Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-am-not-a-bot dept.

This is a Call to Arms! Last evening I read an interesting article, and thought that I had some valuable insights to offer as a comment.

Instead I found myself stopped dead by a combination of Disqus and reCaptcha.

I typed a comment, then Disqus demanded that I authenticate myself. Fine. I chose Twitter, and it did its thing, then Disqus demanded that I give a username, e-mail address, and password. I typed those in, and Disqus told me that an account already existed for that address.

When I guessed the old password that matched the log-in, I discovered that Disqus had lost the comment that I had created seven or eight steps earlier. I gave up.

I decided to write the site operators. Their contact page won't let you see an e-mail address until you answer a reCaptcha challenge. I had to refresh THAT a dozen times before I could even try to read the words.

OK, from this day forward, if your site insists on either Disqus or reCaptcha, you will never see a comment from me! Let's start a revolution!

Surely we can come up with something better than this?

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Moru on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:33AM

    by Moru (1248) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:33AM (#88768)

    As the normal site owner can choose between recaptcha and having 1000 spam posts per hour, I'm affraid this is a war you will loose.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:09AM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:09AM (#88780) Journal

      Agreed, its not a big deal.

      Nobody is getting on a band wagon just because one guy got butthurt because his gift to the world was lost in the ether. The guy acts like he's the first one to ever have a post get lost, and the then demands the entire internet join him in boycotting not ONE but TWO web systems.

      For how long should we march up and down in front of our keyboards carrying placards? And should we all log on to some obscure corner of the internet and repost his demand?

      With 12 submissions in the queue, how in gods name did this get through the editors?

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 4, Funny) by Marand on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:14AM

        by Marand (1081) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:14AM (#88781) Journal

        With 12 submissions in the queue, how in gods name did this get through the editors?

        Probably because one of the editors hates disqus as much as I do and rubber-stamped it out of sheer spite and a desire to see people complain about it. Lucky for him, there's no CAPTCHA required to submit, or he'd be SOL.

        • (Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:10AM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:10AM (#88808) Journal

          Probably because one of the editors hates disqus as much as I do. . .

          Maybe, but how do we know that the editor does not hate disqus precisely because he is a bot?

          This whole revolt is starting to look, well, suspicious. Maybe if we had a captcha?

          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:57PM

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:57PM (#88901) Homepage

            Is there a site which uses Disqus that is actually worth posting to, notwithstanding the captcha and registration hassles?

            • (Score: 1) by Mike on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:24PM

              by Mike (823) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:24PM (#88939)

              Or, at least, I haven't seen one.

            • (Score: 2) by Rune of Doom on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:56PM

              by Rune of Doom (1392) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:56PM (#89026)

              Schlock Mercenary uses Disqus for comments on Howard Tayler's posts.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Groonch on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:44AM

        by Groonch (1759) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:44AM (#88784)

        And should we all log on to some obscure corner of the internet and repost his demand?

        Uh, I think you just did that.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:30PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:30PM (#88967) Journal

        Sigh....Thanks, I so rarely get to use this in a sentence...WHOOSH! It is NOT the CAPTCHA he is (rightfully) bitching about, its the fact that Disqus is about the most piss poor, backwards ass, total POS design on the fricking web, we are talking AOL96 levels of suckitude here!

        Forget to make a copy of your post BEFORE you started jumping through their flaming hoops? Well fuck you pal, because more than half the time Disqus will LOSE YOUR COMMENT before you can finish jumping! And seriously WTF people, I thought if ANY place would be against douchey corp practices it would be THIS one...you seriously gonna tell me that Disqud needs your FB/Twitter/Google AND it needs you to have an account with them? Really? Well WTF point is there of having the God damned FB/Google/Twitter login if that isn't good enough? Oh and I hope you have a longing for the old "works ONLY in this version of IE" days, because I have found their fucked up JavaScript is EXTREMELY picky about which browsers it will work in. It works on SOME Chromium based but not ALL Chromium based and then ONLY if you have ABP disabled and even then half the time you can spell the CAPTCHA absolutely perfect only for it to go "Nope, i don't like you, do it again!"....ffffffffuuuucccckkkk yyyyoooouuuu DISqusting piece of shit!

        Look if there is anybody here that hates fucking spammers? Its me. I'm the guy that wants a "NO AC" button so that those of us that bothered to make an account won't have to deal with AC garbage...remember? But there is a RIGHT way to go about it and then there is the shittastic Starfuck DRM to the 50th power way of doing things and DISqust? Definitely in the latter.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:05PM

        by edIII (791) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:05PM (#89009)

        I had to figure out what he was talking about first.

        Disqus is blocked by default by Ghostery and DoNotTrackMe. I already boycott it, but that's only because it's a dinky little comment system. I don't want a separate login and have comments held by 3rd party. It's an interesting business model to offload all of those resources and requirements to a 3rd party, but I don't need to have a part in it.

        Apparently, both of those plugins are not fans of Disqus either by default.

        Most technical forums demand you log in to post, so reCaptcha is not exactly a problem either unless you demand to post anonymously. That, and I'm not boycotting CAPTCHA systems until there is a workable alternative.

        If you had any real feelings about this at all the easiest way to participate is just download Ghostery. Site owners can see that Disqus isn't running on the page and will eventually use something else if nobody is posting comments. If it's just a feature and nobody was going to comment anyways, who cares?

        Since Ghostery and DoNotTrackMe continue to grow with installations every single day I would say the "problem" this guy has will solve itself soon enough.

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
        • (Score: 2) by gottabeme on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:26PM

          by gottabeme (1531) on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:26PM (#89374)

          I don't use Ghostery anymore. Take a look at their TOS. They may be fine, but frankly, I see no reason to trust them--a business that somehow sustains itself by interfering with other businesses. I'm no fan of advertising companies, of course, but it seems to me that Ghostery is basically interested in the same things: gathering data about browsing habits. And with RequestPolicy, NoScript, ABP, and all the adblock lists (like the Annoyances and Social blocklists), I don't see any need for it.

          Besides, the UI is not very good, and when it updates itself, it can be quite annoying.

          • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday September 05 2014, @05:21PM

            by edIII (791) on Friday September 05 2014, @05:21PM (#89886)

            I see no reason to trust them--a business that somehow sustains itself by interfering with other businesses.

            That's not true though. It's my choice to selectively run snippets of Javascript. Ghostery isn't interfering with other businesses by delivering a tool that allows me to make choices.

            According to that logic, SonicBlue was actually stealing commercials and interfering in the business of the cable companies with their commercial skip technology. I don't believe that, and neither do most people.

            with RequestPolicy, NoScript, ABP, and all the adblock lists (like the Annoyances and Social blocklists), I don't see any need for it.

            How are the actions of ABP and NoScript considered not interfering with other businesses in exactly the same way? The only real difference at all is that Ghostery gives you reports, different UI, and the ability to selectively block different scripts.

            Nobody is interfering with any business just by delivering tools and features that people want. Perhaps the businesses being blocked should concentrate on delivering what the customer really wants. In this case, the customer is Big Advertising which is getting what it wants. Considering the end user is the one making the choice to use the technology, perhaps, just perhaps, they might want to start delivering what *we* want.

            It sounds like you have a little bit of cognitive dissonance going on just because Ghostery may be collecting the same information. That actually doesn't bother me since the business model of Ghostery is centered around giving *me* what I *want*. They find new companies all the time making trackers, beacons, and widgets and *inform* me about them and allow me to make a choice to disable them completely and forever. Ghostery works for me and not the advertisers. Don't underestimate or ignore that fact.

            As for the need, I'm not insanely fanatical about disabling Javascript everywhere. Web technologies are just interfaces and I don't have a religious need to roll the Internet back to a pure document markup language devoid of any actual features. Javascript, or client-side languages, are not the enemy. Since I live in a practical world where we need to get stuff done, I *selectively* use Javascript. That's *why* Ghostery and DoNotTrackMe are needed. I don't want to nuke Javascript from orbit, but instead, surgically remove it.

            If you don't like Ghostery that's fine, but your attacks against it seem hypocritical.

            --
            Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:24AM (#88796)

      No, the site owner can choose between spam, reCaptcha, and his own, locally installed captcha system.

      I particularly like the system Pipedot uses: It is pure text (so anyone who can read text, can get the captcha, even with a screen reader), but to correctly answer them, you need to understand the text.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by gman003 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:09PM

      by gman003 (4155) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:09PM (#88930)

      Weirdly, I run a site with comments. I have absolutely no anti-spam protection - even the email address for your sign-in isn't validated. No captcha, no rate-limiting, nothing.

      I have had zero problem with bots. I've had one person create a dozen sockpuppets to upvote his own stuff. Banned one person for calling me a faggot. Other than that, I've had no problems with comments at all.

      I vaguely suspect that there are bots creating accounts, then not being able to figure out how to post comments. There's about 700 user accounts, but only 20 that have actually posted anything. Even if those are bots instead of just lurkers, they aren't hurting anything.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by halcyon1234 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:54PM

        by halcyon1234 (1082) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:54PM (#88956)

        Thank you for your anecdote. Please put it over there next to the pile marked "Data". Please don't mix the piles, it's a chore to re-sort them.

        Here, let me counter with one of my own. I'm doing web development for a relatively popular video producer. When I took over, the site was running slower than shit. It's a Drupal site, so I expected it to be slow as shit. But not slower. I analyzed some logs, looked at some data. Turns out the site was getting absolutely hammered with spam bots, slamming the account creation page, and dumping spam posts into the forum. Thankfully, the forum wasn't actually in use. Actually, it never even showed anywhere on the site. But there were hundreds of thousands of spam posts, and failed login attempts, etc, etc. And Drupal, because it's fucking stupid, did nothing about it. Sorry, it would reject some of the posts because the poster's IP was banned. But it would only check for the IP ban *AFTER* loading the framework, activating all the plugins, rendering the page, etc. Hundreds of requests per second taking a full CPU load just to check for a banned IP.

        So I created a simple table. "banned_ips". Did a select on the watchdog table to see who had failed the CAPTCHA more than a few times-- cross referenced it with anyone who had posted to the fourm. Got a list of about 3k IPs, dumped them into "banned". Put a simple script before the Drupal framework loaded. "if this IP is in the banned table but not in the whitelisted table, echo "Your IPs banned for too many CAPTCHA fails. If you actually are a human, email (my personal email address) with your IP". Changed the watchdog code to insert into Banned IPs on 3 CAPTCHA fails.

        CPU usage drops off enormously. The banned IP table starts growing. After a week it's up to 10k addresses. Right now (about a month later) it's at 26k.

        Less than 10 real actual human peoples have emailed me to whitelist their IP

        Even with all of that, there's about 30 spam posts per day hitting the forum, even with the built-in 5 digit obfuscated CAPTCHA. If we weren't a couple weeks away from burning the whole Drupal site to the ground, I'd install a reCAPTCHA for fun.

        --
        Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
        • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:05PM

          by Geotti (1146) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:05PM (#89124) Journal

          it would only check for the IP ban *AFTER* loading the framework, activating all the plugins, rendering the page, etc.

          We were considering using drupal to build a small API (don't ask...), and this was the main reason, why we decided against it. How stupid is it to have to load the whole fucking thing to reply with a json string?! Drupal 8 was supposed to solve this problem, but I haven't looked at it in a while (might do now).

          Regarding disqus, they might loose your comments, but they have a kickass architecture [highscalability.com]! If you're not CTRL/CMD+A, CTRL/CMD-C your post before submission, you're obviously new to the internet.

          • (Score: 2) by gottabeme on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:32PM

            by gottabeme (1531) on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:32PM (#89376)

            > Regarding disqus, they might loose your comments, but they have a kickass architecture! If you're not CTRL/CMD+A, CTRL/CMD-C your post before submission, you're obviously new to the internet.

            Well, here's the thing: I've used the Lazarus Firefox extension for years. It works perfectly. I never lose any form data, no matter what. I can even manually recover data through the preferences, without going to the web page it was submitted on.

            But for some reason, it fails with Disqus. Oh, it saves something all right--an empty textarea. This is the only thing it has ever failed with. I've lost very thoughtfully written comments due to Disqus having (I guess) some kind of API timeout that caused the comment to fail to submit--which then reloaded the page--which threw away the form data.

            And, of course, Firefox was supposed to have fixed losing form data years ago...but no.

            In conclusion: software sucks. Period. Sometimes it's a wonder that we have an Internet at all.

            • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday September 05 2014, @01:43AM

              by Geotti (1146) on Friday September 05 2014, @01:43AM (#89636) Journal

              Sometimes it's a wonder that we have an Internet at all.

              No kidding.

              I forgot that there was an extension for that. I remember when it came out years ago, I just waved it away thinking that it's probably unreliable anyway and continued to copy the main text before submission.
              I've never used a clipboard manager, but I imagine that could immensely help as well, but I just open a text file, if there's more fields and paste everything in there (yeah, I know, totally awkward, but works).

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Subsentient on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:33AM

    by Subsentient (1111) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:33AM (#88769) Homepage Journal

    I can always read Captchas, at least on the second refresh. Disqus, I don't really bother with disqus sites.
    Can you read captchas? I have friends with bad eyesight. Indeed, there must be something better than this.

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:45AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:45AM (#88773)

      I am with you on just ignoring any disqus-based forums. I simply don't need to jump through that many hoops. I'd like to think that using disqus filters out smarter people, but it probably only filters out paranoid greybeards.

      As for captchas, I've seen a couple where instead of trying to figure out the mangled characters you re-arrange like 8 tiles to form 4 different pictures, kind of like a really simple jigsaw puzzle. It is yet another javascript shit-storm but even regular captchas seem to be full of javascript nowadays so it really wasn't any worse in that regard.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:28AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:28AM (#88798)

        Actually, for me the first hoop would be to find out what I'd have to enable for the discussion to even show up, let alone participate. I once did enable enough for the discussion to show up. And found it's not worth the effort (and the privacy leak).

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:13PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:13PM (#88853)

      "Disqus, I don't really bother with disqus sites."

      This is the point thats being missed about the whole topic. Lets say you passive aggressively don't want social media / public comments but some idiot in marketing says all the cool kids are doing it so we have to jump off the bridge with them. It seems about 99% of those places use disqus. If they explicitly don't want you there, then go away?

      A good example of a disqus site would be my local newspaper where the comments are 99% paid political astroturfers slinging mud and sloganeering against each other in every story. Its content free commenting. They just aren't worth reading. But... "we gotta have comments because everyone has comments". So they have an epically crappy setup because none of the readers, and more importantly, advertisers, care.

      If you want to discuss things, you go to a discussion site with moderation and friend/foe mechanic, like HN SN /r/ and several others. If you want to read political mudslinging in the comments of a story about mad bites dog or kitten stuck in tree about how all the worlds problems are the because of the other guys political party, then you read a site that uses disqus.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:33PM

        by hemocyanin (186) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:33PM (#88969) Journal

        Two comments -- I doubt that the posters are paid. Many GOPers and DNCers actually buy their parties' lines and believe them.

        Secondly, any newspaper that doesn't have a comment section would be nuts -- it keeps people coming back and it keeps the ads flowing. I used to visit my local paper's website regularly to poke fun at party loyalists of both sides. In the last year or so however, they replaced it with a comment section that requires a facebook account (I don't have one). Where there used to be 50-100 comments per story, most go uncommented now and I just don't visit. The ads on that paper are annoying enough to drive me away totally and only the comment section kept me coming back. So the managers saying "we gotta have comments" are probably correct (I don't pretend to be the epitome of the average user, but I don't doubt that the change my paper's comment system changed its traffic patterns).

        • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:12PM

          by Geotti (1146) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:12PM (#89126) Journal

          The ads on that paper are annoying enough to drive me away totally and only the comment section kept me coming back.

          If you replace "ads" with "newsbits" ^w^w^w^w^w^w it sounds remarkably similar to another site we all know. ; )

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:57AM

    by Marand (1081) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:57AM (#88778) Journal

    See title. Disqus is one of the worst piles of excrement to show up on sites that want to display comments. It's another one of those idiotic "responsive web" bullshit designs that is so reliant on JavaScript that it won't even work without JS allowed from multiple domains. Technically it has a no-JS fallback mode for viewing (no commenting), but it's a complete cluster-fuck. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and even when it "works" it displays everything with no formatting, no logical order, no reason. So, best-case scenario, you get a useless text-dump, and usually you don't even get that.

    And that's not even getting into the deeper problems, like the submitter's mention of needing to authenticate from a third party site like Twitter. I can't say much about that because I found disqus so absolutely horrible to deal with that I never even got to that point. Frankly, I'm amazed at the fact that the submitter even bothered trying to deal with disqus long enough to the point where he could actually post a comment at all.

    Technical gripes aside, I also find its design questionable, because putting all the comments on these disparate sites under the control of a single provider is a data collection goldmine. It's a tracking nightmare, and on top of that they're generous enough to let you pay them to get extra features for their "service".

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:30PM (#88878)

      Disqus causes anal cancer.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by andrew_t366 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:13PM

      by andrew_t366 (1072) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:13PM (#88934)

      Not only does Disqus require a tonne of third-party JavaScript to work properly, but it is also hyper-restrictive about the browsers it's capable of working on. You can no longer submit Disqus comments with Firefox 3.6.28, and it's only two years old. Because of creeping system requirements, people who use Disqus effectively block entire platforms of users (Win9x, PPC Mac) from contributing to their sites.

      What really makes my head hurt is that the vast majority of the sites that use Disqus these days used to host their own comments on their own site; accessible from any platform/browser combination of the last decade without JavaScript overhead or inaccessible captchas. They already provided the functionality they sought; then they threw it out and replaced it with a crappy, free service for seemingly no reason at all.

      To me, this makes as much sense as a big commercial enterprise taking down their regular website, and replacing it with a GeoCities-hosted version of the same thing.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:04PM (#89032)

        people who use Disqus effectively block entire platforms of users (Win9x

        That was obsolete in 2003.
        These people will continue to use their Pentium Pros and listen to their cassette tapes on their walkman clones.
        They wouldn't even be able to see TV (Lawrence Welk reruns) if it wasn't for the gov't-subsidized ATSC converter box.

        These people don't buy anything.
        They won't even accept a $0 replacement for their obsolete software.
        Why anyone would think they are valuable as advertising targets is beyond me.

        -- gewg_

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by keplr on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:45AM

    by keplr (2104) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:45AM (#88785) Journal

    I use Noscript to block Disqus. It's a privacy and civil-liberties nightmare. There's nothing wrong with Captcha in general, but sites need to roll their own system and not just link into the Google leviathan. I've now become a 100% Google-free user, but I can't help but use recaptcha on sites that require it. There are so many perfectly good replacements that you can host yourself. It's not hard.

    --
    I don't respond to ACs.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by sudo rm -rf on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:38AM

      by sudo rm -rf (2357) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:38AM (#88818) Journal

      I use Noscript to block Disqus. It's a privacy and civil-liberties nightmare

      I agree, and those that don't believe can see by themselves: From their Privacy Policy [disqus.com]

      Personally Identifiable Information: We collect information that can be used to identify you as an individual (“Personally Identifiable Information”) only when you provide such information directly to us in connection with the Service. We ask for Personally Identifiable Information such as your name and e-mail address when you register for a Disqus account with the Service, or if you correspond with us (in which case we will also retain our responses). We may also retain any messages you send through the Service, and may collect information you provide in User Content you post to the Service. We may receive Personally Identifiable Information about you from third parties, including, for example, information about your transactions, purchase history, or relationships with various product and service providers, and your use of certain applications. For example, if you access our website or Service through a third-party connection or log-in, for example, through Facebook Connect, by “following,” “liking,” linking your account to the Disqus service, etc., that third party may pass certain information about your use of its service to Disqus. This information could include, but is not limited to, the user ID associated with your account, any information you have permitted the third party to share with us, and any information you have made public in connection with that service. You should always review, and if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third-party websites and services before linking or connecting them to Disqus’ website or Service.

      It IS a nightmare.

      • (Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:01PM

        by DarkMorph (674) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:01PM (#89102)
        I imagine those terms are at least partly why Disqus is blocked by Ghostery.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:09PM

      by wantkitteh (3362) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:09PM (#88931) Homepage Journal

      I original chose to use Google's search engine over anyone else 15 years ago because they had the best search product on the web. Today, Google's products are ubiquitous, interlinked and impossible to evade patronizing. Protecting your own privacy from this indiscriminate invasion of the functionality of third party websites requires the same kind of ecosystem as anti-virus products (browser plugins, updated blacklists) as well as aggressive security settings that result in missing or incorrectly rendered content.

      While using language like "invasion" seems like an exaggeration, my own experience supports it. I set up a Wordpress site for my World of Tanks clan and found a good free theme to apply to it. When I compared what I saw on my own privacy-secured browser with the regular impression, it became immediately obvious that there were an even dozen design elements included that were Google-hosted. I would argue that the provider of the theme should have warned me up-front about their incorporation of Google's infrastructure into my site if I applied it. But no - my site inadvertently became a spying little eyeball for The Beholder of Mountain View. It's far to easy to do.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by halcyon1234 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:04PM

      by halcyon1234 (1082) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:04PM (#88959)

      I use Noscript to block Disqus. It's a privacy and civil-liberties nightmare.

      Agreed. It's a shame the OP went off on some hissy fit instead of addressing the actual problem at hand. That is a cross-site tracker that monitors not only which sites you use, but how you interact with them. Not to mention the plethora of marketing data you're giving over just by typing comments. What, you don't think that content is mined for all it's worth? What sites you visit and what words you use? Just think about the profile someone can build knowing your 3 most favorite sites to comment on, and what keywords you spew into them. They already know the demographic information about the sites themselves.

      And double shame on the on the website runners for deciding to use Disqus in the first place. They're willingly submitting their users to the privacy-invasion that is Disqus. It's extremely disrespectful to the people who support your content creation. I know Disqus touts themselves as "easy to get comments on your site". Fuck that. Every single website software has had comments built in for a decade or more. It's utter laziness.

      The only cold comfort is knowing that as soon as Disqus decides it isn't profitable to stay in business-- or to maintain an archive-- or for any reason whatsoever, really-- all those comments will be fucking gone. Poof, years of discussion gone. Oh, sorry, did you not keep a constantly updated locally cached archive of your Disqus threads. Oops. Welcome to farming shit off to third parties.

      I've said it before and I'll say it again... fuck Disqus with a leaky car batter [sevenseventeen.ca]

      --
      Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
    • (Score: 2) by ragequit on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:31PM

      by ragequit (44) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:31PM (#89038) Journal

      Ghostery.
      End of story.

      https://www.ghostery.com/en/download [ghostery.com]

      --
      The above views are fabricated for your reading pleasure.
      • (Score: 2) by gottabeme on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:36PM

        by gottabeme (1531) on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:36PM (#89377)

        Have you read Ghostery's TOS? Do you trust them?

        ABP, the annoyances and social blocklists, NoScript, RequestPolicy, and Cookie Monster. I don't see any need for Ghostery.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by dpp on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:34PM

      by dpp (3579) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:34PM (#89041)

      I'm disgusted by the trend nowadays where you're not offered the choice to create a unique account for a given site, in order to be able to comment/discuss articles.

      I've seen less pressure to use the Google leviathan than other services.
      I've seen more pressure to use Facebook or Twitter or others than Google.

      Re: Facebook
      Some sites ONLY allow Facebook, an example is Huffington Post. I can only assume this is due to deals/arrangements between companies, forcing people to create a FB account.
      For myself, I do not and will not have a FB account, so I'm left out of being able to engage in discussions on many popular sites.
      Is there some point where FB becomes a monopoly? If you want to participate in online discussions on popular websites, you are forced to have FB account or be locked out?
      FB can put a LOT of pressure on companies.

      Not to side-track too far here in regards to FB, but for myself another example is Oculus Rift. I was so excited about this product, and was just about to purchase a dev version when the FB purchase was announced. Now I'm not going to purchase one. The reason - it's only a matter of time before you'll be required to have a FB account to use one.

  • (Score: 1) by Gobo on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:47AM

    by Gobo (1189) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:47AM (#88787)

    So, because you personally had trouble making a comment, you submit an article to SN with spurious HTML, almost akin to using a blink tag. In it you call for a revolution without actually coming up with a better solution for combatting spam. Good luck to you sir.

    You do get bonus points for also telling us that you apparently reuse passwords.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:33PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:33PM (#89019) Journal

      There seem to be a large number of people who dislike Disquis. (I've never used it, so I don't know.) OTOH, I've got nothing against recaptcha. That *seems* to be an irrelevant connection.

      So. His solution was for people to stop patronizing sites that use Disquis. I'm satisfied with just blocking it...or ignoring it. This does mean that I ignore all comments on some sites, but that's ok with me. I already spend too much time browsing. And if a site requires something I don't like to read (e.g. flash) I just never see it. (I don't have flash installed.) It's not like there aren't a lot of sites out there. Perhaps I'd already joined his "revolution" before he ever called for it, as I'm already doing what he suggested...just without the emotional drama.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday September 04 2014, @12:20AM

      by fnj (1654) on Thursday September 04 2014, @12:20AM (#89141)

      you submit an article to SN with spurious HTML, almost akin to using a blink tag.

      You're going to have to spell that out to be taken seriously. All I see is ordinary bold and links. And there exists NOTHING that is "akin to using a blink tag". Blink is a unique abomination.

  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:47AM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:47AM (#88788) Journal

    Another solution is making browsers better at saving your work. I've lost long comments thanks to websites throwing away the text input box to get my login info. The back button sometimes restores the lost text, but more often it doesn't help. Sometimes I've saved my work to the clipboard. That works, if you remember to do it.

    There is Lazarus, a Firefox addon that autosaves everything the user types. It works, but it makes the textbox a little more buggy than it already is, so I don't use it much.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:09AM

      by Marand (1081) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:09AM (#88793) Journal

      There is Lazarus, a Firefox addon that autosaves everything the user types. It works, but it makes the textbox a little more buggy than it already is, so I don't use it much

      Personally, I use the It's All Text! [mozilla.org] addon for commenting unless it's a very short one. I started using it to save my input from the capricious whims of Firefox and bad websites, but kept it around when I realised how much nicer it is to use a proper text editor (including any plugins, completion features, code formatting, etc.) for composing.

      As a bonus, it's in Debian's repository (xul-ext-itsalltext), so it's a get-and-forget sort of thing for me.

      • (Score: 1) by boltronics on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:02AM

        by boltronics (580) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:02AM (#88823) Homepage Journal

        Thanks for the tip. So nice to type this comment in almost seamlessly using real GNU Emacs. :)

        I don't like Lazarus - it's freeware, not free software.

        --
        It's GNU/Linux dammit!
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:33PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:33PM (#89039)

          Search boilerplate [google.com]
          You can also add +inurl:opensource to that.

          Here ya go. [alternativeto.net]

          -- gewg_

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:41PM

          by Marand (1081) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:41PM (#89115) Journal

          Thanks for the tip. So nice to type this comment in almost seamlessly using real GNU Emacs. :)

          It's great, isn't it? Except the emacs part; I actually really like KDE's editor, kate, for most things. I'm kind of editor-agnostic, since I like kate, geany, vim, and even nano depending on the situation. Tried a brief fling with emacs but it didn't work out between us: I find the shortcuts uncomfortable to use, even after moving modifier keys around looking for something more suitable. (Not trying to start a holy war, I promise)

          Anyhow, glad the suggestion helped someone out. It's part of a list of addons I find indispensable, along with TreeStyleTab, Copy HTML, gui:config, and a handful of others (including a lot of the well-known options). I'm actually considering sending in an Ask Soylent discussing preferred addons, because some of the ones I use might be useful to others, and maybe I'd find out about awesome ones I haven't heard of before.

    • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:26AM

      by jimshatt (978) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:26AM (#88797) Journal
      I always ctrl-a ctrl-c text, especially in javascript-driven ajax 'user-friendly' look-how-cool-we-are systems. They spend more time at looking cool than at thinking about how your data should be handled.
  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by NoMaster on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:03AM

    by NoMaster (3543) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:03AM (#88792)

    "Only 12 submissions in the queue."

    I didn't realise things were quite so bad. Those must be 12 really shitty submissions if you let this rant through ahead of them...

    --
    Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:38AM (#88830)

      At least it's not another clone story from the old place.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:06AM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:06AM (#88834) Homepage Journal

      Judge for yourself [soylentnews.org]. SoylentNews is very much community-powered. What you submit is what the editors have to choose from, though they will when the queue is extremely low go out and get a few on their own.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:50PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:50PM (#88950)

        With articles like "Men Wanted To Satisfy Town Full Off Yearning Brazilian Hotties" and "Video Shows Police Shot Man As He Leaned On Toy Gun", we could be a mainstream news outlet in no time!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:11PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:11PM (#89080)

          Men Wanted To Satisfy Town Full Off Yearning Brazilian Hotties [soylentnews.org]
          A town that is 100 percent females 5 days a week is interesting.
          You should have your testosterone level checked; you appear to be about a quart low.

          How that town got to be that way is interesting as well.
          The way they solve their disputes--like bonobos instead of like (violent) chimps--is also interesting.

          .
          Update: Video Shows Police Shot Man As He Leaned On Toy Gun [soylentnews.org]
          As it says, it is an update to a story that already made the front page.
          You conveniently left out that word to slant your argument.
          Let me guess: You're a Fox so-called-News watcher?
          The item is yet more evidence that cops routinely murder people who are absolutely no threat to anyone.

          -- gewg_

    • (Score: 1) by iWantToKeepAnon on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:15PM

      by iWantToKeepAnon (686) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:15PM (#89014) Homepage Journal

      That should be modded insightful. LaminatorX had to have part of his edit struck-out on the 30th b/c it was a flame/rant. I think it's telling that of all the editors and all the submissions that it was LaminatorX who published that one.

      What's going on LaminatorX?

      --
      "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by lhsi on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:36AM

    by lhsi (711) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:36AM (#88800) Journal

    Why does it need something to replace it? The few times I've read comments attached to an article they were rarely worth reading. YouTube, news websites, blog posts; mostly not worth the time.

    Sites like this are fine as they are focused on the comments instead of just an afterthought. TheConversation sometimes has some interesting comments the few times I read them, and if an open access paper has comments its usually worth having a look, but in both cases the commenters are more likely to be academics than the unwashed internet.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:39AM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:39AM (#88801) Journal

    If I write a comment on a website, most of the time I'm using a text editor first for exactly that reason.

    BTW: Could we change the captchas on SN for ACs to something like this [seosmarty.com] ? ;-)

    --
    Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:20PM (#88856)

      Different captchas for SN? Wouldn't that require that there are already captchas on SN?

      I can't see any captcha here.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:35PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:35PM (#88862)

        Sorry, I thought a capture was required for anonymous posts. Anyway, *that* kind of captcha I might like :-)

    • (Score: 2) by bugamn on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:56PM

      by bugamn (1017) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:56PM (#89100)

      So the idea is that if I'm able to answer I must be a bot?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:58AM (#88819)

    I have captcha plugin on my website. im sorry if its too difficult. I will tune it a bit.
    as for disqus (and facebook) login ... I never use it.
    I think its either to spy on posting history from one central location -or- lip service: post some oitrages news and give people chance to comment but is acctual "political ideology phising site".
    anyways personally I prefer captchas over username/login solutions because it allows anonymous to post too.
    all obvious .. question then: why disqus and facebook login for post?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Jaruzel on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:37AM

    by Jaruzel (812) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:37AM (#88829) Homepage Journal

    A long while back, I hand cranked a basic blog engine. As part of the design I added a basic captcha system. I wrote a script to generate random 5 character strings, and display each character randomly vertically offset from each other with some random lines also across the image. The resulting .pngs were VERY easy to read (for a human) and for the year or so I was running it, I got no spam via the web form the captcha was on. Admittedly I didn't have large scale traffic hitting the site in question - but as spambots just trawl sites for comment forms automatically I don't think thats a metric really. In any case it worked well, without being impossible to read.

    reCaptcha started well - as what it is really doing is using crowd sourcing to solve hard to read bits of text from Googles book scanning efforts, along with a secondary image that it already knows the answer to. However, over time, and popular usage, the only bits of unknown text left in the database are completely unreadable smuges of nothingness :( It really needs to be retired and replaced with something else now.

    -Jar

     

    --
    This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by chewbacon on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:52AM

    by chewbacon (1032) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:52AM (#88831)

    Fine, I'll take time out of my life to submit if this is front-page worthy. So this guy got pissed at Disqus. Do you boycott windows when it crashes? Or switch window managers when one of them crashes? Sleep on it before you fire off angry emails or soylentnews posts. This isn't news, it isn't stuff that matters. This is a customer service issue I don't give two shits about.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:11AM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:11AM (#88838) Homepage Journal

      Do you boycott windows when it crashes?

      Yep.

      Or switch window managers when one of them crashes?

      Yep.

      I'm currently on openbox precisely because I have never had it crash or go otherwise wonky on me.

      As for on-topic, I'm right there with the submitter. It generally takes me between 12 and 30 tries to get a captcha I can read. Bots do better at solving them than I do. It is a major pain in the ass.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by _NSAKEY on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:32PM

      by _NSAKEY (16) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:32PM (#88997)

      I've decided to do the same. The quality of the stories is really uneven. I suspect it's because the rest of us aren't stepping up (My excuse is that when I see a story elsewhere that seems worth submitting, it's either already in the queue or I suspect that it will be soon), while trash users like gewg spam the queue with stories none of us want to read.

      To say something on-topic: Disqus and reCAPTCHA are both abominations to be avoided. I walk away from sites that use reCAPTCHA, because apparently I'm a bot and can't solve them most of the time. Disqus is everything you guys have said, so there's not much point in railing against it.

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:15AM (#88839)

    Boycott shithead NCommander's gay fucking bathhouse of a "news" site for wannabe revolutionaries!

    FUCK
    SOYLENT
    FUCK
    SOYLENT
    FUCK SOYLENT

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:22AM (#88840)

    OK, from this day forward, if your site insists on either Disqus or reCaptcha, you will never see a comment from me! Let's start a revolution!

    Right on brother, withholding your valuable comments will definately kickstart the revolution.

    For me, Disqus doesn't work without javascript so that's the end of it.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bootsy on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:51AM

    by bootsy (3440) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:51AM (#88848)

    Despite the creaking code the original slashcode was and now is, thanks to the soylent updates, the fasting loading and least Javascript requiring comment system I have seen in popular use. It scales well and the modding system worked really well. It could have been licensed out to other sites in the way Disqus has been and it would have worked a whole lot better. The sub threading works nicely as well.

    It loads well on poor mobile connections. It doesn't make the browser do a lot of work, oh and it survives the slashdot effect.

    If Commander Taco was ever going to make money from Slashdot that would have been how to do it. That ship has now unfortunately sailed.

    As the code is open sourced and Soylent weren't the original authors I don't think we can fund the site by licensing the code but you might be able to offer a service based upon hosting the comment content.

    • (Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:57PM

      by cmn32480 (443) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {08423nmc}> on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:57PM (#88975) Journal

      The one day I don't get mod points... But I'll give a rousing AMEN!

      --
      "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:45PM (#89003)

      This.

      Soylent could self-support with the early Red Hat model, providing this branch of Slashcode, and offering service contracts and a la carte bugfixes.

      Given that many of us are well-connected we could probably use it ourselves and suggest it to enough colleagues doing green field work to get a foothold.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:31PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:31PM (#88859) Journal

    Disqus comment sections are worthless for meaningful discussion. Sites that employ Disqus use it as a turnkey sop to social media. But without Disqus I could not engage in my guilty pleasure, which is hunting semi-literate political trolls and eviscerating them. It does no good. It changes no minds and teaches no one anything. It's a waste of time. But for me it's an enjoyable waste of time and I can do it while compiling code or rendering animations.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by gottabeme on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:40PM

      by gottabeme (1531) on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:40PM (#89380)

      Out of curiosity, could you define "semi-literate political troll" for me? I wonder if you would consider me one of them...

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 04 2014, @06:17PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday September 04 2014, @06:17PM (#89437) Journal

        "Semi-literate," as in, can't spell, can't write grammatically correct sentences, can't construct coherent arguments. The first two obviously don't apply to non-native English speakers. Other hallmarks include conflating mutually contradictory terms like "christian atheist" or "elitist egalitarian."

        "Political troll" indicates a combination of ignorance about history, politics, society, and religion; total reliance and regurgitation of talking points crafted by others; and a willful intransigence about those qualities that frequently expresses itself in all caps or torpid repetition.

        I relish discussion with minds that are razor sharp and challenge me to be better, but there are almost no such forums left. So we're left with hunting dull bots too lazy to use the wits god gave them. It is a lesser pleasure, like substituting mash potatoes for canard a l'orange.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 1) by zafiro17 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:38PM

    by zafiro17 (234) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:38PM (#88883) Homepage

    I don't have a huge problem with Disqus, and I think despite issues like Javascript dependencies etc. it's reasonable software. The sites I really hate are the ones that only permit me to log in with Facebook or Gmail, since I don't use either. Those sites don't get my comments, not because I'm boycotting them but because I simply can't post.

    Disqus is trying to provide some sort of happy medium here. They're not without fault, but what is the nirvana you are looking for? Make it too easy and too many idiots will post crap. Make it too hard and nobody will post, etc.

    --
    Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
  • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:42PM

    by zafiro17 (234) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:42PM (#88889) Homepage

    This is a call to arms!!!

    chirp ... chirp ... chirp ... chirp ...

    Uh, guys? Anybody?

    chirp ... chirp ... chirp ..

    --
    Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by anahata on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:46PM

    by anahata (2399) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:46PM (#88892) Homepage

    The best solutions I've seen for tripping up spambots on HTML form based postings/mail are:

    (1) using a timer - if the form is filled in less than 2 seconds after it was displayed it was done by a bot
    (2) Invisible field - if if gets filled in, the sender was a bot

    You can combine the two. It works for me!

  • (Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:07PM

    by halcyon1234 (1082) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:07PM (#88960)

    Mentioned in post above, but it truly bears repeating:

    fuck Disqus with a leaky car batter [sevenseventeen.ca]

    --
    Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:27PM (#88966)

    This is a Call to Arms!

    Yeah. Whatever.

    Last evening I read an interesting article, and thought that I had some valuable insights to offer as a comment.

    Ya did, didjya?

    Instead I found myself stopped dead by a combination of Disqus and reCaptcha. (Sad tale of Recaptcha hell snipped)

    Surely we can come up with something better than this?

    In my experience, there is often an inverse relationship between the ease with which a site can be accessed and the importance of the content. There is probably an important clue buried somewhere in this observation.

  • (Score: 1) by iWantToKeepAnon on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:08PM

    by iWantToKeepAnon (686) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:08PM (#89011) Homepage Journal

    You posted a flame/rant just a couple of days ago ( https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/08/30/043205 [soylentnews.org] ) and now another one?!? This bit is not news, this is at best a op-ed and at worst a troll.

    Somebody needs to edit the editors!

    --
    "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy