Tag: MetaFilter

Home Tag: MetaFilter

Commenting and Spam

Technology, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Phil Ringnalda has an interesting post about comments, moderation and spam. As someone who developed my own blog software (part of the interest in running a blog, as far as I’m concerned is in testing out my development chops), I thought long and hard about how to approach comments and avoid spam. My solution was more restrictive than most but works for me. Gated Community The reason I decided to first ask people to register before being able to comment was based on the observation of several online communities. Metafilter, Slashdot and Kuro5hin all opted for solutions that required registration first. Granted, requiring that people register requires some extra work and slows down the amount of people commenting but it’s based on the concept that most people that read a particular site are returning visitors. A look at my server logs shows that this may largely be the case: Generally, I get traffic from roughly the same ratio of sites to visitor. There must be a golden mean in here somewhere as to how this works. From there, I took one extra step, which is to require that people verify their email. TNL.net users are all verified based on an…

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Faces of 9-11: First links coming in

Personal, Politics, , , , ,

Earlier this week, I decided to start passing the word about a new project I’d like to do as a 9/11 memorial. Some links have started to come in, albeit early but, as promised, I am posting them. So here is the first collection: Metafilter has a thread about this A small victory.net Jane Davis James Lileks Some great stuff here… It’s kind of interesting because with every new entry that comes in, I get a clearer sense of my own feelings. I’m still struggling on writing my entry, it’s a tough assignment but one that I think matters… On a related notes, the Smithsonian Institution has just launched the 9/11 digital archive, a very deeply moving site on its own.

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A declaration of bloggerdom

Business, Personal, , , , , , , ,

Ed suggested in a Metafilter thread that we come up with a blogging vow of chastity similar to the one Dogme film-makers did in 1995. Here’s my stab at a first draft of this: Declaration of bloggerdom We are bloggers. We are individuals. We are not for sale We are not a target market. We link to sites because we find them interesting, not because we think we’ll get free goods or money out of our links. If we have a relationship with a product/company/service/person we link to, we will disclose it in the same post. We believe in contributing. We believe in truth. Our writing is our own. Our words are our own. Like them or not, our opinions are our own, too. It’s a start. But does it need more?

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What are weblogs?

Media, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It seems that my bit of navel gazing about blogs has attracted a lot of attention. Among some of the things that came up, though, is that there is no clear agreement as to what blogs are. So in the search for definition, I went back to trying to figure out what people mean when they talk about weblogs and whether blogs are indeed journalism. If you take Dave Winer’s definition, you end with a definition that is much more limited than thinking of blogs as journalistic tools. Let’s examine the four basic tenet Winer presents as the basis for a blog: A weblog is personal: if that is truly the case, what does this mean for “community weblogs” like Slashdot and Metafilter ? Things they are not driven by a single person, can they truly be called weblogs? And what about the whole trend of companies setting up weblogs? Doesn’t that go against this concept? A weblog is on the Web: It’s pretty much a given (hence the weblog name). But so are web pages? What is the big difference between a Geocities personal page and a weblog? Is there any? Is it just the rate of updates? A…

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