Disqus - Latest Comments for Niclas

Re: Being Random: Why I'm Not an Apple Fan #11

Niclas — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:52:04 -0000

Because—some of—the fanbase rubs me the wrong way. :)

As much as I like Gruber, he has his annoying moments.

2009/8/1 Disqus <>

Re: Being Random: Why I'm Not an Apple Fan #11

Niclas — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:33:28 -0000

Because—some of—the fanbase rubs me the wrong way. :)

As much as I like Gruber, he has his annoying moments.

2009/8/1 Disqus <>

Re: Subscribe by email? Yes Please!

Niclas — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:08:27 -0000

Finally! :P

Re: Moderators, this one is for you!

danowen79 — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:04:28 -0000

Yes, a spoiler tag would be invaluable for my blog. Too often the "preview box" on the front page contains spoilers in people's comments for film/TV shows. It would be great if they could make their spoilers invisible, or something with a <spoiler>blah blah blah </spoiler> tag, or whatnot.

Re: The Image/File Hosting Problem

Niclas — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:39:59 -0000

I finally recalled the term I was looking for to succinctly make my point (I could only remember it in Danish): Cumulative information.

Don't start over and archive the previous writing every single time but try to delve into all the topics as deeply as possible, and whether they've been dissected to the point of exhaustion or not, always put the newfound or -disseminated knowledge together in a summary - a synthesis. Some people do this in the form of a book; others find other ways to do it.

A little late, but the the term was important to clarify my remarks.

Re: Moderators, this one is for you!

Niclas — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:10:24 -0000

Either a collapsible box or a black cover highlight the reader has to mark as seen here.

Re: Moderators, this one is for you!

giannii — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:55:59 -0000

A spoiler tag eh.. What would you suggest?

Giannii
DISQUS
Community Manager
help@disqus.com
http://twitter.com/giannii

Re: Moderators, this one is for you!

Niclas — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:25:25 -0000

Nice to finally see it implemented.

This reminds me that Disqus needs a spoiler tag for discussion of fiction, be it movies, TV, literature, videogames, etc. (Along with other tags, of course, but this one is more urgent than others).

Re: The Image/File Hosting Problem

plagiarismtoday — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:05:30 -0000

Thank you very much for this and I do not read it as a criticism at all. I appreciate the help. I am going to take some time to consider this and will probably work on some of your points shortly. I do need some time to digest though, quite a lot here :)

Thank you very much for your help and suggestions. They are very much appreciated!

Re: The Image/File Hosting Problem

Niclas — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:09:28 -0000

Thanks for the follow-up.

Side note: I just remembered how I found your site; I Google-searched FeedBlitz after reading this article.

You seem to be keeping yourself well-covered with all the bookmarking links, along with a presence on Disqus, Twitter, and, to some extent, Tumblr. The use of the two latter might be extended by creating yet another set of profiles to use for new article headline notification by means of RSS. The tool HootSuite supports it for Twitter, I believe, while Tumblr has a native RSS syndication feature, though I am not aware of whether it merely posts the article titles or the articles themselves verbatim.

Social Web aggregation sites BackType and FriendFeed (check out the beta) could also be some pastures you would want to look into. BackType aggregates your presence in commenting across various systems, while FriendFeed aggregates the bulk of whatever online presences you have across the whole web. Additionally, Disqus allows you to merge what people on FriendFeed say about your blog with your homepage's Disqus comments, though it may imply ruining any structured, linear on-going debate. Alternatively, the two can be separated by means of the feature called Social Media Reactions, which also shows comments from such sites as Twitter.

If I were to have one main gripe about the vast majority of websites, it's that they lend you the impression that if you didn't follow the blog from the start, you have no way of acquiring the knowledge shared up until know, unless you use the archive button and keep going back, back, back ... and back. To some extent, it creates an image of the blog posts not mattering particularly, merely serving as SEO- and money-driven content, which is clearly not the case for you and such a site as Daily Blog Tips. Some site owners, however, see this problem and publish books based on what they've written, making it available, i.e. accessible, in an organized fashion. This is both a boon to the selected few who've been with the blog from the start, as they no longer have to go through a mess of disorganized bookmarks, whenever the author struck a chord with them; and as for the, newcomers, they save time by having the author trim all the information, eschewing out redundancies and earlier versions, leaving only what is best and what (still) matters. Not to mention the general advantages of print versus digital.

In your case, newcomers would get to see your recommendation for the best watermarking or plagiarism detection tool, rather than seeing you go through the lot of them without getting a tangible idea about which you prefer, and, conclusively, recommend. As I take a second glance at your articles, a great lot of them concerns discussions of services and tools; even so after reading them, I don't get the impression that I've learned whether the products discussed are among the best or worst of the bunch. It reads like a news blog "X new product is out; let's take a look at it"; rather, I'd like a review or sorts and a summary at the end telling me if it's one of the best, and, bad or not, what the best products in the business is according to you. Compare it to a mobile phone review, which, ideally, would state something along the lines of "Is the new BlackBerry an iPhone killer? (...) A great product, which might rival the iPhone, which we believe to be the best in the market; these and these aspect set them apart. Take your pick according to which characteristics you find to your liking". And, possible, separating the legalese articles from the product reviews might be a feasible suggestion. I have only just discovered your blog, so I'm not entirely sure how much they make up of your articles, but just an observation on my part.

Otherwise, your older articles seem to get left behind, even though full use could be taken of them; some of them needs to build upon each other like the aforementioned review articles in order for them to keep their legitimacy. Not that you need to organize it in a book in order for it to work (even though lulu.com makes such a prospect surmountable), but allow your readers to study various topics that fit their own agenda, and see the conclusion of various articles on the same topic as aforementioned. You've already anticipated this to a joyous extent in relation to DMCA-filing guidelines as seen in the top menu bar. More of that philosophy applied to the entirety of your articles. Not doing so tends to put articles of a certain age into retirement, lest someone stumbles upon them, or if you link back to them in a newer article. Doing so ensures that people bookmark your site and stick to visiting it regularly, rather than meandering towards it, whenever it's dugg or slashdotted, likening it to a site like Cracked.com, which uses a model of word of mouth and striking a chord with particular articles rather than keeping the same userbase who RSS it. Database and knowledge repository versus article dispenser, one might put it crudely. Compare Wikipedia to New York Times if you will. If you use Google Analytics (or a similar service), your bounce rate might yield some interesting info, though I've yet to get my hands dirty trying Analytics out in detail.

As for to reeling in more visitors, I would expect some targeted zeitgeist articles to get some attention, at least if you could arrange for some lobbying users to spread the word. One thing that I believe would garner attention is the overlooked, but very important, topic of copyright for forum posts - and, less interestingly, blog comments. The details on this matter to an outsider are somewhat murky, and not knowing your rights on the matter might be a disincentive to partake in larger discussion. Of course, the role of the victim is as interesting as the one of the perpetrator, who may in fact not know about his or her own transgressions. And what's the responsibility and role of the forum owner in all this - to both parties in the dispute, notwithstanding? Also; what legal parameters exist depending on the nationality and/or location of the victim, perpetrator, victim's hosting service, perpetrator's hosting service, etc. Whose country's jurisdiction, laws, et al are in effect? To a non-American citizen, how much of all this - and by effect, the topics of your blog - applies to my predicament?

Another topic is the tendency for to copy-paste news articles on a forum verbatim, even though this clearly infringes copyright.On videogame forums - which frankly make up the entirety of the biggest forums - magazine scans can often be seen embedded. (The biggest two forums within this sphere of discussion being NeoGAF and Something Awful, the former being the most tangible in terms of overview, which also means that it would be more likely to get slashdotted, if they posted some of your writing - hopefully not verbatim!). As an extra spice, you could make your "internet forum legal guidelines" available by means of Creative Commons, perhaps allowing for verbatim copy-pasting, assuming proper attribution. That way, you'd get some exposure while ensuring a cleaner legal environment in an otherwise grey area of internet jurisprudence.

Don't read this as some scorching criticism; just as remarks regarding untapped potential of an already great site.

Re: The Image/File Hosting Problem

plagiarismtoday — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:53:17 -0000

Good point. I covered the DMCA issue but not the server one.

The biggest factor in my decision to move back to one server (before moving my static files to Amazon S3) was that I purchased a VPS. My server can handle many, many times the load it carries now. If I were sloppier with caching and didn't move my static files to S3, that wouldn't likely be the case, but right now my load is a very small fraction of the max it can handle.

The VPS has weathered several traffic spikes already without a problem so I am not too worried.

As far as the site not getting as much of a following that it deserves, I'm not 100% sure why either. Some of it is my doing, the name is terrible, I admit that. Some of it is that a measured, effective approach at licensing and protecting content strategically just isn't cool, read the articles on Digg and Techmeme and you'll see what I mean, and some of it is just that the keywords this topic creates are snoozers.

However, we have been a period of pretty rapid growth the past month or so, I guess we'll see...

Thanks for the interest and if you have any ideas on how to get this site more "out there", I am definitely open.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/04/as-feedburner-flails-and-fails.html

Niclas — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:51:47 -0000

This article regarding FeedBlitz is somewhat disconcerting. I don't know the development from that point on, for one because the author hasn't done a follow-up (which his last comment would indicate), but at any rate, it doesn't lend to the credence of FeedBlitz being the immaculate alternative to FeedBurner, no matter what you think of the latter.

Can anyone elucidate some of the seeming caveats related to FeedBlitz?

Re: The Image/File Hosting Problem

Niclas — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:35:55 -0000

This covers your discussion on hypothetical DMCA suits. But what about the second part of your previous blog post pertaining to countering slashdotting?

What changed your opinion, initially arguing that keeping all your eggs in one basket would have your site go down, if your traffic spiked - not to mention the costs increase if you are using a dynamically priced scalable bandwidth?

Newcomer to your blog, by the way. Love it, and I'm confounded that it hasn't received a bigger following as of yet.

Re: Upgraded! Interface and Performance

Niclas — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:41:37 -0000

"Clout" seems to have been preserved, in spite of the arrow system being removed. How come?

Re: New Disqus Look And Feel

Niclas — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:56:04 -0000

Good point about the potential for abuse, and one I forgot to bring up. It's like we almost need a third system for how good people are at using the arrows system. =)

My reply is by no means a suggestion of a ready-to-ship solution - just one trying to highlight some of the pros and cons of previous and current approaches. Not that you don't know that, obviously, but just to the clarification of anyone reading my remark who risk misconstruing it.

The current, albeit temporary, system is a clear sign that you are taking all input into consideration and are constantly trying to improve on and (re)innovate your own core philosophies. Keep at it.

EDITED 03/23
A(n optional) local reputation point economy for every blog could be a way to tackle the issue. Another one would be to only allow trustworthy people to rate comments. The way this would work would be by the Disqus staff starting out as the only people able to rate other comments. You could facilitate this process by appointing people you know to be competent enough to perform this task. When a person receives a certain rating, s/he is able to rate other comments, and can thus carry on doing the entrusted moderation. In time, this trickle-down effect will permeate across the interwebs and allow a great many people to moderate comments, still depriving newcomers and mischievous twits the chance to ruin the system - much.

At least as an experiment to run - just, I dunno, to try the model in general, aside from the interest and relation to Disqus alone.

Re: New Disqus Look And Feel

danielha — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:40:03 -0000

Thank you for this feedback -- if I could double Like this comment, I would. I just read this and I will definitely read it again.

There are a few communities that split up positive feedback and do it well. Sometimes, it becomes a bit too confusing for the most casual of users. With Disqus, we had initial trouble with getting people to use the Up Arrows appropriately in the first place, let alone categorizing the intention. I strongly believe the new "Like" replacement is more explicit and meaningful. The removal of "down rating" is key for us as well, as it's open to a lot of abuse. We've already seen its usage momentum take over the arrows, though it may be the effect of being new and novel.

I'll give this more thought though, of course. Also, we'll be making the textarea much more accommodating for long posts.

Re: New Disqus Look And Feel

fredwilson — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:19:20 -0000

Thanks for a detailed discussion of this issue. I am certain the disqus team
will think hard about this.

Re: New Disqus Look And Feel

Niclas — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:05:04 -0000

Regarding the the avatar pop-up, it doesn't seem to parse paragraph breaks. Makes for a horrible read, taking my previous reply into consideration, just to name an example.

Re: New Disqus Look And Feel

Niclas — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:12:13 -0000

First of all, before I proceed, I love everything else but the change in rating/voting. As I am writing this rather long comment, I see the obvious need for a "Preview" button or at least an expandable reply box, if I am to avoid getting completely lost in my own reply. A "Draft" feature and optional "Post reply X minutes after pressing Send" might also help remedy jumbled, rambling comments as well. At any rate, I hope the clutter in this reply doesn't reflect the lack of such a feature too much. As for said change:

Style vs. Content - making sense of what rating and liking means
Up-rating as opposed to Down-rating always seemed like an odd fit; it never became clear what the motive for Up-rating was, and isn't now. Being out of line warranted a Down-rating, but not being didn't warrant an Up-rating - but Down-votes had a specific, visible impact on your commenting capabilities and single comments, depending on what responses they received, calling for the need to be Up-rated now and then. Unless a "Negative rate decay rate" was implemented. There are two grounds for voting on a comment: Style and Content. Style, as in whether the person is being an ass or a well-mannered commenter, and Content as in whether you agree or disagree with what the person is actually saying - language or format aside. You can have a good point but be an ass about it. Et cetera.

Using this approach, we have two categories: Style and Content. To me, style represents the old Up and Down votes. People may have good points, but they aren't worth listening to if they won't act like adults. Content pertains to whether you disagree with what the person is (actually, format aside) saying. If you wholeheartedly agree with a comment, you like or reblog it. If you don't, big deal, life moves on.

If you happen to be arguing with a republican against gun control you disagree with, chances are that you might end up Up-voting him because he is presenting his views in such an enlightening and civil manner. Or, as we've seen on Disqus' support form, when your average idiot takes an irate swing at Daniel in the most infantile and self-aggrandizing manner, Daniel always manages to keep his cool and reply in a tone he would use with his own mother-in-law. Such an effort and capacity is by no doubt laudable - and can be rewarded by an Up-rating, as this pertains to a code of conduct - style. The theme, and not the language, of the discussion itself falls into the category of Content.

Filtering and automoderation
The removal of Up- and Down-rating has the adverse consequence on my part as an admin that I have to moderate Every Single Comment.. What attracted me to Disqus when I first saw it was the capabilities of automoderation - assuming I have a blog with a following large enough to ensure that each comment goes through some sort of vetting, as seen on such sites as Digg. I'm practically crowdsourcing volunteers to make sure that the comments on my site aren't overtaken by blithering idiots. With the removal of the arrow-voting, this is no longer an option, save for users using Report to bring to my attention a comment that the user doesn't want to wait for to be down-rated, before it's removed. Or, if the other users for some reason don't see the reason to reprimand or remove the comment, meaning that it will keep being displayed.

On the, now, previous system, people mixed up Style and Content, ensuring that you would never be able to use Disqus for discussing politics, as democrats would down-vote republicans and vice versa. Back then, I called upon a feature that made it possible to disable rating on a per-post basis to avoid this. Otherwise you'd have to pander to the lowest common denominator to avoid stepping on anyone's toes, and what meager and trivial discussion would this encourage? Sure, idiotic remarks would be disencouraged, but intense discussions would effectively be killed

I would like an accommodation of a system that included, and separated, voting on Style and Content, but I see the caveat of people mixing up the two, resulting in good comments being filtered, because they reflect a different or controversial viewpoint. But if there's a place Disqus would be a godsent tool or vehicle, it's in discussing important - and thereby controversial - topics. Just think about it might do on a global scale of enlightenment and education.

Re: Feature: Request deletion of comment

Niclas — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:06:16 -0000

Re: Separate internal disqus.disqus comments from others

Niclas — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:38:09 -0000

When I go to your profile to stalk on your comments, the ones you've made outside of Disqus are grouped together with the ones you've made at Disqus.

It serves a different interest to see your Disqus-related comments, which is why I'm suggesting separating the two types of comments; your Disqus comments aren't likely to be of any interest to anyone but you. Or, at least more likely.

Disqus.disqus.com mostly serves as a support forum, and people might not be as interested in the kinks, the person has run into as the remarks they have made about American politics.

Re: Allow differentiation of moderators via bg color

Niclas — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:12:05 -0000

The text field background for admins and moderators alike can be changed as Daniel so patiently showed me here. Other variables than text background should be alterable as well.

I haven't fidgeted a lot with Disqus CSS, but I don't think there's a separate class for moderators vs. admins. Feel free to experiment, though.

Re: Allow differentiation of moderators via bg color

phrakture — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:54:30 -0000

Well, actually yes and no. I was looking for a way to vary something (background color, in this instance) when an admin, moderator, or regular user posts. As far as I know, the only way to do this with CSS is to have custom CSS entries with crazy selectors indicating specific usernames.

If you know a way to easily distinguish _anyone_ at the CSS level, please let me know.

What I was really requesting, is some different indicator for a moderator, admin, or user. Something like:
<div id="comment12345" class="normalcomment">joe: I'm some guy commenting</div>
<div id="comment12346" class="modcomment">me: I am the moderator and I am awesome</div>

Re: Allow differentiation of moderators via bg color

Niclas — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:24:16 -0000

Sorry, I must've been sleep-deprived or something; I thought you requested something to set the admin apart from the users (thinking about a special background colour for instance), and not admin vs. moderator.

Re: liquify ≠ liquefy

Niclas — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:17:17 -0000

No problem; I just construed your usual X ≠ Y model as X being common, improper spelling and Y as the proper one. No doubt that it's true within its own context.