nope. RSS is workin’ fine here.
http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

Is anyone else seeing RSS feeds from BoingBoing getting counted as new a *whole* lot?

Yes, I assumed it was consequence of the transition.

https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM

Congratulations! (And thanks!)

https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM

BTW: Not thanks for Disqus (I’m agnostic on it), thanks for working to better the site and trying to improve the visitor/commenter experience.

papiermeister

another vote for numbers and/or timestamps. however, very nice transition, congrats!

http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

It just doesn’t feel right.

Miranda

Looks great. Just hope it doesn’t turn into the spammer-bot fest that Wired has become on thiers..

Mister44

I am unfamiliar with Disqus – but welcome something better over that archaic old system.

akputney

Congratulations Rob, Dean and Ken. Works well for me, and I like the appearance of the comments section better.

thebelgianpanda

One thing I hope BB *doesn’t* do is add badges and soshal features. I come to BB to see wonderful things, read from high quality commenters, and occassionally add to a discussion or two. Just my $0.002

Keith Tyler

Thank Bob! I’ve gotten so tired of having to re-login every single time to make a comment. Disqus is rapidly becoming The Way.

Phoc Yu

I’m also concerned that requiring just one or two flags before pulling a comment down may be too easy a method to censor someone or an unpopular viewpoint. And it will come back if it’s a worthy post, but that may go too long before being reposted.

Also, is the anonymous posting feature gone?

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

We’ll be able to spot that kind of abuse, I believe. The threshold is, furthermore, higher than 2.

Anonymous commenting is gone. It was never anonymous in any meaningful sense (merely unregistered) and the signal:noise ratio was becoming untenable. If you need real anonymity, comment on a more truly anonymous venue such as twitter, or register an account using proxies and a throwaway email.

digi_owl

Meh, i guess i can just toss my BB account and just use my disqus linked twitter account. Not like i was using different nicknames on the various sites anyways.

GawainLavers

I’ll bet you can merge them.
- digi_owl
  
  Quite possible, tho i am unsure if that will allow me to track responses to older BB entries via disqus.
  - GawainLavers
    
    Worked for me just now: I accidentally created a new Disqus account when trying to reset my password, and it merged it with my old BB account since they had the same email. I was then able to see my old postings.
    - digi_owl
      
      yep, and now i found a setting in disqus that allows it to mail me every time a thread gets a entry. My poor mailbox…
  - digi_owl
    
    well shit, it worked. scary in a way.

http://twitter.com/Cowicide Cowicide

Does the add image feature work right now or is that a work in progress? I tried make a comment with a picture added but the comment doesn’t appear anywhere.

Sweet, testing edit now though and it works. Never though I’d see the day where I could edit a Boing Boing post! Yay!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49403380@N00/5970546257/
The grey is too light and confusing. Add a little Boing Boing red flavor and much easier on the eyes.

Also.. Digg added.

OMG… I’m editing this twice now?! Yay!

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Image posting is on I beleive, but for the time being they’re held for moderation
- http://twitter.com/Cowicide Cowicide
  
  thanks!

MiG

Congrats!

inkfumes

I hate the top-screen dashboard that pops up when I enter a post.

http://www.facebook.com/stu.mark Stu Mark

I am in love with your dedication to customer service. For realz.

http://www.unwesen.de/ unwesen

Nice! Finally I can use the comments. I signed up a while ago, but never could log on for some reason, so always had to comment anonymously :)

http://deansli.st/ Dean Putney

So glad this is working for you! I’m watching the password change emails come in, and each one makes me happier and happier!

http://twitter.com/blindeschildpad Blinde Schildpad

Yeah, numbered posts would be nice, but this is a definite improvement.

Alister French

Are the “J” and “K” keys to move through the main blog one story at a time gone for good or are they coming back?

I

http://deansli.st/ Dean Putney

I removed these because it created a problem with the registration form in Firefox. They will be back.
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

They will!

Mister44

Does posting a URL automatically flag it for needing mod approval?

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

It may do. We can turn it off If so, and will likely do so.
http://twitter.com/Cowicide Cowicide

I was able to add a link by editing the original post. So if they want all posts to have mod approval before adding links, then they might want to address that as well.

RadioSilence

test

Mujokan

Yay!

strangefriend

Where’s the rest of me? (Looks at what’s clutched in hand.) Oh.

Alex

Ah, the disqus comment field only took 5 minutes to load today. How lovely.
Until they get their shit together, I won’t be commenting much. Piss-poor software.

Ito Kagehisa

Rob, could you please change the link that gets emailed for password changes to an HTTPS instead of an HTTP link? It worked fine if I manually changed it to HTTPS.

Firesheep, nuff said, eh? Thanks!

Also, I’m using linux with a 2.6.24 kernel, gnome, and firefox 3.6.18 and the user account maintenance page has no vertical or horizontal scrolling ability, even with googlecode’s scripts enabled. This is not a big deal but it does mean I can’t see all the page.

OK, never mind that last, it works OK once you’ve successfully changed over to the new system, you just ignore the extra window.

novium

I find this incredibly disheartening. I hate this whole “post via X” thing that has seemed to have taken over the internet, because that’s just what we need more of- more inescapable tracking. I really appreciated boingboing’s sticking with the anonymous posting option. I thought you guys supported that kind of thing.

http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC

Have I lost all my old comments?

taras

Please change the post info so it goes “Author Name on Date” rather than “Posted on Date by Name” (I think it was like that before… wasn’t it?)

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Yeah, on the list

SolaceInRage

Disqus is a good framework when it works properly. The problem is that half the time that won’t be the case. The Dashboard page frequently has gaps of weeks worth of comments not shown, likes sometimes disappear etc. They always get it fixed and in running order eventually, but be warned it is still being constantly tweaked reworked and fixed.

CastanhasDoPara

Okay… well this is a little jarring but I will likely get used to it or have an aneurism.

And +1 for numbered posts and date/time stamps.

Edit: is nice I guess. And I also wonder about the old comments, did they just go poof? Because that would sort of suck. Anyhow, gook luck guys.

Dan B

Is there a way to see the old comments? Just now I was trying to look back to find a link that I saw in a comment thread the other day, and that’s how I discovered you’d switched to Disqus. Then I found this post, which thankfully gives me a place to air my complaint.
Also, +1 for real date/time stamps.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

They should show up–te old stuffs been imported to the new platform.
- billstewart
  
  Is up–te one of those Words of Power that’ll get eaten by the commenting system if we use it, the way many email-based systems eat posts involving the word u-n-su-b-sc-r-ib-e? Is there a web page that describes other words to avoid?
  - awjt
    
    update update update dupeat updeta pudeat tapedu edupat eatpud update update update
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    There seem to be trigger words built into Disqus, but I don’t know what they are. Some comments have been held today and I have no idea why.
    - p. observer
      
      nvm that was just mean
- Dan B
  
  Is there a lag while the old stuff gets imported to Disqus? It isn’t there yet on the post I was looking at, which was: http://boingboing.net/2011/07/22/lowercase-theories-u.html, but f I look at some older posts, I do see they have some older comments. So if I’m patient will it catch up?

http://doran.pacifist.net/ Doran

Advantages and disadvantages. Mixed feelings about Disqus. But still: Time. Marches. On.

Gilgongo

Does this mean the end of devowelling?

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

I don’t think it was in common use for a long time. But I’ve already made the mods a universal disemwoweller bookmarklet that works on any selected text, so don’t count your chickens :)

Ant Dude

Nice. :)

nosehat

I look forward to the new commenting system. I, too, was used to the numbered posts, but the reply button ought to make the numbers irrelevant.

A couple comments:

1) Editable posts might make things more difficult on your moderators, or on commenters trying to work through something. I’ve seen such a feature abused on other discussion boards–it opens
up goofy new ways to troll and flame, leads to rage-editing and
rage-deleting of posts, etc. I kind of like the feeling of committing to what I’m saying by pressing Post, even if it means I have to apologize later.

2) I’d love to see a return of the comment ticker, like on the OLD, old design. I feel that really helped the community cohere. Any chance of that, or something like it, making a return?

–Nosehat

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

The comment counter will be back if we can. If editing posts becomes a problem, we will just turn it off or ban those abusing the feature.
- travtastic
  
  I’ve seen sites that have time limits for edits, although I’m not sure if they were hand-rolled or Disqus-based.

nosehat

Oh, and one more thing. If you can now post comments from a half dozen different logins, that means that casual browsers are more likely to be already logged in somehow and enabled to post. This might increase the sheer volume of comments on the threads.

While I can see that this would be great from the perspective of BoingBoing (more volume = more ad revenue), from the perspective of your core community this might not be so great. I love Boing Boing’s community for the ways it is different from every run-of-the-mill discussion-enabled website out there.

It’s something to think about: If you allow people to post comments with their YouTube login, your comment threads will begin to resemble YouTube comment threads.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

We will delete anything like that anyway. The brokenness and technical hurdles to posting in the old system aren’t a good gatekeeper for community quality!

Winski

GOOD WORK!!!

GlenBlank

I hate Disqus because it sets cookies that can be read by any Disqus-equipped site, so any Disqus site I visit knows my identity and commenting history even if I’ve never logged in or registered there.

Couple that with the non-secure password reset, and I’d rate this as a pretty big fail for a site that claims to be concerned about privacy and security.

http://benv.ca Ben Vinegar

Hi Glen,

Do you mind me asking what you find non-secure about our password reset? (http://disqus.com/forgot)

- Ben

BSD

I don’t like the new mobile version. If I wanted to read the site via RSS, I’d do that, I much prefer the old load-everything-mini to the new headlines-only mode.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

That’ll be fixed soon

John Delaney

Personally I’m not a huge fan of the whole “likes/dislikes” thing. It feels too competitive to me :(

But overall, I do like the new layout, and rather like the fact that threaded comments have been intentionally removed.

John Delaney

Oh the irony!
http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

Personally I’m not a huge fan of the whole “likes/dislikes” thing.
At the moment 3 people liked this.

ahecht

Oh well, I guess this is yet another site I can’t browse the comments on during my lunch break — my work blocks disqus.

http://shadowfirebird.tumblr.com shadowfirebird

I like liking. But I’m not sure I like this change.

Disqus is certainly not the worst third party commenting system. But why hand off to a third party at all, and be at the mercy of — say, their changing their API so that your comments work differently without any advance notice, twice in the last couple of years? (To pick an example completely at random.)

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Our old comments were extremely laborious and slow, relied on some odd JavaScript that triggered warnings in some security software, were quite broken (profiles and such couldn’t be edited) and so on. So it was time to update to something widely used, simple to manage and compatible with our new platform. Of the options, Disqus is best.

Nathaniel

I don’t suppose we could have a slightly bigger font size for the comments? It’s a bit of a strain on my eyes to read text this small, and the discrepancy with the main text size means I’ll forever be having to zoom in to read the comments, then zoom back out to read the articles again…

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

For sure! Expect that fixed soon

http://djfoheso.myopenid.com/ oheso

I’m getting screen redraws while I’m in the midst of reading the comments, meaning I have to scroll and find my place again.

http://djfoheso.myopenid.com/ oheso

I’m seeing responses from Rob here on fixing stuff within Disqus that is fixable, but no response on the privacy/third party issue.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Comments and your user credentials are now stored both with us and with Disqus. At Disqus, your bb account is unique unless you merge it with another third party one.

Comments and your username were always public at BB, so third parties could (and did) scrape them. We also have had ads, google analytics, twitter and facebook sharing buttons for years.
- http://djfoheso.myopenid.com/ oheso
  
  Comments and your username were always public at BB, so third parties
  could (and did) scrape them. We also have had ads, google analytics,
  twitter and facebook sharing buttons for years.
  
  All noted in my mail to Cory on this issue. Disqus just makes it a one-stop-shop.
  
  (I’m not complaining that my comments are public durrr … )
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    If it’s any consolation, I can’t comment anywhere else that uses Disqus because it would look like I was impersonating a moderator on somebody else’s site. I almost jumped out of my chair the first time that I saw my own eye staring back at me on another site.
    - http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/0.1/ Paul Laroquod
      
      “If it’s any consolation, I can’t comment anywhere else that uses Disqus because it would look like I was impersonating a moderator on somebody else’s site. I almost jumped out of my chair the first time that I saw my own eye staring back at me on another site.”
      
      Does that mean that a moderator from some other site could come here and masquerade as a Boing Boing moderator?
      
      Also note: When I copied and pasted your paragraph there, really weird stuff happened to the font size which I could only correct by pasting the quote intermediately into a text editor.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      You could have done that before. There were no limitations on display names. You could have called yourself Antinous / Moderator and the system wouldn’t have cared.
    - http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/0.1/ Paul Laroquod
      
      Thanks.

Nathaniel

(Also, since you’re updating stuff – I don’t suppose there’s a chance there will ever be a search feature on BoingBoing that displays results in reverse chronological order instead of just using Google? Usually when I search BoingBoing it’s because I’m looking for a recent post I want to show someone, but more often than not recent posts don’t appear in the search results at all.)

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Improved search is definitely on the todo list

http://djfoheso.myopenid.com/ oheso

No response yet on the font size issue, either. I’m not the only one asking for this.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Well be making it look just like the old comments typographically ASAP
http://www.facebook.com/patrickq Patrick Quinn-Graham

I’ll third or fifth or whatever this, it should be the same size as the post text

Jack Zero

the mobile theme (m.boingboing) as rendered in iPhone / Safari is now only showing blog post titles, not body text. mucho annoying. Any chance of restoring full body text?

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Yeah, it’s unintentional and will be fixed

http://johnmc.net/ johnmc

Love it. Movable type was definitely beginning to show its age.

petsounds

1. Requiring everyone on the site to reset their password seems like a bad site transition.
2. I loathe Disqus. Tying all of your account passwords to one third-party site, a site which no one knows the security or intentions of, is foolhardy at best. I applaud BB for keeping their site-specific logins intact (something many sites, including Engadget, chose not to do). It’s the only reason I’m still commenting here.

http://shadowfirebird.tumblr.com shadowfirebird

Yeah. I use Disqus for commenting on my Tumblr blog. But … why does Disqus want me to give *them* my Tumblr password? They don’t say what for, or what they will do with it.

The Facebookness, it hurts.
http://insight.pinkonbrown.org/ Dr P Fenderson

Why would you tie your passwords to a third-party account? Most of the Disqus logins use OAuth or something similar – that doesn’t share ANY passwords…and you can revoke access at any time.
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Password reset is unavoidable, because we don’t know your passwords. Sites that store unencrypted passwords… should not be.

I don’t think disqus has any meaningful private data about you until you reset that password, at which point we feed it your email. It might have your email, though, already, from the import. Its privacy policy is ok and we trust it. All else is stuff already public, your username and comment history.
- travtastic
  
  I myself don’t see it as a big deal, but if the reset process wasn’t transparent about that email forwarding, I can see why someone might not like it.
- p. observer
  
  “until you reset that password, at which point we feed it your email”
  could we maybe get a warning note about that if i had been aware of that i wouldn’t have bothered

Virgil Taylor

The red links and black text still kill usability if you are colorblind!

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Back to blue soon :)

Guest

Yeah! I started using DISQUS sometime ago at a site I frequent. I am liking it more and more.

Guest

Check out Comments FAQ at Disqus for supported HTML. The URL is:

http://docs.disqus.com/help/19/

nosehat

Here’s a couple of requests, since you are redesigning the site, one trivial one not so trivial:

Trivial: Can you put a link back to the main page at the bottom of the comment threads? I know how lazy this request makes me appear, but if I’ve clicked a few links to jump from comment to comment, the back button isn’t the best option. And scrolling up to the top of a long comment thread, if you’re as impatient as me, can get old fast. Anyway, it would be easy to do, and plenty of other sites have this feature.

Not-So-Trivial: Can you take this opportunity to do something about the load time of your pages? Currently Boing Boing is the slowest site to load in all my daily internet round. It feels like you front load all your ads and google analytics and etc and etc, one at a time, so the content isn’t accessible right away. If the ad server is slow to respond, the whole page waits and waits and waits… And it seems like *everything* has to load before I’m able to start scrolling down the page. I hope the new Disqus Dashboard doesn’t just add to this problem. Seriously, any thoughts about improving the load times?

Antinous / Moderator

The slow load for me is almost always due to Facebook and that ilk.
- travtastic
  
  My loading has gotten significantly faster on a lot of sites by blocking the Facebook integration lines on them. But, I guess that wouldn’t help someone who uses them for posting and liking and all that.
travtastic

A ‘Top of Page’ link would be cool, but until then (or maybe even after?), in most browsers hitting your ‘Home’ key will send you up to the top every time. Holding ‘Pg Up’ would work too.

That being said, I do second having a link down there in the page template.
petsounds

nosehat, there’s this key on the keyboard called the “home” key. It’s quite fantastic. It takes you home, e.g. the top of a web page. It’s been around a long time, and most people ignore it now. It’s a bit lonely, so why not say hi?
- nosehat
  
  Ah, you’re right! Thanks for the re-introduction. :)
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Nosehat, look for both issues to be taken care of in a forthcoming redesign. It won’t be radical a la gawker, so hopefully we won’t introduce too many new ones!

travtastic

I don’t know if it’s directly related, but I was able to get to the manual submission page, I filled it out, and then it went to a page with the header title ‘Confirm’; but, the actual page was the 404 page.

I have no idea if it actually sent and was a bad redirect, or if that means the submissions aren’t working.

(Was trying to submit this: http://mashable.com/2011/07/24/rainbow-niagara-falls-photo/)

Antinous / Moderator

Some pages (like the Comment Policy) have fallen into a crack somewhere. We’re looking.

RJ

The Disqus system looks good. Thanks for taking the time to implement it; I realize it must be about as much fun as having a toenail peeled back.

petsounds

What I think is the strangest part of The Disqus Way is that all comments are stored on their server. If Disqus goes down (either temporarily or permanently), all comments are lost during that time, no? And the whole commenting mechanism goes down as well? That seems like a big dependency and risk for a site owner.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

If Disqus dies, we have it all on our own servers too. Worst case scenario is having to reset your password again when we move to another aystem
http://eecue.com Dave Bullock / eecue

You can actually export all your comment data at any time. It makes sense to do it on a regular basis as backup. =]

http://pineappledonut.org Lachlan Musicman

Looks great! Congrats.

p. observer

i found a bug if you click “in reply to asdf” and the post is long the close button is pushed off the page and cannot be clicked
p.s i hate disqus and should BB persist with this garbage this will be my last comment

nosehat

There’s a similar problem with attached files, which your post inadvertently demonstrates. Clicking on your attached image, I got an image displayed that was too big for my tiny netbook browser window, and there was no way to close it. Hitting back returned me to the boingboing main page, not the comment thread.

Right clicking the image to open it in a new tab only opened the comment thread again in the new tab.

I tried to save the image, but that got me only the thumbnail. I tried to save the link, it just got the comment thread.

So… attached files need some fine tuning as well :)
- travtastic
  
  Back returned you because that pop-up is on top of the actual page. You’ll notice that your scroll buttons will continue scrolling the page underneath.
  
  But like I said for the other issue lower down the page here, just click out of that pop-up, and the regular page will re-focus like it was before.
http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan “bytehead” Price

I don’t see the problem. Yes, a long reply will push the Cancel/Post buttons off the end of the screen. I take it you didn’t even attempt to scroll the page a bit downward and click the correct button.

I just tried it, and while yes, the interface loses the buttons on the screen, scrolling (I used my scroll button) gets them to where they are clickable.

For the mouse impaired, tabbing a couple of times also gets the buttons available to click on.

If this is your last comment, it’s probably for the best.
- travtastic
  
  You can also click somewhere on the page that’s not the window, and it’ll go away without changing the page position.
  - nosehat
    
    But that doesn’t work with images that fill all the available screen. See my post above.
    - travtastic
      
      On here, they just filled up the right side and went off the page. I don’t know if that’s due to my browser settings or what.
    - travtastic
      
      If you can still see the “original” link, copy that and go to the URL. The back button will then bring you back here to the right position.
      
      Now, if that’s off the bottom of the page, I have no idea. Either way, it’s definitely a bug.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Hit the Esc key.
    - travtastic
      
      Well that’s certainly a bit more elegant than my solution.
    - nosehat
      
      I’m not talking about the “in reply to” feature. With that I can just click on some screen outside the popup.
      
      I’m talking about images, like a full screen cap, which are too big to fit on my netbook browser window. In that case I get the popped up image (apparently) centered on the screen, and taking 100% the real estate. The scroll bar is still there, presumably scrolling the page behind the popup, but I don’t see any of that.
      
      At any rate, this feature could use some tweaking. It would be nice to be able to open images in other tabs, or download them, etc.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      When I click the image, it opens in a window which is smaller than my browser window, but has a link on the bottom left that says ‘original’. That link opens the original size in a new tab.
    - travtastic
      
      I think they might be using a small monitor or screen resolution. The pictures seems to be displaying 1:1 over here, so I can see them shooting off the page.
    - nosehat
      
      Here’s a screen shot of me, trying to view p. observer’s screenshot. As you can see, his screen shot fills the entirety of my browser window.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Is your screen resolution 600×400? It doesn’t look anything like that for me.
    - nosehat
      
      Ha ha, close. It’s 1024 X 600. It’s a netbook.
    - travtastic
      
      Shit, I’m psychic.
    - travtastic
      
      Even with 1024 res on a netbook, it would still be horizontally off the page.

David Llopis

I’ve often used Unicode in my comments here, and they’re broken right now.
For this message, I used ASCII single quote instead of the Unicode apostrophe/right single quote.
Shut up: I don’t have OCD ;)

http://ma.tt/ Matt Mullenweg

Welcome to the WordPress family! :)

Antinous / Moderator

Moderator note: As you’ve probably noticed, Disqus allows images to be uploaded. We’ll have an image policy when I can find the Policy page to put it in, but basically – no racist, sexist, etc. No corpses, wounds, fresh turds, etc. Nudity is somewhat discretionary, but you’d better have a good reason for adding it.

Comments with images need to be hand-approved, so don’t add an image unless you’re prepared to wait on approval. You can always make your comment and reply to yourself with an image so that the comment goes up even if the image has to wait.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

I am delighted to see that unfresh turds will be permitted.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Coprolites

dcg

Can you get a longer RSS feed again? It’s been cut down to about 1/3 of the old length.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Yeah, it should be easy for us to go back to more rss items

http://eecue.com Dave Bullock / eecue

Interesting, is there a way to pull all my old BB comments into this profile? It uses the same email address / username.

http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

You should e able to by resetting you password via the boingboing login. Thatll tell Disqus to create an account from it, which you can then merge with your normal Disqus account.
- http://eecue.com Dave Bullock / eecue
  
  Hmm nope, tried that and this account shows no comments at all. =[
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  The black box on this page continues to invite me to log in no matter how many times I change my password or log in. Since I don’t get a star when I comment from the front, it doesn’t seem to recognize that A / M the moderator is the same person as A / M the commenter.

Antinous / Moderator

It appears that Disqus’s only limit on images is that they be less than 2Mb.

http://openid.aliz.es/HurfDaDurf HurfDaDurf

You guys realize that if you don’t post a comment, discus still knows what you are reading on boingboing.

Also discus is obviously “broken” I logged in with openid on another site and I was able to post here using that login. So boingboing, your ban of openid accounts is fruitless. Have fun with your new commenting system that you really don’t have control over.

Antinous / Moderator

Or, you could just log out.
- http://openid.aliz.es/HurfDaDurf HurfDaDurf
  
  Anyone reading a boingboing article is sending information to discus telling discus what article they are reading regardless of an account or not. Unauthenticated users are being tracked by discus via boingboing.
  - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
    
    “Anyone reading a boingboing article is sending information to discus telling discus what article they are reading regardless of an account or not. Unauthenticated users are being tracked by discus via boingboing.”
    
    The same kind of tracking would presumably be possible on here for many years by the ads, by google (site search box and stats), by the social networks via their share buttons, vimeo and YouTube via the presence of their movies…. The list is endless. If you’re worried about being a statistic in Disqus’ or anyone else’s database even if you don’t sign up for them, you should block it completely at the hosts file or by some other low level method

BarBarSeven

I like this!!! But I miss the authority of knowing who the mods are by type coloring.

travtastic

Yeah, I noticed that. Personally, I’d strike until I got a star by my name.

lvdata

I like the new board, and unlike other people here, I ASSUME that Google/Bing/Big Brother will cross reference and index anything I type here. If you want to be anonymous you have to take steps to create fake credentials and use proxys properly.

Fyi the page http://boingboing.net/2011/07/22/lowercase-theories-u.html seems to be missing all the older comments.

lvdata

Hmm Disqus seems to hide url’s as a default, not something I like.

http://boingboing.net/2011/07/22/lowercase-theories-u.html

Will posting it on its own line help?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  That’s definitely unfortunate.

awjt

Can we get numbered comments back? Without threaded/nested comments, we need a way to refer to another post absolutely. OK, not we. I. I have no idea what these other people want.

travtastic

The timestamp is a permalink.
travtastic

For instance, this is your comment:

http://boingboing.net/2011/07/24/bb-gets-wordpress-disqus-new-machines.html#comment-263071190
- awjt
  
  Nobody is going to follow a link to a post on the same page to see what the heck I’m referring to, when I can just write, “travtastic (comment #112)” and see it right there with a glance, like in the olden daze.
  - travtastic
    
    Why? It’s the same as the old ‘Response to…” link from before. You click it once, read it, and hit the back button. In most browsers it doesn’t even reload the page, it just knocks you up to that position.
    - travtastic
      
      You could also just mask it with a href to say ‘that freaking travtastic guy, up there’.
      
      I’ll admit the lack of an absolute timestamp is really annoying, but there’s not really any difference here in practical use, from before.
      
      Numbered comments might be an option on Disqus, but I always assumed before that they weren’t used because of the comment threading most sites use.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Once you’ve made a reply, anyone can click on the ‘in reply’ line in the header for your comment and it opens a tiny window with the first few lines of the comment to which you replied. And it has a link to jump to that comment.
    - awjt
      
      ok, fair enough. New behavior. I’m used to clicking in order to *do* something, rather than clicking in order to read something. I can get used to finding the context of an obscure comment by this new click.

Bevin

test… sorry!

http://www.pegritz.com Derek C. F. Pegritz

THANK YOU for updating the comment system! At last. :)

Walter Hawn

I seriously dislike disqus, for many of the reasons stated by others.

travtastic

What about changing the font color in links? They’re impossible to find as it is without the text pointing to them.

For instance, one of those words up there is a link.

http://eecue.com Dave Bullock / eecue

Ah, once I went to discqus.com it prompted me to link them up… still not showing my old bb posts though.

http://nawel.tumblr.com Nawel

okey, I’m using my disqus profile here… nice, the old system was… err.. old. Cheers!

bardfinn

I’m sure Antinous is happier.

Antinous / Moderator

Two years ago, I spent about five minutes per day dealing with spam. Recently, it’s been half my work day. This system cuts actions down from minutes to seconds. I just edited something and the edits were publicly visible instantly. In MT, it would have been a ten minute wait. This is much more functional. Hopefully I’ll find all of the buttons soon.

http://tariq-kamal.livejournal.com/ Tariq Kamal

Huh. So is there a way to link an existing BoingBoing account with a Disqus account?

http://twitter.com/Cowicide Cowicide

Comments missing and I think it’s unintentional this time. ;P

http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/0.1/ Paul Laroquod

I dunno, guys. There were problems with the old commenting/login system, but this here just doesn’t feel like Boing Boing anymore. I’m gonna need some time…

http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/0.1/ Paul Laroquod

The only privacy complaint I’ve read above this one that I’ve found disturbing, is what petsounds is onto with giving Disque our email addresses. All the other complaints are about whether to trust Disqus, but the violation of the BB privacy policy, is about whether to trust Boing Boing, so yes that is distrubing, despite the fact that I already had a Disqus account.

My email address has my name in it — I’m sure that is true of many others. As such, it is the ultimate identifying info. Also, like someone said above, I gave Boing Boing an even more personally identifying email than the spam-dump email account I usually use for commenting, because I trust(ed?) Boing Boing more.

Gloo

Glop, Glop…
at last !

http://lectiblog.blogspot.com/ lecti

So…if someone flags your comment and moderator removes it, can the original poster know that it was inappropriate??

http://pineappledonut.org Lachlan Musicman

Hey, it looks like the old-is-new-again submission form is broken, FYI.

CastanhasDoPara

Also the ‘load more comments’ that sends you to the bottom of the pile is fairly annoying.

Antinous / Moderator

It doesn’t do that for me.
- travtastic
  
  I actually just had it happen to me a few minutes ago, but only when comments get added before I read/scroll down the page. The update notification shows up at the top and kicks you down.
Antinous / Moderator

We set pagination at 200 comments because it’s fairly rare to have more than 200 comments in a thread, but no pagination is a huge pain when you get a thread with 1000+ comments. I’m already somewhat annoyed by it, so we may bump it up after a couple of weeks of evaluation.

m0nkyman

another person not happy with the new iPhone/mobile site.

.

If I click change settings and click save changes in the pop up, I get this.

Forbidden (403)
CSRF verification failed. Request aborted.

More information is available with DEBUG=True.

http://BrianEaston.net/ Brian Easton

I for one welcome the lack of post numbers. They were at best quaint and at worst archaic. It was especially infuriating to see them being used when the reply to feature was first introduced, especially since in some high volume threads the post number could be unreliable.

http://pineappledonut.org Lachlan Musicman

Ooooh, I love the fact you can follow a poster’s name, and get everything they’ve posted in chrono order…did that exist before? Eg: http://boingboing.net/author/david_pescovitz nice…

TomLosh

Just assuring I still have a login here…

http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

Trying to change my notifications settings I got:

Forbidden (403)
CSRF verification failed. Request aborted.

More information is available with DEBUG=True.

I would send it to the bugs address but the link and post seem to have disappeared.

BBNinja

I recently just switched my crappy little blog http://www.soupandfork.com from Joomla to WordPress as well. Joomla was a complete pain in my butt. WP is a bejillion times easier to use and manage.

Gulliver

Echoing the numbered posts sentiment.

Other than that, looks good Misters Putney and Snider. Thanks for the hard work!

Eric Monse

I use the keyboard shortcuts J and K to flip to the next and previous post on Boingboing. This functionality no longer works.

penguinchris

Hmm. I like it. It’s felt like BB needed a change for a while – particularly the part where you had to sign in again for seemingly every article to make a comment.

I do hope that the styling gets worked out… the gray style with small font feels very alien right now, and not like BB at all. I definitely would like normal timestamps, and numbered posts. In fact I see no reason not to make them look identical in essentially every way to the previous style, just with the different underlying functionality obviously. Right now it’s actually quite difficult for me to follow the conversation… I know structurally it is identical to before, but somehow it’s difficult – I think the “in reply from” message being less obvious (blending into the background) is what’s doing it.

I appreciate that now we can edit our posts, but I did like the feeling of committing to your comment. I would previously hit ‘preview’ several times before committing to a comment, and often I would decide not to comment at all after previewing it and reading it over and realizing I had nothing important to say (many of the comments I did post were like that too, but no matter). I think this was actually an important part of the style of discourse we have here, which is different from most sites (but similar to e.g. slashdot which does not allow editing or deleting of your comments).

I would also like to echo what petsounds has been saying… frankly I’m not actually that concerned about it personally but it does feel like a bit of a strange thing for BB to do given the general stance toward privacy and so on around here.

dr

I just thought I’d mention that if you are running Firefox with a tracking-cookie blocker like Ghostery then you not only can’t post a comment, but you don’t even see that there might be comments to read. (The line that might normally say “4e+10 comments” just says “leave a comment,” and when you click through the article is there with no comments.) It was just an odd whim that prompted me to try a different browser, I was all set to simply assume that the last few entries (including this one) hadn’t been interesting enough to elicit any response.

I guess this is the same thing as a couple of people wrote above, that you can’t browse anonymously, but somehow it feels worse when that becomes “the very existence of the discussion is kept a secret from those who surf in a secure mode.”

Guest

I thought the only function missing from BB was ‘edit’. No matter how carefully I proofread, I would almost always find a mistake after hitting ‘submit’ – drat! So, in this way, BB just got better.

The presence of a ‘like’ button is a bit disappointing and I won’t be using it. What, are we in high school, turning our dialogues with each other into a popularity contest? The conversation here has always been a cut above the rest of the riff-raff out there in cyberspace, imo. It feels as though the presence of the ‘like’ button would lower the bar. If we agree or disagree with each other, we say so and why, that’s part of beauty of the BB community. Few folks here lack the capacity to fully articulate their opinion and they could give a rat’s ass whether you like it or not (without necessarily being trollish)- and I love that!

I have old eyes. The type is too small and I’ve had to magnify to 150%. The old type was okay at 125%.

Otherwise, nice job, guys!

Guest

Also, I really liked numbered comments. It helped me more easily find again someone I wanted to reply to.

Antinous / Moderator

I’m trying to talk Rob into turning avatars on, as I think that it will help to find comments, but he wants to get the immediate bugs taken care of before we start flipping switches and turning dials.

Nick_D

Booo.

http://www.facebook.com/unclegravity Mark Senior

Hm. Any chance that old credentials might not have made it over unscathed, maybe where some special characters are present? I have the same difficulty as Phoc Yu with my old email address not existing any more, but with the additional headache that my BB password suddenly doesn’t work either.

Well, this is bye-bye from dragonfrog, if I can’t get my password working again…

Antinous / Moderator

Moderator note: If you don’t have access to your BB account e-mail, you can e-mail me and I can go back into the old system and change it to your current one. This offer may be time-limited.

Correction: My fix isn’t fixing, so e-mail Rob at his given name at this domain.

http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC

The site doesn’t seem happy to let me log on from my iPad. As far as I can tell, I’m typing my password right, but I’m getting a rejection every time.

Cowicide

Hmmm… fixed the dashboard in the user profile settings, but it would appear all my posts are going into a black hole. Not seeing any lately from Disqus or now WordPress and no link or images were attached.

EDIT: But this one worked… huh….

Cowicide

Ok, this is a reply test using WordPress.

Or, so I thought… hmmm… oh, I see, I guess WordPress is merged in some way with disqus. Nevermind.

Cowicide

Hmmm… I’m super confused. I logged into the WordPress thing, changed my password, but everytime I come back to boingboing I’m logged out and it apparently uses disqus instead of wordpress. Something’s screwy here.

Antinous / Moderator

There is no such thing as being logged into BB anymore as far as I can tell. You can merge your accounts via Disqus.

Cowicide

Ok… I see there’s a buggy thing going here where it still says LOGIN on near top-right even if you’re logged in (I reenabled the menubar dash thing and that shows I’m logged in).

I think a FAQ is in order for us to read to make sense of this. I’m not sure what account I’m using right now. I feel like I have two accounts? Which one should I use? I’m confused.

BarBarSeven

Since the submission form seems to now be down, may I suggest this Mac OS X Lion parody I found? Because Lion is one of the worst Apple upgrades I have ever made: It’s In the tradition of MobileMe, iOS 4, Final Cut X & Ping (in iTunes) comes Mac OS X Lion (10.7): An utter piece of crap that is clearly still beta.

http://www.papermodelplane.com/box/lion.jpg

ablebody

just commenting to see what will happen. here goes everythiiii-ing..!!!!

Little John

Any site redesign brings out the whiners for sure. I’ve seen it happen with IMDb many times, BoingBoing just a few. But here are a few items from my own like/dislike lists:

Like:
1. Being able to edit my misformatted post.

Dislikes:
1. Not knowing how to edit a post. Where is this? Ah, I see now; the Like button becomes an Edit button for my own comments. Cool!
2. Even with the above ability to edit, I’d still like to preview my stuff before posting.
3. The comment font size is currently 20% smaller than two days ago.
To see the comments I must now have JavaScript turned on, which I
usually prefer to avoid. I guess this is to ensure that I load the ads?
4. With JS turned on, the new-style pages never finish loading. My Firefox “throbber” just keeps going roun and round.
5. Numbered comments FTW! I really miss these; I use them to keep track
of my place and who’s said what. Otherwise I have to worry about
linking to e.g.travtastic’s post above.
6. I’d much prefer date and time for both OP and comments.

Meh:
1. “Like”.
2. Avatars
3. Black-and-white comments. What happened to the (old) new BB look?
4. Relying on the generosity of strangers (Disqus).

Guest

I see BB has been assimilated.

How are username collisions handled? I swear this username was taken @ BB, so I used something else. And I know for a fact my BB username was taken on Disqus.

Does anyone else wonder exactly what Disqus is up to with all of the cross-site correlation they can do? Imagine this: Disqus analyzes your comments and builds a profile of you across all Disqus-enabled sites. Your interests are determined based on how your comments are positive or negative towards the product, service, idea the associated articles are about.

Once Discus has a picture of what people are saying, they sell that data.. once companies start paying, very subtle astroturf starts showing up in comments… and you, my targeted friend, are the only one seeing it.

Or worse: not everyone sees the same _real_ comments. A product being “promoted” by Discus will only show “positive” comments to the target demographic. A competitor’s product will show “negative” comments.

If campaigns get involved, imagine how the tone of comments on political articles could be swayed.

Your comments are their data. Just a thought.

http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog Steven Rosenberg

I wonder if anybody from BoingBoing can comment on the whys and hows of the switch from Movable Type to WordPress, both the reasons for the move and what BB is doing to make WordPress work for this particular web site.

wolfiesma

Is it true you can edit the text of a comment? How do you do that? Thanks!

Antinous / Moderator

Where the Like button is for everyone else’s comments, you have an Edit button.
- wolfiesma
  
  I see it now! Very cool! :)
Little John

See my post above. There should be an “Edit” button below your comment (for you alone).

Little John

About that “smooth transition”:

It appears that with JavaScript off, some replacements of old posts, such as the would-be-usurper Elvis post at http://boingboing.net/2011/07/20/elvis-lives-robs.html shows the old comments we originally added to the original thread (http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/21/elvis-lives-robs.html (non-optimally formatted)).

With JavaScript on, the old comments load but are then replaced with new comments added to the replacement post.

Same thing with the Vintage Chemistry Sets post(s). I’m wondering why there are repeated posts (post-dated, even) in the first place. <leghorn>I say, I say post-dated, son!</leghorn>

gwailo_joe

Sigh. Well. . .I’m back. No numbered comments? Images and comment editing? -like- buttons???

Eh. Oh well: I feel about change about the same as I feel about maggots in my wounds: I suppose it’s a good thing. . .but I don’t find it particularly pleasant.

CastanhasDoPara

Yet another gripe, nothing too serious but… it seems that the comments are chunked into pages(with a sufficiently long comments section such as this), so one can’t just scroll through them all or, as I tried to, search within the page for a specific comment. Not sure if there is anything that can be done about that but it is one more tick leading me down the path to aneurism.

http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan “bytehead” Price

Well, I hit the “load more comments” button, and I can still locate text on the very first comment. So keep hitting that button until it’s done, and then do your search.
Antinous / Moderator

Pagination is at 200 comments. This is one setting that will be re-evaluated after two weeks for annoyance vs convenience value. Posts with more than 200 comments happen ~ once per week, if that often. Unpaginated posts with 1K comments are a nuisance.
- CastanhasDoPara
  
  Right, I suppose that makes sense. Also the ‘load more comments’ thing seems to be doing the right thing for now.
  
  Something to consider, the pulldown box for post ordering really can confuse things. I inadvertently set it to ‘popular now’ and was royally confused for a couple of minutes as everything was out of order. It follows that when/if we get post numbers back or date/time stamps that could make things a little clearer. FWIW I won’t be using that ‘feature’ in the future. Keep up the good work.
  
  Edit: Did we just get threaded comments as well? Going to f5 to confirm.
  
  Reedit: Nope, just dropped it to the bottom. Either way.
  
  Again: oops, ‘load more comments’ does the right thing, ‘X new comment was just posted. Show’ does not.

nosehat

I came back with a couple of extremely minor quibbles/suggestions:

Today’s CSS change makes me really, really, really want to flag some posts. Is there a happy medium between the previous too-subtle flag option and today’s?

One side effect of the pagination: I came back to this thread to post my minor quibble about the flag button. I hit “Load more Comments” to make sure nobody else had posted it. I clicked the red login-button to log in. The comment thread reloaded in the background, but only the first 200 comments. So I hit “Load more Comments” again, and the system hung. I reloaded the page, hit “Load more Comments” again… seems like the measure to save bandwidth is actually costing more bandwidth, but I guess that’s more Disqus’s problem rather than yours.

Otherwise, I continue to like it. The running total of “likes” provides a dash of “gamification.”

Don

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t post comments on Disqus-equipped sites from my Windows 7 machine at work. Slacking just got much less fun!

http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan “bytehead” Price

It’s just you. Windows 7, 64-bit, Firefox 5.01, 6.0B3 and 8.0a1), Chrome, IE, they all work for me.

noah django

So… now something that never gave me problems and that I did every day without having to think about it has become something that I had to send 3 password reset reqs to and there’s a gang-load of new features that I have to learn and navigate. but in exchange, there is no numbered posts or by-hour/minute timestamps, links are truncated and the same color as text, plus now I have to be paranoid about a third party?

I get that this makes admin-ing easier; and it’s y’alls site, so I can’t really argue with doing what makes sense at your end; but I feel a bit cranky.

I started following this site in maybe ’08, and though some of the posts do not interest me, I primarily appreciated that this place was an island of logic in the sea of chaos that is humanity generally, especially as reflected by the internet. I sort of assumed that y’all were ill coders who could build your own website. now, either I’m linked into some sort of comment-thread social network dumb-assery or else I don’t get to participate in BB? Man, whatever.

Yeah, I’ll still be here, but pic related.

noah django

wow. after using it for a few minutes, disqus/WP is making me rage even more than I did in my comment currently held for moderation.

BRING BACK J AND K

lose the stupid banner with my profile on it. it takes up too much real-estate in my browser window (especially since I zoom in quite a bit) and it has no features that I need moment-to-moment. or at all, for that matter :(

http://www.facebook.com/unclegravity Mark Senior

Thanks Antinous – what email address shall I use for you?

Antinous / Moderator

As it turns out, you’d better send it to Rob. My fix didn’t work, so he’s on the job. His e-mail is his given name at this domain.

http://profiles.google.com/jonathan.harford Jonathan Harford

I’m getting every singe BB story showing up multiple times in Google Reader. I’m also subscribed to Offworld and BB Gadgets, and the BB stories are showing up in those feeds as well!

Wait… are Offworld and BB Gadgets dead? I can’t even find the websites for them now.

Marktech

Ditto ditto ditto some other negative comments, I’m afraid: for my part I’ve lost some functionality I actually used, like preview and numbered posts, and I haven’t [yet] found anything to compensate. In particular I really, really dislike the concept of the “like” button: at best an irrelevance, at worst an incitement to populism. But it’s your bat and ball, after all.

Marktech

lose the stupid banner with my profile on it

Click on your name, select “Edit my profile”, and untick “Show Admin Bar when viewing site”

Marktech

… which was supposed to be a reply to noah django. O well.
- noah django
  
  thanks. I was wondering why it said I had admin privileges when I went to “edit my profile” link. the banner is an admin bar.
  
  so I’m just now wrapping my head around what really happened here. BB decided to publish with WP. To manage comments, they chose WP add-on Disqus. I have to join Disqus to comment on BB (boo!) which de-facto means that I have joined WP (boo!) and now I have to learn how to manage a WP profile and dashboard so I can do something that I never had to even think about before. What’s next? solving differential calculus captchas to post?
  
  I come here to relax after work, and I usually have a healthy buzz on. I’m not really trying to do more work. I wasn’t trying to join WP, either, and not with the email I used for BB, but too late now.
  
  Thanks for the confusion, appreciate the heads-up, team!
http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan “bytehead” Price

I don’t see any banner. And I certainly haven’t found any “Show Admin Bar” setting either.

I DID find a setting to change the date/time from relative to absolute. Click on “edit profile”. Select the Account tab, the change your date/time display from relative to absolute, and save it. It won’t be site specific, but oh well.

But turning on threading here (or at least allowing it be set, I know I’ve seen other Disqus sites with threading, so it has to be able to be done) might help.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  If you don’t see the admin bar, how did you edit your profile?
- noah django
  
  “Account tab”?

http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/0.1/ Paul Laroquod

No response about the violation of privacy policy? Alright guys, but next time you post some article criticising some other site for violating their privacy policy, the kind of commentary you get is going to be… well, let’s just say different from what you are used to.

Phoc Yu

Is the ability to put pictures in a permanent feature or one undergoing testing? If it’s the latter, I’d like to register my negative feedback. It’s jarringly out of place – even with thumbnails – and so far hasn’t added much to the discussions in instances where I’ve seen it used. I’d hate to see the boards become filled with animated gifs and memes and see actual discussion forced out. Providing an option to filter would be a nice option.

Also, I’m possibly daft, but where is this admin bar? My page never finishes loading (Safari on Mac), so maybe that’s the last part that normally loads. All I see is an option to be notified by email (which also doesn’t work).

CastanhasDoPara

@ petsounds, noah django, others… If all of this was so important to you to begin with why in the hell did you register your BB account with an email address that you cared about?? or could be easily tracked back to your precious actual identity?? it seems fairly silly or unmindful for starters(even as cool as BB is I still don’t really trust them not to do the sort of shit that basically everybody is capable of much as I don’t trust anybody on the internet). I myself am very privacy conscious and as such when I registered (guessing about 4-5 years ago) I used an account I have set up just for this sort of place (which at the time I didn’t know whether or not I would stick around or not) I am glad to be here and partake in the on-going conversation. Given that it seems you have two options, suck it up, or quit this place (or create a new account and start over). Privacy on the net is what you make it and as it seems to me you only have yourselves to blame. Sorry if that comes off as flippant or dismissive but seriously…(I’m sure you can fill in this blank).

All that said, I am a little disturbed with all of this hoopla, it does indeed seem to go against the tenets of BB.

Surely the aneurism is imminent.

And what the f’n hell is up with this comment box? After every CR it tries to add a ‘sort of’ random users name ahead of the initial ‘@’ and when I type an ‘@’ the list of seemingly random users pops up below the box. Going to attach the snip for any interested folks/mods.

http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/0.1/ Paul Laroquod

That defence of Boing Boing sucks, because essentially you are saying that privacy policies don’t matter and websites should be free to break them, and users should just take that into account when they give their information, that the policies aren’t actually worth anything. Not only do I disagree with you on that, but an increasing number of US state laws do, as well.

The contractor for website functionality thing sounds acceptable as an exception (as long as Disqus had to sign an NDA to accept the contract — otherwise, not really). But yeah it really needs to be written into the actual policy.
- CastanhasDoPara
  
  That’s not at all what I was saying. The meat of what I meant was that ‘privacy on the net is what you make of it.’ To clarify, placing your trust in people that you barely know is foolhardy at best for several reasons. For one, people make promises and people make mistakes (intentional or unintentional) and for another, shit happens (data thieves, espionage, govt thugs). Ulitmately, the only person you can (or should) trust is yourself.
  
  I do appreciate you position and BB’s lack of warning or opt-out IS seriously questionable. But privacy policies are just quasi-contractual instruments to protect the quotidian net user from their own ignorance. For people that know how the net works it seems a better policy to be defensive in general and to not trust people you hardly know. For me I never expect any system to do the right thing 100% of the time, especially when humans are involved at any stage. FWIW privacy policies are good and necessary and should not be broken freely as that only alienates people but here in the real world it should be known that people don’t always act the way you would like them to, in my experience people rarely act the way I would like them to and as such I always hope for the best but plan for the worst.

CastanhasDoPara

Aw, crap, forgot that pix are held for mods. Shoot… well it’s all good. Just wait for it. Trust me it’s worth it.

t3kna2007

Telegram link is still down. ;)

http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

Is there an easy way to see replies to my comments? Right now the only way I can find it is by going to the front page, logging in, clicking through to a blog post, then clicking on my username.

http://twitter.com/fullakingi Kingi Gilbert

poor BB, this is the biggest bug-list ever! nice work however.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Kyle-Dekker/1193292504 Kyle Dekker

you
guys broke the javascript thingy that the old boinboing had where you
pressed the keys ‘j’ and ‘k’ in your keyboard and the page would scroll
to the next or previous article. that extremely useful. please bring it
back! thank you!!!

s2redux

Not trying to stir the pot, but feel it’s worth pointing out that the Commenting Policy page has returned from its hiatus (albeit not updated), and it now accepts comments. If it’s intentional, perhaps that’s a more convenient spot to hash out these issues (and if it’s not, then a heads-up to Rob/Antinous to work on making it a static page).

BB gets WordPress, Disqus, new machines

More at Boing Boing