Blogger can't seem to handle long comments

Before some readers think it's my fault, I just need to make yet another Google-hates-us-all post concerning the bloated bureaucracy's inability to handle long comment posts in its Blogger sites. You may have seen the dreaded user-hostile Google error if your posts were too long. Strangely, when I reach this error page, it turns out that the comment had posted anyways! I recommend to commenters who experience this issue to first check whether your comment has posted despite the error on my page. (Remember to refresh the page.) Another very handy trick is to first highlight the entire message you're about to send (press Ctrl-A), then copy it (press Ctrl-C) so that if Google does eat your time-consuming message, you can still repaste it (by pressing Ctrl-V) into the commentbox again or by saving it in a file for a later attempt. Keeping messages brief and to-the-point is always well-advised of course. Sorry about this but my hands are tied here.

Google has sat on their ass for at least two months on this important issue while commenters keep voicing the problem. Which is why I assert...

Google hates us all. <;o(

Blogger reluctantly fights spam

This past week or so, Blogger notified its users that it's finally decided to fight spam. You can read all about it here. Perhaps many of us would have found this impressive if implemented several months or, quite frankly, a few years ago but the admins seem to have only responded to this common problem now, and only after a deluge of complaints have been posted on their unresponsive feedback site (through Google), over the course of uncountable eons. Some other bloggers are mildly more hopeful than I about this banal update.

I'm one of those crabby realists who doesn't buy into the overused "better late than never" excuse that barely keeps typical bureaucracies from imploding into failure. Behind the scenes, I've been spending my precious time deleting and redeleting automatic spam from some computer-savvy psychopath writing short quips (half in Chinese & half in English, oddly enough) with a trail of elipses anchored with tags to Russian porn sites and the like, purposely designed to capitalize on accidental user click-through by bloggers trying hard to moderate their commentboxes from this very stupidity. From browsing other sites, I see I'm not the only one of his victims since his spam has successfully rooted itself in other commentboxes by more careless Blogger users. For some odd marketing reason that I can't fathom, Blogger allowed this to go on for quite a long time with no solution, no doubt driving yet more bloggers to their competitors. If I could find a Wordpress solution that was free like Blogger and matching all the capabilities of this system, I'd be gone too. Soooooo gone. But we must do with what we got and make lemonade out of the sour lemons.

After perusing Google's explanation of the new system however, I see some obvious flaws. It would make far more sense to simply allow us bloggers to individually determine for ourselves what constitutes "spam" and not force Google's comparatively blind algorithms on people. For example, I would like to specifically block a few rather dense and obsessive commenters permanently from my blog without having to go through the motion of specifically deleting their consistent nonsense in my mailbox. Can I do this in the new system? It doesn't appear so and this irritates me.

But then, as capitalistically glib as it is, they say "you get what you pay for" and Blogger is as free as they come.

Things coming for spring...

Just to make sure that no one thinks I've suddenly disappeared, I'm letting everybody know that I'm still pondering, still creating, and will be making some new posts shortly. My attention is presently diverted between making a blog redesign (and convoluted Blogger code associated with that task), my attempts at modelling historical things in 3d, tracking down a decent meaning for the Etruscan word aclχa, collecting the details on another potentially contrived PIE root (*)*galakt- 'milk', and a whole bunch of other stuff that has nothing to do with this blog. It's spring afterall and the extra sunlight is making me extra creative after a chilly winter of relative ennui. Hold tight, readers.

Some thoughts about trolling

For me, the usual definition of the word 'troll' needs a serious readjustment. When online, intent is impossible to determine with certainty. They could have a determined intent to be a jerk or they could just be mental. Morality and civility can never be your guide in anonymous environments and is a typical way for trolls to exploit your guilt for 'hurting them' when fighting back or deleting them. They're last tactic is to attack you from another website, but this just makes them look like twits and is free advertisement for you.

So when assessing weak links in your commentbox, the only objective criteria is rationality. A 'troll' must be redefined as: Anyone **for whatever intent** who constantly exploits logical fallacies. Hold your own. Don't back down. Be merciless. Rip the purposely ignorant apart with glee.

Fallacies are the very bread and butter of a determined troll. It's the bug-spray to kill them dead. This also effectively identifies and zaps yappy children, crackpots, spammers, topic-derailers, and the traditional intentful troll. No self-respecting academic-oriented blog wants anything other than sane adults on their blog. Only sane adults add reader value to a blog. Unfortunately, until laws are in place to jail some of the extreme offenders (watch, it's coming), keep in mind that every website is a troll target. No one is a virgin to troll attacks.

Typical trolls I get in my commentbox are as follows:

1. The pompous no-lifer troll
   
   It's the idiot that can't defend his position so he hurls invectives like "You don't know anything about [fill-in-blank]". It begs the question why they don't just take their free time to read something better. Answer: they're social rejects.
   
   
2. The language-kook troll
   
   One nut is still posting falsifiable Vasco-Caucasian etymologies to me for months on end. He fails to absorb that each and every one of his messages has been rejected. Maybe it's time for the meds? No, I'm not interested in how you think that Etruscan is related to Mayan or that you took offense to my position against clumsy protolanguage reconstructions. Get lost.
   
   
3. The neophobic troll
   
   These trolls try hard to twist any new idea proposed by the blogger as a logical fallacy without facts to support it in a transparent attempt to interfere with open dialogue. It doesn't matter how often you espouse Occam's Razor or explain that it's only a rational possibility to ponder given the facts. But grown-ups know damn well what you're saying or ask pertinent questions when they don't. These people tend to be flakes who have no ideas of their own and due to their deficiency bitterly try to discredit others simply for sharing ideas to bring everyone down to their brainless level.
   
   
4. The free-speech troll
   
   This is the person that yells "Free speech" whenever you try to shut them up with a deletion or two. Obviously if all commenters are free to blog their own positions, then there is no free-speech issue. The person is just an aimless jerk who is trying to wear down your own inherent freedom to delete his stupidity from your own blog.
   
   
5. The you-hate-all-opposition troll
   
   Such trolls will say that you can't handle opposition and that you hate everyone, blah blah blah. You're told that you're ornery, you're a prick, you're an aspie. They've got every name in the book for you but no facts. Of course, bloggers have a right to object to factless, argumentative opposition from nutty commenters who pretend that they represent everyone when you're clearly only objecting to their own personal views.
   

Hip-hip-hooray for the blessed 'Delete' button! The best technological innovation ever!

Blogger lynchmobs - Get out the pitchforks!

Given recent comments, let's overtly explain what my intentions are as a blogger and how I moderate my blog against the general intrusions of internet nonsense. Paleoglot discusses comparative linguistics (most often on Proto-IE and ancient Aegean languages), but I will often speculate about things that are of interest to me based on existing facts. Please note the following:

• Fact-based speculation and random speculation are not the same nor on a par.
• Healthy fact-based skepticism is not equal to toxic absolutive skepticism based on petty feeling.
• Speculation is not a danger to Reason for those with minds sophisticated enough to separate fact from fantasy.
• In fact, without speculation, we lack a vital step in the learning process since speculation helps us reflect on the implications of new information.
• We must have clear reasons for our objections, not just for our personal conclusions.
• I reserve the right to delete comments that I deem unconstructive (whether abusive, factless or downright nutty).
• I don't distinguish trolls from genuine but stubbornly ignorant persons - both are unworthy to have voice in an academic forum. (ie. This isn't a kindergarten.)

There are no quicker ways to make my trigger-happy finger delete your comment, besides being insulting to other commenters, than to have people repeat facts and references over and over, chastise me for merely blogging/speculating/expressing, or reducing one's rebuttals to vacuous denials of facts presented without further substantiation.

Blogger quickly getting on my nerves

I suspect other people are having the same trouble with Blogger. I've been noticing an aggravating bug that's just appeared on all Blogger comment boxes that successfully mangles your comments by deleting spaces from them in unpredictable ways for no clear reason other than to elevate your blood pressure. This is really annoying, particularly when you have to rewrite the message over and over trying desperately to make it look moderately readable for others!

I'm thinking that it has something to do with a faulty program by the Blogger team that misinterprets things like hyperlinks and thus strips away spaces incorrectly and at inappropriate times if the message is written just so. For me, hyperlinks were the problem and I had to incorporate the links into full sentences with periods before the cursed program left my spaces where they were.

WAKE UP, BLOGGER TEAM! HIRE REAL WEBPROGRAMMERS!

Ugh! :o) Now I've vented. Carry on, people, carry on.