Coventry

Dick,

You're being a troll and probably should not be fed.

Have you considered that (not being retired) I have other obligations and commitments,  and this afternoon was the first time I had to look at this "Blog?"   (Personal consideration,  of course,  being the first value of EphBlog and its participants,  of course!)

In the past,  the burden of dealing with "SPAM" has fallen on the shoulders of volunteers.  There are some around here,  yourself included,  who have developed a rather arrogant tendency to treat volunteers as "the staff."  (I saw enough abuse of "the Staff" at Williams in the 90s).

Currently,  we have a community moderation system-- for the pieces of spam that get through.  Anyone delegated the authority can simply click "report to Mollom" and help us,  the site,  the community and the entire world fighting spam,  out.

Unfortunately,  this system has a fairly obvious backdoor that would allow users given permission,  to delete others' (<<<--- note possessive!)  comments.   I don't believe in running a system that (from a data standpoint) allows deletions rather than revisions (see my friends' opinion,  in Speak Up!);  and at this point,  there's maybe one person here I would trust with that authority.  (Hint:  neither you,  Ronit nor David,  given your behavior-to-date).

I'll need to talk to Dries about the above,  or just hand him my code for a "no delete" option.  (Or maybe it's hidden in the options somewhere.)

In this case,  we had one engenuious (<<<--- note:  metathesis!) spam-text writer who managed to figure out how to write some rather odd text to get his ad(vertizement) around the filters,  and who did so on eight or so posts.   If the spammer's company's verification script "confirmed" these posts as "hits" before I reported them,  the poor guy who walked through the posting process may have gotten paid $0.70 or so for the work.

I reported the comments to Mollom as soon as I saw them,  so neither the IP nor the text should work anywhere on Mollom's network again in the near future.  (See how this works-- community--  Onion reports its problems,  that spam gets blocked here,  we report our problems,  these guys don't show up on the Chronicle?)  (This is similar to Akimet,  the system we were using before;  if tuning does not eliminate the problem,   we may add Akimet as well).

Normally the process of deleting eight spam comments,  while of course annoying and menial,  would have been about 3 minutes.  But some jerk had to come along and leave his own spam in reply to the spam on most of the threads,  making my job significantly harder.   As if I have free time!

While I understand you may have trying to be humourous (or something) in reply to the situation,  there is a time and a place,  and most forums have rules which spell out that what you did,  is not welcome.  I've explained this to you,  about five times now. 

And what was I to do with your comments?  Once I got rid of the shoe-spam,  there your comments were!,  defacing the memorial and other posts! 

I left them up for about an hour (other duties) and decided to implement Coventry and put them there.  In the course of this I had to deal with some of the NodeComment module's oddities (that goodness crea has stepped up to fix them!).

Finally,  as regards the picture,  it seems to me that your lack of experience in these matters,   makes you have no idea what you're asking for.  You might as well ask a FaceBook user to remove their profile picture next to a particular post (Tweet,  whatever).  It's not as if it is a "page" and I can just hit "erase";  it's a dynamic system that puts objects together and renders a result,  in this case,  user pictures together with posts.

I can turn user pictures off entirely,   (hardly a solution),   or I can build a system to customize their appearance (advisable,  useful,  and as this is not Facebook-- can be done,  but I'd need to poll the community for prior work and best method first);  or I can implement a hack-level solution (the kind of stuff WordPress is built on) to "get the job done,"  and pass the pain/expense of maintaining that half-arse solution,  to the future.

In this case,  I probably would have removed the picture via "hack" earlier in the day, and put creating or deploying a robust "standards-compliant" system for control ing user pics on my todo list,  (as well as fixing my "hack"),  but I haven't had a free moment since waking (welcome to my world-- one forgets when one last had a free moment,  maybe ... June?),  and some jerk put an extra 90 minutes of needless work on my plate today.

All of which is to say-- your comments were large inappropriate.  This is not your playground.  If you need a playground here,  I'll be glad to put it on the Planning Committee's agenda,  but I would like you to actually thinknow and then that,  hey,  maybe when these shoe spam comments go away,  my comments will be the defacement.

Hmmm?

All of which reminds me that I haven't replied to RRO regarding a matter that (given RRO's position as finance-minister-designate) strikes me as somewhat more important that anything that has ever gone on at EphBlog,  despite the urgent self-importance of the collection of fools which has found its way to what one faculty member yesterday described to me as "dramablog."  

The point being,  this is the problem,  95 out of 100 Ephs want nothing to do with this.  Nothing whatsoever,  as in wouldn't pole vault over this crap with a 20 foot pole.  People do not want to be involved in pointless drama which interrupts and disrupts their regular lives.  Bring a good train wreck now and then,  and they'll galk,  otherwise,  the smell is too much.  And your bad behavior is just as much a part of the ongoing problem,  as anyone else's.  Being a "regular commenter" or poster,  is no excuse for bad,  thoughtless,  and disrespectful behavior.  There are other channels to express concerns,  such as the HELP DESK,  than posting off-topic material on multiple posts.

Regardless of all this,  and your claim,  my analytics report that more people are reading E(b)L than ever before-- perhaps,  just perhaps,  because they'd just as rather not read this kind of tripe  comments,  while significant,  are not as important at the moment,  as you(r malicious,  spite-driven) commentary make(s) them out to be.

And you've just made me violate Shabbat before even lighting the candles,  which,  along with the anti-Semitic comments about Hebrew (<<--- interpret as you will),  keeps you firmly in the "ass" category in my personal version of the Book of Names.

Respectfully,