Posted on 06/16/2016 5:24:20 AM PDT by relictele
Today, I’m happy to announce the release of our user blocking feature. As one of the most requested features from commenters over the years, user blocking provides you with the ability to manage who you interact with on Disqus.
Blocking someone removes their activity from your experience across the network. This means that you’ll no longer get notifications from them via email or in your Disqus Inbox, nor will you see discussions or comments by them in your Home feed or on discussion threads.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.disqus.com ...
Personally, I will always prefer a site like FR which links to the stories since trolls are rare to nonexistent here. Like anything in widespread use on the 'net the sociopaths eventually become a problem.
Disqus has many other longstanding problems to solve, including its balky performance, failure to load properly, and a threading model that only goes 2 or 3 deep.
This also doesn't excuse lazy or nonexistent site moderators who fail to monitor content and delete spam, trolls and cul-de-sac type threads.
Speaking of spam, the spammers use random names etc. so blocking them will be mostly futile but at least you can have a go.
On the other hand, trolls who change their name manually can eventually be blocked completely especially if the user community points them out.
PS - sites that chose to use or migrate to a Facebook commenting engine have seen the comment traffic, which is also a measure of readership, plummet. They imagined that Facebook comments tied to a real person would encourage civility. The problem is, lefty fascists can and will pursue anyone for any reason. They feel completely at ease threatening, harassing and even attempting to involve someone's employer, church, friends, relatives, etc. Did I say sociopathic? Let's try psychopathic.
If I log in under Disqus I’m banned from commenting on Real Clear Politics. I have to log in under the RCP site. I’ve contacted them again and again but no help or even a response. I gave up.
I think a few sites have a separate gateway in that manner...Townhall eg. They shifted from a native comment system to Disqus and Townhall comments are visible on Disqus but one must still log in to Townhall.
Don’t forget Discus’s PCification (discontinuance) of the down-voting system a few years back. “Up” votes are publicly tallied, “Down” votes are not. Only Up votes (participation trophies) are visible. You can down vote a comment, but no numbers show up. Can’t hurt anyone’s feelings.
Yes, Disqus blocked "negative" votes few years ago. I am convinced it was because liberal comments were massacred with downvotes, while conservative ideas were triumphed. So they rigged the system.
I deleted my disqus account (and it’s 10,000+ upvotes) a couple of months ago because the entire bumbling wreckage became (a) infested with hyper-liberals, (b) either mismoderated or unmoderated, (c) a neon “vacancy” sign to spammers (d) exhibits a nearly microscopic signal to noise ratio, and (e) because it started head-hunting anyone that spoke even semi-favorably about trump.
you get to write a sentence or two describing your reasons for leaving. mine were laced with profanity.
I hate disqus as someone just whited me out from every site using disqus tonight. SO I can’t read comments or post. Just get a page that makes all comments invisible.
I hate disqus as someone just whited me out from every site using disqus tonight. So I can’t read comments or post. Just get a page that makes all comments invisible.
Trying to figure out how to delete my accounts now in protest.
Just deleted the two accounts I could enter into I have used since 2007.
If I don’t block at least one troll a day, I’m not doing my job.
It’s definitely a necessity. But if Disqus is going to continue its dominant market share it must:
-Improve its threading. 2-3 levels deep and you have no idea who’s responding to whom about what.
-Block trolls. If someone has been blocked by loads of users especially loads of users on a particular site and/or in a short timeframe then odds are they are trolls. IP addresses, email addresses....it doesn’t seem Disqus does the bare minimum to gatekeep.
-Block spam. Spam still a problem in 2018 means Disqus just isn’t trying very hard if at all.
I was at The Hill today.
In response to someone’s claim that progressivism is a mental disorder,
I made the following response...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From what I can ascertain so far, it seems to be a result of an imbalance between the emotional side and the rational/critical/logical thinking side of our nature.
It appears we have an inner balance scale within us. Too much weight on either side is not healthy.
It takes some work but the goal is to strive for that sweet spot where feeling and thinking are in balance.
It is at, or at least near, that point that our actions/words/comments become unifying and helpful, not divisive and derisive.
That should be the goal of ALL Americans.
Disagree without being Disagreeable
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The post was removed. Posted it again with the same result.
I emailed The Hill with the hope of finding out if they were responsible for pulling it or was it perhaps Disqus’ action.
I haven’t got a reply yet...nor do I expect one.
What I think happened is one of the ‘liberals’ rather that just blocking me
if they didn’t want to see the post instead tagged it as spam leading it to be removed
Not certain but I think that sites using Disqus can choose a particular threshold (for their own site) for downvotes that will cause a post to disappear. Given the number of lefties and trolls at The Hill it may be that your post was downvoted by the unthinking mob rather than being intentionally deleted by a mod.
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