A comment on the comments
There’s a certain amount of blog work that goes on behind the scenes, particularly in the comments section.
First there’s the cleanup of spam, which initially involves deleting the contents of the spam filter. You’ll understand how important that filter is when I tell you that I delete about 10,000 spam comments a day. Spam must be profitable in gaming the Google algorithm, or whatever the goals are, because it has proliferated in recent years to a point that would be completely overwhelming without the spam filter.
Then there’s my own quick sweep of the comments section to try to weed out the spam that has somehow eluded the net. There are always a few spam comments that get through, so I delete them as best I can.
Then there are the trolls. Trolls are not spam, and although they are even more unpleasant than spam, they are (fortunately) not more numerous. But they are numerous enough. They seem to come in waves, directed perhaps by a certain link to something I’ve written, or by the content of certain posts of mine, or maybe just by the way the wind is blowing on the left (that used to be the main source of trolls) or in Trumpland (the most recent source). I allow some, delete and/or ban the worst, and argue with a few if I happen to feel like it that day.
What remains is the substantive discussion. I know that some blogs have up to a thousand or more comments on thread after thread after thread, and if that were the case here I don’t think I could monitor them. So far it’s quite manageable. Do I read every one? No. I skim them, though, and I respond to some I find especially intriguing, or if there’s a point I want to be sure to make so that other people might notice, or something I particularly want to refute or make a joke about or praise.
Lately I find the comments have been so interesting and substantive that I could just answer comments and skip writing new posts every day, and I’d still have my work cut out for me. But don’t worry; I plan to keep the daily posts coming. Sunday, though, will remain my day off, barring huge Sunday-breaking news stories.
neo,
Many of us have expressed appreciation for the work you do.
Well, just to be sure you get the message, here’s (yet) another.
Thanks *so* much for this resource.
Sincerely and with much respect,
M J R
I agree with you 100%!
Now find out about this One Weird Trick to becoming rich!
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Thank you for all your efforts. Thank you especially for keeping the money-making pitches out of the comments. Why can’t PJMedia do the same?
Trolls essentially seek to censor speech, in a sane world they would be identified, their citizenship revoked and permanently kicked out of the country. Of course, in a sane world they wouldn’t even exist.
Thanks, all!
GB:
I think that places like PJ don’t keep trolls out because it’s too much trouble. Also, perhaps they keep more trolls out than you think—you don’t know how many people they’re banning behind the scenes. It takes a bit of doing to police trolls, and can’t be done automatically by some sort of filter. It requires attention from actual people.
Thanks for the glimpse behind the scene.
I’m in awe of your ability to provide this blog. Certainly am glad that you get pleasure out of doing it. We readers/commenters are blessed to have you.
Neo:
“I know that some blogs have up to a thousand or more comments on thread after thread after thread…”
Sounds like you have trumpbart.com in mind.
Unlike your site, there are very few thoughtful, intelligent well-reasoned comments there among those thousands on each post. The few you find are from those diehard souls still hopelessly trying to bring back some sense of sanity to the cult. The rest are all short, often one-liners, praising and congratulating each other, repeating the Trumpian ludicrous non-sequitur du jour, or attacking Cruz and his family.
It took me an entire 30 seconds to delete my their link after I discovered the prettiest Granny Smith on the interwebs (praise be to algore.)
One of my hobbies is flightsim. I came across a long article on setting up your computer to maximize it’s capability. One tweak was to disable Google tracking. It’s a bit involved but the results have been very noticeable. My computer boots much quicker and the ad spam has decreased tremendously. Here’s the link to the article, search it for keyword Google to get around all the flightsim/computer geek stuff. Follow directions precisely.
http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html
Neo,
Thanks for the background.
I wish I had mentioned this some time ago:
The neoneocon.com comments page is mechanically the best I’ve dealt with. All the comments load at once (i.e., reloading or clicking to view additional comments is unnecessary), I can do a word search of comments to find again those to which I want to again refer, the preview button prompts my proof-reading my comments (though I still make errors), and formatting text is easy (thanks to the handy guide you provide).
And, I’ve not yet mentioned the quality of the comments:
A+++
Thanks Neo and commenters!
Ira
Neo,
This is practically the only website where I continue to read comments. Even NRO and WSJ have been overwhelmed by Trupster comments. NRO even got rid of Discus because of them. It is wonderful how you manage to attract so many thoughtful commenters who want to share experiences and insights. But then again, you have such a wide range of interests and express them so well, that it only follows that you would have great commenters. Thank you for helping me to stay informed and to expand my own range of interests.
Neo,
I hope your cranium keeps seething indefinitely! It’s the only thing keeping me sane.
Agree with expat..this is virtually the only online venue in which I read the comments. I appreciate that you make it so easy to do so.
I do wonder where some of the early, vocal Trump-firsters like PatD and K-E have gone. Or maybe they’re still commenting, but I’ve missed it. It seemed as soon as he locked up the nomination the most vocal Trumpsters disappeared…
Ira:
That’s good to hear. I hadn’t realized that about the ease of loading. I do find Discus very bad at loading, though. Some sites don’t even show comments on my cellphone, although they show them on my computer.
expat; CV; et al:
The thing is that if I didn’t police this place trolls would have taken over long ago. I moved to this site from my original Blogger (“blogspot”) blog eight years or so ago, and the reason I took the trouble to get a new design (and pay a bit of extra money) was because Blogger didn’t offer enough ways to ban trolls.
Back then the trolls were close to taking over the entire comments section. They were leftist trolls, and they were relentless. When I came here I chose this platform and design because it gave me a lot more power to ban commenters. I learned that I had to be fairly ruthless or, like weeds or invasive plants, they would totally dominate and the blog would be destroyed by them.
During the past year there were many Trump trolls who came here seeking to do the same thing. They did it to a lot of blogs, and many bloggers discovered they had to be ruthless with the ban hammer. I already was fairly ruthless with it. Sometimes it’s an easy decision—pure troll. Sometimes it’s more borderline, and I give the person many chances until he or she crosses the line. Sometimes the line is never crossed, and the person stays. Sometimes the person decides to go away of his/her own free will. There are many ways it can go, but the bottom line is if the person is not willing to be respectful, or keeps setting up strawman after strawman in order to almost continually take up everyone’s time and effort (and then keeps moving the goalposts, or not responding to the substance but just setting up a new strawman argument), then that person is sometimes banned. It’s a judgment call.
There’s no way around it if the blogger wants to keep the comments civil and substantive. I don’t announce it, either, at least not ordinarily; I don’t say “I’ve banned so and so.” So it tends to be an unobtrusive process.
@physicsguy – great link.
Also, install an ad blocker / script blocker on your browser. It is amazing how much faster browsing is on several sites. All that baggage on those sites makes for a poor user experience.
There are some sites that think they are being clever by frequently (within a space of days) changing up their scripts, so I quit going to them completely because of the frustrating battle to figure out how to make the site work again.
Some claim Disqus reduces the workload for dealing with spam. I don’t know.
@Neo – mentioned before, but worth saying again, thanks!!
This is one of the few blogs to have some semblance of a more real debate in the comments section.
Most elsewhere are hotbeds of partisans attempting to shut down conversation with a drowning stream of one liner quips attempting to one up the other.
People mistakenly think “their side” “wins” in this process. It doesn’t. They don’t.
I’m happy that there are no nested comments. That’s one thing that disappointed me in the changes over time at Belmont Club. of course, that assumes that the comments are worth reading. I believe that the comments here and at Wretchard’s are wonderful.
Except the ads at Belmont Club make my PC slow down. I’d rather not block ads since I know they help some sites stay around, but PJMedia goes overboard.
Thanks for being you, Neo.
Adding to the chorus. It’s pleasant to be able to have discussions, or just see what other people have found to augment the topic.
Thanks for going the extra mile to keep the comments civilized.
(Everyone loves beautiful flower gardens, but how many like to pull the weeds?)
I mostly read here, but I want the commentariat, as well as out hostess to know that I appreciate all of you, and that you are Badger Approved
Let me join the chorus of approval, and of gratitude to you, Neo, for putting this thing together and keeping it running so well for all these years.
I too hate “nested” commenting, and I’m so grateful that you don’t use Dreadful Disqus. I flatly refuse to comment on Disqus sites. And mostly don’t bother reading them./’
I love the cleanness of neoneocon.com. It’s easy to read, it’s uncluttered, and it doesn’t eat bandwidth like some of the “webloids.” (Web tabloids — I just made that up, do you like it? *g*)
It’s great to have the Preview, too. The only other site I know of that uses that function is Samizdata.net.
And the quality of your postings, Neo, and of the conversations here, is very good.
So, thank you very much. :>)
Love your work and I wish every writer has your thirst for understanding an issue.
Here is what Xena Warrior Princess looks like now
click here. jk
Neo: So far I have just been a “lurker”, but I will throw my two cents in at some point. I find your site so refreshing and relevant to my personal situation. I was born and raised in a Democrat, union, NYC liberal family and have slowly transitioned out of the fold. I haven’t really made a bold statement to the family but I think they are starting to figure out that I’m not with them on a lot of the issues. It’s so hard to deal with holidays, get-togethers, etc. because so much of the conversation is usually political and conducted at a high-volume high-energy level. I try to make the occasional counter point, but mostly I withdraw from the discussions. I’m just struggling to ensure that my relationships with siblings, cousins, etc. are not ruined by our disagreements. Thanks for your periodic insights on how to handle these situations.
This is an extremely interesting remark for what it says about the nature of that type of commenter.
These cannot be accidental characteristics, but are rather deliberate – or at least preferred – methods for engaging those with whom they disagree.
It’s a kind of deliberate emotional provocation or incitement using language. I guess you could call it “rhetoric” if you wanted to dignify these verbal behaviors with that title.
Related to this, I’ll note that one of the more fervently desired visitors on a blog I once frequented, was the so-called “rational liberal”. In that case, he was imagined as a liberal who would 1, stick to the initial point until the issue was resolved, 2, avoid ad hominem attacks either open or sly in the meanwhile, and 3, who would be prepared to try and justify his moral pronouncements – since it always came down to that eventually – with arguments and demonstrations that the proffered imperatives were in fact logically necessary conclusions from some more basic and agreed upon axiom or assumption.
Naturally, the entity sought was never found. And the reason it soon became abundantly obvious, was because it was a chimera; i.e., an imaginary creature cobbled together out of essentially antithetical or incompatible parts.
Because – and here’s why – the modern liberal’s moral sensibility and value system is not based on inferences drawn from what is presumed to be an objective and categorically describable human nature in the first place. That is in great measure what makes him the kind of person we refer to as a “liberal”
We conservatives, or libertarians, or non-relativists have been expecting, or hoping for, or asking for, a modern liberal to argue the political compulsion case he advocates on presumably objective grounds, or from a logical framework, which he as a relativist, nominalist, and instrumentalist when it comes to the faculty of reason, rejects right out of the box.
Thus, it is absolutely to be expected that we cannot talk to each other: since one party expects to be framing the argument on the basis of supposedly objective moral criteria, and the other on the subjective tastes and dreams which he feels entitled to try and purchase with the social capital he imagines himself as entitled to draw from others.
That is why, once the superficial matter of how much this or that really costs the treasury is disposed of, there is no further place to go insofar as judging whether “it” is even worth it, or legitimate, at any price.
It is the psychological stance of rejecting such putatively objective analyses as pointless-because-impossible, which to a large degree defines what a modern liberal is, as opposed to a conservative or a libertarian.
From the modern liberal point of view, if you don’t feel it, there is no point in discussing it.
And that unfortunately is why it is impossible to communicate regarding the “objective value” of this or that end. One party, the modern liberal party, simply does not believe in, or have any interest in, supposedly natural and objectively mandated moral (social) ends or purposes.
VoxDay ended up hiring moderators or volunteers, to moderate his comments.
“Thus, it is absolutely to be expected that we cannot talk to each other:” – DNW
This is a self defeating assumption.
Why? Because from that comes the rationale of “Why Bother?”
Then it just becomes a race to grab power and dominate the other, since, after all, we have the exclusive notion on what is right and the other won’t listen and abide.
Aside from the corruptive power of DC, this is a top reason why conservatism gets nowhere – we won’t bother to take our case and message beyond the echo chamber.