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dtmIn many ways, people often use blogs in ways similar to what usenet was used for back in the day. That is to say, some of the common behavior patterns appear to have shown up again in blog comment threads that used to show up in usenet.
Specifically, I'm talking about trolls - people who show up in a comment thread to derail the discussion, and do so again and again and again. Examples might include someone who shows up in the comment threads of a blog discussing recent work in microbiology to argue yet again for Intelligent Design theory to be taught in the schools, or someone who shows up repeatedly on a feminist-oreinted blog to snipe about how a woman who is raped after voluntarily consuming alcohol deserves what happened to her.
Trolls are not necessarily bad people, (though some probably are) but they are behaving obnoxiously in context. In usenet days, there was something known as a "killfile" which would cause your news reader to simply not display posts from users you didn't like for one reason or anthoer. Wouldn't it be nice if you, the blog reader, could simply mark certain commentors as annoying, and automatically have their blog comments hidden when you looked at your favorite blog's comments page?
Well now you can
That is, you can if you are using Firefox to browse the web and feel like installing a few things. First off, go install the latest version of greasemonkey. Then, go install this greasemonkey script. This provides the ability to ignore people on some weblogs where I wanted that ability. So far, it covers:
It's pretty easy to add a new blog at this point, assuming that the HTML around comments is well structured, so expect the list of supported blogs to grow. Among other things, I intend to add support for comments hosted at haloscan.com (which covers several big blogs, such as Eschaton and Digby's blog) by the time the weekend is over.
Specifically, I'm talking about trolls - people who show up in a comment thread to derail the discussion, and do so again and again and again. Examples might include someone who shows up in the comment threads of a blog discussing recent work in microbiology to argue yet again for Intelligent Design theory to be taught in the schools, or someone who shows up repeatedly on a feminist-oreinted blog to snipe about how a woman who is raped after voluntarily consuming alcohol deserves what happened to her.
Trolls are not necessarily bad people, (though some probably are) but they are behaving obnoxiously in context. In usenet days, there was something known as a "killfile" which would cause your news reader to simply not display posts from users you didn't like for one reason or anthoer. Wouldn't it be nice if you, the blog reader, could simply mark certain commentors as annoying, and automatically have their blog comments hidden when you looked at your favorite blog's comments page?
Well now you can
That is, you can if you are using Firefox to browse the web and feel like installing a few things. First off, go install the latest version of greasemonkey. Then, go install this greasemonkey script. This provides the ability to ignore people on some weblogs where I wanted that ability. So far, it covers:
- livejournal, though I haven't tested all the obscure different styles available there yet.
- pharyngula, and other blogs hosted on scienceblogs.com
- slacktivist, and other blogs on typepad.com
- The Panda's Thumb
- Alas, A Blog
- Feministe
It's pretty easy to add a new blog at this point, assuming that the HTML around comments is well structured, so expect the list of supported blogs to grow. Among other things, I intend to add support for comments hosted at haloscan.com (which covers several big blogs, such as Eschaton and Digby's blog) by the time the weekend is over.
Update: Haloscan-based comments are now handled, as are livejournal community and syndicated feed pages. (Which were only excluded because of a bug before)
Update again: Pandagon is now covered and there is experimental support for killfiling people from your livejournal friendslist (e.g. if you like to read a community except for one particular poster). Note that the friendslist support is disabled by default; to enable it you'll have to edit the script to remove the comment markers inside the variable "scenariolist" from the beginning of the line that says "ljfriendsScenario". (You can edit installed scripts from the "Tools-Manage User Scripts..." menu)
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 12:54 pm (UTC)Well, yeah, if there's options to choose from
Date: 2006-04-30 02:04 pm (UTC)This script is more for those cases when the moderator/owner of the blog is too lax on certain types of trolls for the taste of the reader; e.g. I saw it claimed about a month ago on one of the feminist blogs I read occasinally (feministe? Pandagon? I can't remember) that the blogs of certain generally pro-feminist men (Ampersand and hugoboy, I think) no longer felt like safe places to comment because the owners of those blogs were not banning blatant anti-feminist men.
I was inspired to create this script because someone created one for pharyngula, and it was greeted with great cheer, and many requests that it be extended to Panda's Thumb - P Z Myers may enjoy watching silly creationists arrive with their arguments again and again, but several of the commentors clearly wished to avoid the whole thing. (Although the existence of that script did inspire me to learn greasemonkey and to create my script, there's no code shared)
Re: Well, yeah, if there's options to choose from
Date: 2006-04-30 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 01:39 pm (UTC)This only handles comments, not top-level posts.
Date: 2006-04-30 02:08 pm (UTC)I'll look at your friends list and see what I can see.
The problem with syndicated feeds and communities is fixed
Date: 2006-04-30 02:18 pm (UTC)That's what you get for being an early tester...
Anyway, the problem was that my script is (possibly excessively) paranoid about applying its comment-mangling mojo to anything that isn't a comments page, so it has an extra check that the url matches a comments page that it knows about before it does anything.
I fixed it by adding a pattern for community and syndicated feed pages (the url looks different than it does on the comment page of a regular user).
You'll have to install the script again, but that's as simple as clicking on the "this greasemonkey script" link above and saying "install". Greasemonkey overwrites scripts from the same source with the same name.
Re: The problem with syndicated feeds and communities is fixed
Date: 2006-04-30 03:40 pm (UTC)Re: The problem with syndicated feeds and communities is fixed
Date: 2006-04-30 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 05:46 pm (UTC)I'm hoping you get comment notifications, because this post is a bit old, lol. Um, I guess the question I have is: How do I stop seeing a particular poster? I can kill her comments, sure, but I was hoping there was a way to simply NOT see her anymore.
Thanks, darlin'.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 02:46 am (UTC)Well, there's this. Whether it'll work or not depends on what LJ theme you have. If it doesn't work, let me know - I haven't looked at this part of the code in a while, and so haven't updated it to cover all the livejournal themes that are out there.
Anyway, what you do is this:
// Commented out because I think it's ugly. Your taste may vary, so you can
// uncomment this next line to kill/unkill people on your lj friends list.
// Intended primarily for communities you like mostly, but one or two
// posters get on your nerves.
// {scenario:ljfriendsScenario,hrefpat:".*/friends\\b"},
// Commented out because I think it's ugly. Your taste may vary, so you can
// uncomment this next line to kill/unkill people on your lj friends list.
// Intended primarily for communities you like mostly, but one or two
// posters get on your nerves.
{scenario:ljfriendsScenario,hrefpat:".*/friends\\b"},
(That is, cut out the initial two slashes on the last line)
If you accidentally edit too much of the file, and killfile stops working altogether, you can always install the script again from the link in this post, and it'll wipe it back to the base version.
It's wonderful.
Date: 2008-07-28 02:18 am (UTC)killfile vs. hide comment
Date: 2009-01-07 11:46 am (UTC)I was just wondering about the kill vs hide comment option. In my case, I just wanted to collapse that one comment because I'm fine with reading the person's other messages. However, I find that "hide comment" does not stick. When I closed the tab, opened a new one and navigated back to my entry, the comment was displayed on the fully-loaded page. "Kill" does stick, though. Is that really the way the script is meant to function? I would really prefer to just hide that one comment, and kill -- as I understand it's meant to and as it works on my journal -- hides every single comment of the user.
Thanks so much!
Re: killfile vs. hide comment
Date: 2009-01-08 03:37 am (UTC)I hadn't considered the case of someone wanting to hide only a few selected individual comments, and have that persist. This would require something very different, as I'd need a way to reliably find the same comments after a page had been reloaded.
Re: killfile vs. hide comment
Date: 2009-01-08 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-04 01:27 am (UTC)I've uncommented the two pieces of code:
{scenario:ljfriendsScenario,hrefpat:"^[^/]*//[^/]*/friends"}
{scenario:ljfriendsScenario,hrefpat:".*/friends\\b"}
but the entries of the people I've killfile'd are still showing up.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-03 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-27 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-28 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-28 12:10 pm (UTC)At the moment, my theory is that firefox and chrome view the html slightly differently. Both take the html that comes from the server and internally canonicalize it - add missing closing tags, that sort of thing - but they fix it in slightly different ways. Something about what chrome is doing causes the script to crash and stop running partway down the page.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-02 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-17 07:35 pm (UTC)However, I want to ask a question - suppose there is a poster who is just so obnoxious, so infuriating, that the very sight of their username makes you see red. Basically, you don't just want to hide their comments, you would prefer it if you were never reminded of their existence, EVER again, because every time you see them you want to throw something. Is it at all possible to remove the "Jackhole left a comment here" notification completely since generally if you killfile a person like this it's because by doing so nothing of value is lost? Or more accurately, I killfiled this dweeb, I don't care that they left a comment here and don't want to know they exist. Is something like that even possible? Or if that doesn't happen, is it possible to replace the username with "Blocked User" or something generic like that - I know I've blocked them, but there is no username there to make me remember specific acts of assholery and/or trolling and give me hives, if you see what I mean.
Just a small suggestion, that's all - even as is, killfile has been a lifesaver. Life is too short to read the spewings of trolls, fanatics, stans and idiots, and I probably don't want to know how many triggers and fights I've been saved by clicking on that little "kill" link next to a username, so thank you.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-16 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-09 05:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 01:10 am (UTC)I installed greasemonkey, then the script, then fixed the html as recommended (removing the two hashmarks). No dice. No kill/hide options. :-( Any advice?
ETA: somehow, finally, I got the kill/hide option to show...but ONLY in comments to entries on my friends page. I'm not seeing the kill/hide function on this page, nor am I able to kill the lj comm posts on my Flist of the user whose existence I'd like to avoid; I can only kill comments. It's the user's posts on my favorite LJ comm I'd most like to avoid.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 03:27 pm (UTC)Many thanks for the current kill/hide script. I can't get it to kill posts on my flist, but it's still very useful to have.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-28 01:31 am (UTC)