New comment policy

Filed under: Journaling
9 Comments

I've just implemented a new policy for comments:

For entries less than two weeks old, nothing has changed; anyone can comment freely.

For entries more than two weeks old, all comments are moderated, except for comments from "trusted" commenters.

If you don't want to become a trusted commenter, that's fine; your comments on old entries will still appear, they'll just have to wait for me to approve them by hand.

But if you do want to become a trusted commenter, here's a rough version of how to do it:

  1. Sign up with any of various authentication services, such as TypeKey. (I think OpenID will work too, but I might need to do some more work on that first.) The TypeKey people don't require very much info from you; it's not really a registration system, it's just a way to demonstrate that you're a human rather than a bot.
  2. Go to an entry in my journal and sign in to TypeKey or your other authentication system, and then post a comment using that identity.
  3. Wait for me to turn you into a trusted commenter.

Let me know if you run into any problems with this. I had to add some code to the Movable Type system to make it work, and my code change is kind of a hack; I've tested it minimally, but it may well still have bugs.

9 Responses to “New comment policy”

  1. Shmuel

    I don’t have a TypeKey identity, but do have one for OpenID, by virtue of having an LJ account. How would I go about using it here?

    reply

  2. Nao

    Hope you don’t mind another test!

    reply

  3. Anonymous

    Ah, I see. I can have my LJ linked (with the little LJ icon) AND a separate website AND an email address. The one thing about the little LJ icon is that if people don’t know what it is, will they click on it if they want more info about me? Or do I care? Probably not. The same is true of the TypeKey icon thingy, too.

    reply

  4. Nao

    Um. I guess I can’t. You see, I forgot to sign in first.

    I can enter an email if I don’t sign in, but once I’m signed in with my LJ id, there’s nowhere to put an email address, though I can still enter another URL for a separate website, if I want.

    (BTW, do you mean that to be an OpenID sign in or for LJ users only ? If so, you might want to use the little OpenID icon instead? And LiveJournal/OpenID for the signin? Just a thought…)

    reply

  5. Jed

    Yeah, the sign-in system appears to automatically insert the email address from your LJ userinfo page, unless you specify a URL instead. I imagine I could change that, but I think it’s an okay approach.

    Re LJ vs OpenID: using the LJ-specific system means LJ users can just type their username, not the whole LJ-OpenID URL. I don’t expect there are many readers of this journal who use OpenID but don’t use LJ, but if there are, I may provide that as an option as well.

    reply

  6. Nao

    Ah, ok, I had my email on my LJ info showing to friends-only (goodness knows why, since I was posting it in comments hither and yon), so it wasn’t showing up here. Let’s see if it works now.

    And it does make sense that most OpenID users would be LJ folks.

    reply

  7. Lola

    This is a test of the emergency comment system. This is only a test. If this were a real emergency, your comments would instantly be authenticated regardless of origination source. Or would they…Mwaa Ha Ha!!!

    In other words, as I am only barely computer literate… will posting this comment without a TypeKey, LJ or other official authentication work? Can I just skip to number 3, wait for Jed to add me as a trusted commenter? Perhaps I am already trusted? Repeat: Mwaa Ha Ha! Little does he know of my sneaky evil plans!!

    Okay, I’m done spazzing now.

    –L

    reply

  8. Jed

    If you don’t authenticate, you can still do two things at any given time:

    1. You can post comments on any entry that I’ve posted in the previous two weeks. Those comments will appear immediately.

    2. You can post comments on any older entry. Those comments will be held for moderation, and I’ll hopefully see them within a day or two and approve them.

    But if you want to authenticate (which allows you to post comments on older entries without waiting for moderation), you can quickly and easily sign up for TypeKey for free. You need to give them a small amount of info about you (your name and email address, both of which you can keep hidden from the rest of the world), but it’s a pretty non-invasive system. Again, all TypeKey really does is provide some measure of assurance that you’re a human and not a bot.

    You could also ask the JournalScape folks to set up an LJ-style OpenID server, but I suspect that’s pretty low on their features list.

    Sadly, I can’t make you a trusted commenter unless you’re authenticated. If you’re not signed in with an authentication system, then my journal has no way of knowing whether you’re really Lola or someone else (like a bot) using that name. So I can’t pre-approve comments from anyone who’s not signed in.

    reply

  9. andy

    hi
    Hope you don’t mind another test!

    [Jed notes: I’m guessing this is spam, since it’s a copy of an earlier comment, so I removed the URL.]

    reply

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