Happy Opening Day of Baseball to all who celebrate, but especially the guy who wore a throwback Mike Piazza Marlins jersey to Yankees opening day. You’re a hero. As you may have noticed, we introduced a new commenting system yesterday. Things seem to be operating fairly well so far, but there are a couple of issues and one (good) change we’re immediately employing.
1. Email Notifications Are Turned Off By Default Now
We had the site setup so that anyone who commented would receive information via email pretty much any time someone replied to a comment. I liked this feature, but if you comment a lot it can result in a lot of emails. We’ve turned this off, but you can still get replies via email by clicking the subscribe button above the comment bar:
Unfortunately, the side effect of this seems to be that the little orange reply notifications aren’t working? For now, we’re going to keep email notifications off so we don’t overwhelm anyone’s inbox. We’ll try to get this feature separated so it works without the auto-emails. Though, if you like the emails, let me know.
2. We’re Reducing Spam Moderation And Turning On Approved Comments
The spammers (they don’t appear to be bots) who show up from time-to-time kept adapting what they said to bypass our spam filter. As their phrases evolved, it ended up causing more people who were not spammers to get caught up in moderation. We’ve since changed our site moderation policy to: only those with approved comments can reply. This means that, if you’ve never commented before, you may have to wait. At the same time, we dialed our filter down, so fewer of you should be caught in moderation. This should be a net improvement.
3. Appearance Weirdness
We are getting reports of comments sometimes not appearing. We’re looking into them.
Thanks!
Testing, let’s see how this goes
Your ping is pong.
You crashed the servers. Great job.
I never knew about the skyliner, now I want one.
Unfortunately cheapest one for sale is about €60.000
I’ve got a ’59 that I’m happy to let go for substantially less than that if you’re willing to make the profoundly misguided mistake of taking on someone else’s disassembled project, which is the same mistake I made when I got it. It’s not a good idea.
Yeah I dunno about y’all, but I haven’t gotten any notifications about replies to my comments at all, despite going back later and finding that there were in fact replies to my comments which I was simply not notified of.
The only notifications I’ve gotten via email were about my comments being approved, which I guess is good since that means you know I’m not spamming you.
Yep – same here, except I did get a few emails early on.
Test? Test.
Are the orange notifications supposed to be for anyone that comments (newly) on a story? Because that’s what I’m getting instead of notifications for replies to my comment, which I thought was the idea…I dunno, just asking 🙂
That does seem to be what’s happening now! Lol.
Yep, I just got an orange notification for a new reply to a comment that wasn’t mine! Those orange notifications are a nice and unusual feature, though I’d still like to see notifications on replies to comments when I’m not in the post itself, like when I’m looking at the homepage.
Ja, that’s what’s happening to me now. It’s not replies to my last post (regardless of page), but any/all new replies to the article that’s on the page.
Test test test. No Mayo. Test.
Big improvements, thanks.
It’s like 2010 all over again, it’s a pleasure to experience the technical advancements again. (-;
What’s cool is that I can now find all of my old comments, which made me check on my first one – in which I ordered you guys to poach Mercedes from that other site. Good job.
I started off with a remark about good cotomer sevis, apparently.
…which is also oddly checking out so far.
I can’t seem to find it! Where can you see your old comments? 😛
Agreed, I’m unable to find anything.
Right under the input box, and right next to the “[##] COMMENTS” heading, there’s a little person-outline with a gear. It should pop over with “My content and settings” if you hover over it. Click that, hit the Activity tab, which brings up all of your comments. Then hit the >> at the bottom to navigate to the oldest page of your comments. It should be there.
This was my first post that wasn’t “test”. My how much has changed and some not at all in a year, lol…
“The best part of the whole vid was at the very end with how hard DT was eyeing those garbage chairs on the sidewalk. “They’re perfectly good…” Ha!”
That is ridiculously obscure.
Thank you! That works! 🙂
There was a mysterious little button somewhere that did it, but I don’t know where I found it any longer.
Look for the lightning and the fire and then look left until you hit a little person with gears.
I’m not sure you can see a comment history other than your own.
(It’s also entirely possible that I’ve misinterpreted, and you’re looking for your own old comments, not those of mr.choppers or anyone else.)
Waiting?! But I need my spur-of-the-moment hot take validated by strangers on the internet immediately!
Man, I got so excited by that Skyliner that I didn’t even read the tagline – then got disappointed. I spent a lot of time as an 80s kid riding to car shows in my dad’s ’59, thinking it was the coolest thing.
Hooray! I’m excited to not get caught up in the spam filter as often lol
I’m down for whatever….I like this place, even if there is A LOT of EV crap being blasted into my face daily…
Ironic, as it’s ICEs that mostly spew crap into my face…
No, you’re thinking of animals. ICEs spew gases. If your ICE is emitting solid waste, that is abnormal and you should consult your mechanic immediately.
Really consistent article with the no nonsense approach Autopian takes. Love to see it flourish. (For those camera nerds out there, lets help website DPReview survive, same ethos.)
Well, now the orange notifications appear to be back?
I’m seeing the orange notification come up for new comments coming in since I loaded the page.
Where should they be appearing?
Dadgummit, I knew I shouldn’t have unsubscribed to all of my posts. Where am I lookin’ for these? Not seeing them on Firefox.
I assume the Ford retractable hardtop was chosen as emblematic of what it takes to overcome a host of technical difficulties and to establish long-term viabili… Well, one out of two, anyway.
Testy McTestface
Heh heh, you said “testy.”
(Testes.)
First comment on the new system, lets see how it works out!
Thanks again for the upgrades. We know it’s a process.
Wrote too soon. Refreshed again and now they are gone again.
It seems (for me at least) that if the comments don’t appear initially, refreshing the page can make them show up.
I mean I see Matt’s comment, and Catman, but it says 8 comments were made
Whenever I can’t see any comments, or the number of them does not match the count, I just hit refresh and they all appear
Overall this is working great and it is a learning curve to get to the activity center. I can see the comment when in a post but that may be limited to that article. I have stumbled into the full list of my comments, just can’t do it every time.
tap tap tap
Thanks for the update. Aside from unwanted emails, the only thing I’ve noticed ( and it doesn’t happen all the time) is that no comments appear when it’s indicated there are some. If I’ve commented, I can press on the icon that shows a list of my comments and then all comments on that article, including mine, appear. But really, pretty smooth rollout, I’d say.
This is also happening to me. Annoying, but I’ll take a few glitches for the ability to EDIT!
Are all members automatically not spam, or is there a chance we end up back in the “grays”?
You should not get stuck in “the grays” unless you inadvertently say something very specifically spammy (unlikely) or put a ton of links into one post (more than 5). Otherwise, it should be pretty rare.
Ok folks, let’s see how this goes!
Thanks for working on this – hope on-site notifications start working properly soon!
Edit – I’m seeing the orange circle now, but related to your reply to Swedish Jeep above (which was highlighted). It may now be showing up for ALL unread comments on a article? Yes – I’m seeing it pop up now with each new comment on this article. I didn’t see it at all yesterday or this morning, FYI.