All Things in Moderation…
After some discussion, Diane and I have come to the conclusion that the SPAM comments we’ve been getting here on the blog are both inappropriate and overwhelming. We’ve looked into ways to block and/or control the SPAM and have determined that our current version of WordPress (our blogging software) does not have adequate filters.
The Good News
More recent versions of WP seem to have better SPAM controls. To that end, we will be asking the WPG to upgrade and install some nifty plug-ins that will allow us to vanquish these evil doers.
The Mediocre News
This will take some time, as their To-Do list is long and we have several projects that rank far ahead of this one.
The Bad News
In an effort to spare our sanity in the mean time, I have turned on the moderation feature for comments. What this means is that all comments will go into a queue for approval before they are made live to the site. This will allow us to block the SPAM manually. With a little luck, it will also teach the spammers themselves that they’re wasting their time; causing them to stop. (Okay. So. Translate “a little luck” to “a honking miracle” and you’re more on track…)
There are implications in moderating a discussion that I would like to address now–before anyone has the chance to be upset by them.
Moderation can sometimes suggest that discussions are controlled by those with the ability to moderate. That is, it will now be possible for me to simply ignore comments that I (or we) do not like, choosing not to make them public. Given the ambient paranoia level around here, it seems likely to me that, at some point, someone will accuse me (us) of doing this in an effort to spin things in a manner that is less than truthful or in a direction that paints Cornell/the OWC in only the best of lights.
Here’s the deal. Please get your glasses and put them on, because I am only going to say this once and I want to make sure there are no alternate interpretations.
All legitimate comments will be made live. Legitimate, in this case, translates to anything that is not SPAM.
All legitimate comments will be made live.
If you disagree with me, I will make your comment live.
If you tell me you hate what we are doing, I will make your comment live.
If you tell me that you hate the new logo, the guidelines surrounding it, and the website that houses them, I will make your comment live.
If you think the new site is ugly as sin and feel the need to detail everything you find wrong with it, I will make your comment live.
If you feel the need to get personally abusive, I will make the comment live. I will also reserve the right to respond or ignore you openly as I see fit.
Questions? Comments? Gripes? I’ll make those live, too, gosh darn it.
If the concept of moderated discussion bothers you (it bothers me, for the record), the best I can offer is this: we’re working on better ways to block the spam and have every intention of opening things back up once they can be put into place. I ask for your patience. And…maybe your tracking skills so we can hunt down the spammers and dispatch them like the miscreants they are.
Okay. Go be upset by the implications now. Kick something inanimate. It will make you feel better.
Lisa
PS. In case you’re wondering just how much SPAM it takes to prompt a decision like this one…between Diane and myself, we spent the better part of four hours yesterday deleting the hundreds of messages that came in over the holiday break. Hundreds. Hundreds.
Just saw the site updates… looks great, but doesn’t appear correctly on my display. The CU Logo is not centered vertically.
It’s sunday at 7:37 PM, and I see that the updates to the home page have been made. The page looks very busy right now. I think it could be improved in the following ways:
1. Truncate News/Welcome so that only News and Welcome appear. When the mouse passes over these words, a column should drop down with the pics and links (forgive me if this is the programming equivalent of asking you to build a time machine)
2. Removes the “Any Person, Any Study” quote. Now that the attribution to Ezra has been added, this has become more of an eyesore. Not to mention, it reeks of corporate marketing. Cornell is technically a business, but I feel that what Cornellians desire is a simple, elegant, and austere presentation of our wonderful Ivy League school.
3. Remove the cut-outs at the bottom right of the pictures. These seem to go hand in hand with the “Any Person, Any Study” corporate-marketing-ness. They are bringing down what we consider a website with fantastic form and function.
Thanks for your time and work
This spam problem and the lack of comments or posts has made this blog very disappointing.
Ezra Cornell never said “Any person…Any study.” He said, at most, “….[A]ny person…[A]ny study” which just highlights what all seem to agree is the silliness of continuing to use this truncated epigramatic substitute on the web site. Why don’t we just relegate the full quote, and its historical and any contemporary meaning, to a “history” link?
I have to sort of agree with Roger Evans. “Any person..any study” works OK as a slogan, but it sucks as a quote. I grew up with the full quote–my father had Cornell notebooks all over the house–and it was one of the things that helped me decide to come here (along with the fact that my father probably wouldn’t have paid for anything else). The short version invokes that feeling for me and probably other alums, but I think it may look cryptic to the uninitiated. Putting it in quotes and attributing it to Ezra probably intensifies that: it looks like a sort of secret shorthand that you know somebody’s supposed to understand but you don’t.
I use WP Blacklist on my WordPress blog and comment spam has been dramatically reduced to almost nothing. You can get it here: http://sm.farook.org/WPBlacklist.htm
err…not sure where else to put this, but if you’d like to consider trying out Movable Type, please get in touch with me. We love Matt and WordPress too, sometimes, MT is just better for certain tasks.
sorry for the spam.