Got Trolls? Usenet-style killfile for lj comments

[dtm]

In 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:

• 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)

Comments

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Personally, I like to see trolls banned. They notice that. They don't notice being killfiled.

[janne.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Tried installing the script, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to mark somebody as a troll. I found a page under tools telling me I can add or remove URL's, but are those the URL's of trolls, or the pages to be checked for trolls, or isn't it relevant at all?

[fromyourashes.livejournal.com]

Hey there - I'm reading [Unknown site tag]'s question, and it's the same one I came here with. But I'm not seeing any way to block this particular user from my sight when I view the comms I'm a member of, so I'm wondering if it's different now that it's a year later, or if I am just not tech-savvy enough (which is ENTIRELY possible).

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'.

It's wonderful.

[(Anonymous)]

Can your fans send you donations by Paypal?

killfile vs. hide comment

[psychme.livejournal.com]

Hi. I was looking for a script on userscripts.org that would hide one very annoying comment from someone who's a good friend in general. The search led me to your script.

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!

[psychme.livejournal.com]

Hi. Sorry to bother you again, but would there be any way to make it so that the entries of people you've killfile'd won't show up on the friends page of a community you belong to?

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.

[apperception.livejournal.com]

It seems to have stopped working. Did LJ change or did something change in the most recent FF upgrade to make it stop working?

[tribulation.livejournal.com]

How do you add lj users to this? Thanks!

[cdvla313.livejournal.com]

Hi, so I realize this is a good 4 years later, but I was wondering if you have any idea if this works in Chrome. I'm trying to figure out if Chrome just doesn't have the capabilities yet for this particular script, or if I'm just installing it wrong. The hide comment button works, but not the kill one.

[spitphyre.livejournal.com]

So I found this through Google... I'm currently trying to block someone on a community I belong to. I can get [kill] and [hide comment] to show up but if I try to click on these I get an error that essentially tells me Firefox doesn't know what I'm asking of it.

[muddyroad.livejournal.com]

First of all, thank you very much for this script - it's come in invaluable for dealing with trolls, assholes and general undesirables on LJ. Killfile them, then add a "danger Will Robinson!" LJ note, and my journalling experience is greatly enhanced.

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.

[umbertoukaxe.livejournal.com]

Если не секрет, дорого обошлось создание блога? Тоже хочется попробовать вести своё что-нибудь. (http://zimnyayaobuv.ru/) (http://zimnyaya-obuv.ru/)

[yacovnefyk.livejournal.com]

Действительно полезно! (http://zimnyayaobuv.ru/) (http://zimnyaya-obuv.ru/)

[(Anonymous)]

I can't seem to get this to work fork chrome via https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aghlloohhfdcogiifcjeffpmpoecloee or firefox. On FF, the kill or hide comment option doesn't pop up near user names or icons.

[thistlethorn.livejournal.com]

I can't get it to work for me, either, on Firefox (which I just installed to use this script; normally I use SeaMonkey). I'm bummed--I was hoping for this script to save my sanity from a poster who used to stalk me.

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.

[thistlethorn.livejournal.com]

I'm sadly not very tech-savvy, but someone mentioned that on LJ we can track a user (presumably to follow their posts because we enjoy reading them). Using that functionality, would it be possible to write a script to track and then block a user's posts/comments from being seen on my personal LJ landscape? If so, would you be interested in taking on the creation of such a script?

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.

[valiha.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious here, but even after changing the posted chunk of text, I still don't see a way to killfile a user in a community I follow. What do I need to do to make it work? Thank you in advance!