It is fast becoming troll central. At first I thought they just hated you. Turns out they hate everybody. Sometimes they go after each other. I’m pretty sure I saw a troll go after a moby once. Anyway, thanks for the update.

This goes back to what Bob (Nick Danger) Hahn found while managing Free Republic. If you allow trolling you have to refute each individual troll. It isn’t like you can say once, “that isn’t true” you have say it every time someone makes the argument. So there is no end to it. Second, refuting them takes time which could be better spent. Third, dealing with trolling causes committed activists to drift away. For those reasons we’ve made the decision that trolling is a capital offense and that the burden of proof is upon the troll to prove their good faith, not ours to prove trolling.

I’ve never used it to manage a large site, but IntenseDebate may be a more flexible alternative than Disqus – and it’s written by the WordPress developers, so the support should be hard to beat (as far as free plugins go, anyway): http://intensedebate.com/

Twain, my friend. Twain is the source of all wisdom.

“Never argue with an idiot. They’ll drag you down to their level, and then beat you by experience.”

And – its a waste of time.

We’re banning them as fast as we can. If I see someone with one or two RS comments and a buttload of comments on TPM or other sites, and they are either marginally or plainly not on our side, they go away. No questions asked. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Still, it’s trolls that you should not be having to constantly ban. There’s a potentially unlimited number of them too, because they simply can sign up for DISQUS on TPM or other lib sites and get easy access.

One other issue that I’ve brought up several times and never gotten an answer about: I’ve never seen anything in the user diaries section in IE8; the only way I’ve been able to view them is by happening upon them in this bottom section (ALSO ON REDSTATE.COM) or by going to my laptop. Is this being addressed, or will I have to upgrade my browser?

I know you’re banning as fast as you can. And, I might add, doing a tremendous job. Do you have a cursor that looks like crosshairs in a gunsight? I figure you must ’cause you guys catch on to them kinda quick.

I find it pretty easy to spot the trolls. Their comments are way out of whack here and are mere assertions. Well-reasoned arguments from the opposition should be welcome though, IMO. They help to sharpen everyone’s thinking and help keep RS from becoming an echo chamber.

It seems most of them are not interested in discussion but rather, insults and name calling and for that reason, they are an annoyance and interference more than anything else. i like having an environment where they are not welcome since we already have to tolerate them dominating Hollywood and the news media 24/7.

You’d think Disqus would have an option to keep comments in chrono order, and not subject to “best” from up/down arrows. Odd that there aren’t more competitive options out there.

I agree there needs to be reassessment to restore the sense of community here, because it has really rally flattened.

I need to test that.

Bill, as a part of the Disqus team, it would be great to get a direct dialog going with you and your team to see what we can do address your concerns.

Erick:

Just a technical ‘Idea’ that might cut down on the trolling:

Is there anyway to bring back ‘RedState Accounts’ as a separate feature from Disqus?

Say, you have to log into RedState (with a separate username/password from Disqus) to even get to the pages that have Disqus content on them?

That would degrade/eliminate the troll-problem – as it would allow RS.com to filter out known-bad user-info, AND it would return the 24hr rule…

No RS.com account? You can read the front page only…

Think of it kind of as how WSJ does their pay-wall: you can read the front-page of the site, but everything else is for WSJ account-holders only….

Not saying you should charge for a RS.com account – just saying that it would solve the technical problem (by making the commenting pages only visible to RS-approved visitors, vs-a-vs anyone-with-a-disqus account)…

It’s technologically possible…

In Disqus’ defense, the site can choose to force a SSO gate, requiring everyone to make an account with RedState. But I guess the admins here didn’t know that. CC: @streiff:disqus please tell the rest of the mods this.

Your SSO gate is not turned on.

They can also add more mods to aid in this. Responsible community members are good.

I would suggest you try a modern browser. If you were a web developer, you would know that it is much harder to code for IE8. Chrome and Firefox looks better visually (the Disqus embed), and it has some nice eye candy.

If you want to see the litany of issues and complaints, you can read this thread. Not much has changed since early September.

The biggest issue is the influx of troublemakers. I attribute that to either a) a hole in the back end that’s allowing non-RS members to post, or b) the loss of our 24-hour wait period to post. We were told that Disqus filtering would avoid the troll problem, but that is patently false. In fact, I had to ban a “HIGH REP” commenter for trolling just yesterday.

The second biggest problem is this asinine vote up/vote down system. It is possible for NON MEMBERS to vote up/down any comment – they don’t even have to be signed on. That is absurd. Related to this is the default sort sequence for comments that sequences them by “Best” instead of by date/time. It confuses people and it allows trolling to bury good comments.

There is very little ability to customize comments using HTML. There is no custom signature block. There is almost no capability to embed pictures and videos. The threading is awful – after 3 or 4 levels of replies, Disqus switches to this silly @ referencing.

The commenting system we had before was vastly better. Too bad it ate our servers alive.

The RS I/T people have been in contact with Disqus. I suggest you work with them. They’ve received plenty of “feedback” from those of us who have to deal with the troll invasion.

I can see your troubles, and while I don’t work for Disqus, I try to help them out as much as possible, as right now they are really busy.

1. You can solve the troll problem by forcing a SSO gate that requires everyone to register an account with RedState using their own account system. Sites like NPR have this functional on their site. What is happening now is RedState has SSO turned on, but it allows other auth systems such as Disqus and Facebook to work as well. I’m not logged into RedState ATM, but I can still comment.
2. Refer to my other comments.

not to be unduly rude, but wtf are you? Do you know how many active moderators there are on this site? All I see is someone I don’t know, with and girlie pink “Low Rep” icon by their name, who is acting like they have all the answers to problems they really aren’t acquainted with.

yassah, boss man.

Hey, we’ve had conference calls with Disqus. We are working with Disqus directly. They are aware of our issues. I’m guessing that possibly they may have considered that solution.

I’m sorry. My reputation is trashed because a Akismet bug back a few weeks ago, and it has trashed my rep. I’m seriously not a bad person. Disqus refuses to get back to me on this, and I have a whole group of people who can back me up on that.

I don’t work for Disqus, but I sure do know how to fix most issues. I’m sorta like a Disqus shadow. I try to help people as much as possible because I’m that type of person.

kowalski…and I sure miss acat, aesthete and Cinco de Solas. Even though I didn’t always agree with acat and aesthete, they were respectable libertarian conservatives who brought great perspective and knowledge to the discussions.

And our old diaries never made it over here in one piece with the appropriate comments attached. For a lot of us, that was a wealth of information, resources and a lot of hard work lost.

Thank you, I agree completely with both your points and miss reading their thoughts as well.

Very glad to hear you all are still trying to muscle through the re-build.

I will keep checking in from time to time to see how things are, er, “progressing”.

I am at the point of just banning them without comment and deleting their comments. It minimizes disruption.

And for you leftist douchebags out there reading this comment, please take note that your viewpoint/comments will be deleted on sight. Redstate is not a debate club. You don’t get to air your opinions here. So don’t bother.

I post frequently on Townhall. They have trolls that spew left wing talking points and insults. They also have a massive problem with spammers that clog discussion threads with lengthy, off-topic responses that are cut and pasted continuously until all discussion is lost.

EE said: “I view RedState’s mission as educating conservative activists, motivating them, and then activating them as necessary.”

“Educating conservative activists.” About what?

“Motivating them.” To do what?

“Activating them as necessary.” “Activating.” What does that mean?

“As necessary.” What does that mean?

What, exactly, are the RS “conservative activists” to be motivated “as necessary” to DO?

Maybe, just maybe, 28 days from the general election, could we motivate them to help GOTV?

RS-ers, if you want to actually help GOTV (Get Out The Vote), and you’re not sure what to do, start at www.mittromney.com.

If you live in a “battleground” state or congressional district, contact the campaigns of your local candidates and ask how you can help.

Long term, consider becoming a Republican Party precinct committeeman. Go here to learn more:

http://theprecinctproject.wordpress.com

For Liberty,

CW

I have to admit, it has been a pain to use the NEW RS site, but, I can understand why you moved to disqus, although they seem to be a very cumbersome way to go. Was WordPress not able to work with you on the problems? I have a few WP sites that I post on regularly, of course I don’t get much in the way of reads or comments so I don’t have that problem, but I have found WP to be very eager to take care of their users, even the freeby ones. Anyway, I’m still hanging in and I do hope you can get a better system going soon. The most important election of my lifetime (67 yrs) is just a scant couple of weeks off. VOTE conservative Republicans into office, lets move the “moderates” out of leadership.

This is Jon from @Disqus…

As a commenting platform that powers some of the most active sites — including political news and campaign sites on the right and left — dealing with trolls, or at least differences of opinion, is certainly not new to Disqus. To that point, our goal is to surface the best commenters and comments for the community’s long-term benefit and engagement. In part we do this through user reputation (such as how many comments a user posts, what percentage of them are approved, and other behavior witnessed across the 1.7M sites that use Disqus). In part, we also approach this through reply, sharing, and voting activity.

To clarify, there is one vote permitted per person per comment.

Red State is a very active commenting community, but the breakdown of votes shows several multiples more upvotes than downvotes, which is the norm across Disqus communities. If there are examples of trolls gaming the votes, we’d like to see those examples so that we can address any loopholes or opportunities for distortion.

For those who simply prefer chronological (or reverse chronological) sort, that is a user preference that you only need to set once and we preserve that preference for future sessions.

Regarding the SSO gate, there is a setting in place to ensure that all commenters register on Red State before commenting.

From reading this thread, I think there are some interesting ideas and valid concerns — many of which we are addressing with augmented functionality as we speak. In the end, Disqus is focused on long-term community engagement. We look forward to continuing the discussion with the Red State editorial and dev team, as well as its readers, to make sure we’re addressing your community’s objectives.

Certainly not the primary message we meant to communicate.

Look forward to continuing the discussion with you and the Red State team to address these.

@redstate-e8630344970962450dbedfcd4cc6d718:disqus There were at least 5 diaries posted on 9/27 about activism and GOTV that provided great info on how to get involved and links to make it easy. Nary a one promoted. Not only that, but try searching “GOTV” or “get out the vote” in the search box at the top and see what you get. Maybe it’s just me, but the results don’t look like GOTV diaries to me.

RS has lost its way in grass roots conservative activism. Does a mission statement to that effect exist? I haven’t been able to find it on the current site. Glad to see EE starting to take on the propaganda incestual media, but still nothing about grass roots activism which will solve tons of problems in future as far as running out the RINOs and weak leadership.

B.S.

You write code? Get it right or fail the course.

Univ. of Ill. Math 106 1964 FORTRAN.

No excuses.

So is it fair to say that you don’t think @redstate-e8630344970962450dbedfcd4cc6d718:disqus’ comment should be at the top (the one I show first under the ‘best’ sort)… Looks like a good comment and discussion to me.

Or are there comments in that thread with more downvotes that you think are good comments. I imagine some people in this community disagree with what is and is not a good comment from time to time, even if you all agree on bigger issues.

Simply trying to better understand the complaints and what we can do to improve the experience. Appreciate the dialog.

With all due respect, are you being funny when you act like you do not recognize the problem Bill is addressing or are you really this clueless?

It would not take you long to figure out that there is a major exploitation with the voting system if you spent just a small amount of time on the site observing. The mods will make a comment, any comment, and usually within minutes they will have a ton of down votes. These votes are not coming from us, they are coming from the assholes that hang around the site for no other reason than to cause us issues.

You can go around this site and find numerous comments that are hidden due to “reported abuse” and yet there is nothing wrong with their comment other than it is a right leaning comment that makes the trolls mad. So they vote it down and report it so many times the comment becomes hidden.

The reality is, probably less than 1 out of every 20 or 30 down votes actually come from people who support this site, the rest come from KOS clowns and other similar losers. Quite frankly, and I do not speak for the site or for everyone, the whole voting thing is sort of juvenile. We may not like every comment from every person every time, but we are like minded people with one goal, and we do not need a vote button to understand that. But we def do not need trolls playing childish games with the voting process and Disqus acting like they do not see it.

The quickest way to solve the problem would be to make the person who votes one way or the other visible to the mods. If there is code in place that keeps non members and guests from voting, then there are a ton of accounts on this site that do not belong. But since anyone who has a Disqus account can vote, I would lean more towards hit and run voting is what is occurring and since that is the more likely case, mods need to have the ability to see who is voting so they can take action and over time eliminate most of the problem. That or get rid of the voting system and abuse reporting system all together. Our mods are good enough there is no real need to keep the abuse system.

so true, I miss many, some are still here I just haven’t found them yet! I started “follow” on a few familiar from before the change in hopes to once again at least be able to read all their insightful comments. Glad you are still here patriette!

Thank you, Erick, for your attention to this matter, and for the status update.

Oh the irony!

This popped up as the lead article. Not sure why.Just noticed. Old news. Sorry. Not trying to stir things up.

Agree. It seemed like Erick was speaking real-time. That’s why I didn’t notice the date discrepancy. A few minutes after I posted, I thought of something else I wanted to say, went into the home page, and couldn’t find it. Even clicked on “front page.” Still no luck. I thought, Oh, how ironic, Erick’s diary on the DIsqus problems went into the netherworlds of cyberspace. I did a search in Google to try to get ahead of the game, and find a cached version. Only then did I realize this was an old post.

For the Administrators – I was using my iPhone4S when this issue occurred.