Comment Spam and the future of Blogger

I have decided to disable comments on this blog because of the large volume of spam comments I am having to cope with. They outnumber real comments 20:1 now.

Talking of which, how long can Blogger continue? Google have not updated this platform for a few years and I can't see them maintaining it for much longer.

Returning to blogging

In my last article dated 3rd May I explained that I was giving up blogging for the time being, but that I might return in the future.

Having considered all the options, and with the amount of interesting things going on and the number of technical tips I have not been able to share I thought I would make a tentative return. I have updated the blog template and I have given greater prominence to the disclaimer which accompanies every article. I encourage  you to read it here.

For those of you who don't know, Ecalpemos is the word "someplace" spelled backwards and is derived from the name given to a house in the novel "A Fatal Inversion" by Barbara Vine:

The day before she left he thought of a new name for his house. For some days he had been mulling this over, trying to come up with something more interesting than Wyvis Hall. Myopotamus Manor, which had occurred to him, was just a joke. He began anagramming, twisting letters round, keeping in mind where they had been going, where Mary was still going... Ecalpemos. He asked the others what they thought Ecalpemos was. 'A Greek island,' said Mary. 'Not an island,' said Rufus. 'More like a mountain. A volcano.' 'Or a resort on the Costa Brava.' 'You just made it up,' said Rufus lazily. 'It does sound rather like a community. Oneida, Walden, Ecalpemos.' `It doesn't sound in the least like Oneida or Walden. I know what it is, it's like Erewhon: that's "nowhere" backwards.'…..
…... Ecalpemos is "some place" inverted.' `Well, well, very clever. Don't you find 'some place' has too much of an American flavour?'
`I don't give a sod about that,' said Adam. 'It's not being called “some place" anyway, it's going to be Ecalpemos.' Which thereafter it always was.  (From A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine)

What's the bloody point?

The last entry in Kenneth Williams' voluminous diaries is a one line entry for 15th April 1988. It reads simply:

Oh, what's the bloody point?

Within hour of writing this Williams was dead from an overdose of barbiturates, probably administered accidentally.

His diary had ended, and so has mine. For now.

Blogging has been a large part of my life for the past nine years. It has covered subjects ranging from mental health to IT to my musical work to my journey of faith. There has even been the odd recipe. Some of my writing has sparked great discussion - one post has 402 comments. There have been controversies. There have also been great meetings of minds. But there has always been freedom to discuss the things that matter.

Earlier this week I deleted a blog post because I felt under pressure to do so. It was the first time I had ever removed an article from this blog. The repercussions of this have been that I can no longer write about my personal faith in this blog or anywhere else.

Freedom is not all encompassing. Rudolf Steiner pointed out in his Philiosophy of Freedom that our ability to act freely probably lies only within our own thoughts. Everything else is subject to social norms, expectations of others, the law and cultural frameworks. So for now my thoughts must stay within my own head. My faith will remain a personal matter. Unresolved and unexpressed.

For now this blog has ended. It may return in some form in the future.

I would like to thank all of the people who have read and commented on my writings over the past nine years. Your companionship has been an important part of my life.  Until we meet again May God bless you all.

Gordon

Some changes to my blog

I have decided to make some improvements to the comment system used by this blog. The previous commenting restrictions were put in place after a spate of automated comments aimed at "link spamming". Now that Blogger (Google) have put in place a comment spam filter I have been able to free things up slightly whilst not having to change to an external comment service (and lose all the existing comments).

Here are a summary of the changes:

• You no longer need a Google account to leave a comment, but there is a message encouraging you to leave a name/URL so people can tell your comments from other people's. Sadly there is no way to force this in the blogger comments system currently.
• I have removed moderation. All new comments will be instantly posted to the blog.
• I have removed the captcha barrier for posting comments (but may reintroduce it if spam becomes a problem).
• I have modified the "x comments" link that appears on each post so it encourages people to leave a comment.

Lets see how it goes. My guess is that I will need to re-enable captcha at some point, but Blogger's anti spam system may be good enough to not require that.

Making some slight changes to my blogging habits

Being a user of the Chrome browser by Google I was recently prompted to install the "blog this " extension. This puts a little blogger icon in my toolbar and allows me to add an article to my blog which links to any page I visit in my web browser. I promise to use this sparingly, but it might allow me to comment on some interesting articles and issues as I find them.

The ethics of removing blog comments.

I was asked earlier today to remove three comments by a contributor to the discussion on one of my blog articles. The comments in question related to interaction the person had had with someone mentioned in the article and how that related to the subject under discussion. Some time after these events the two people had made up with each other and he wanted to remove a record of the disagreement.

I went ahead and removed the comments, but this did raise two interesting questions:

Should the comments have been removed or should an update have been posted explaining that they were now friends again?

Is this the same as Winston Smith (in the novel 1984) changing newspaper articles and destroying the originals?

My gut feeling is that blog comment threads should remain intact for as long as the article exists and that by amending the flow of the discussion at a later date we are attempting to change history. It may seem like a small thing but the principal is important.

Considering Making Changes to my Blog

My blog is currently published using Blogger, but hosted on my own web hosting account.

Pros:

• Can email articles and photographs in from my Google G1 mobile phone.
• Don't need to maintain any scripts on my hosting account as it uploads via FTP.
• Some evidence that Google indexes Blogger pages more quickly because Google own Blogger.
• Its published under my own domain name.
• By hosting the pages outside the Blogger/Google network I have some protection from pages being taken down for legal reasons. Anyone complaining would have to contact my ISP, and because they are in Ireland it makes any threat of legal action slightly more difficult.
• No ads.

Cons:

• Publishing via FTP from Blogger.com is getting slower and slower because it insists on uploading all the pages in the blog rather than just the ones that have changed.
• Not hosting it on Blogger's own servers means I can't use some of the new Blogger features like "followers".
• Means maintaining a web hosting account for it with sufficient resources and enough reliability (my hosting is actually very reliable, but Blogger hosted blogs have greater redundancy).
• Some difficulty maintaining my custom Blog template when Blogger make changes.
• People leaving comments have to have a Blogger account or I have to leave it entirely open (which is undesirable).

Because of these issues I am considering moving to either a Blogger hosted blog or a Wordpress blog.

This is how I have compared the different options.

Blogger hosted blog:

Pros:

• Reliable.
• All Blogger functions will work.
• Publishing should be faster.
• Templates should be easier to update.
• Will still be able to post via email.

Cons:

• Ads may appear on my blog.
• Less security against malicious takedowns and legal threats.
• Possible to have it under a new domain - for a fee.

Wordpress hosted blog:

Pros:

• Reliable.
• Better templating than Blogger.

Cons:

• Ads - but only shown to people who have not logged in as Wordpress users.
• Less functions/gadgets than a Blogger hosted blog.
• Possible to have it under a new domain - for a fee.

Wordpress blog hosted on my own hosting account:

Pros:

• More control over malicious takedowns and legal threats than a Wordpress hosted blog.

Cons:

• Will have to maintain and update my own copy of the Wordpress scripts.
• Server load issues of running the scripts might cause problems for my web host or increase my hosting costs.

In addition to this I need to decide what to do with my existing blog. I might just let it continue to run, but add new posts to the new blog. The new blog will (of course) have a zero page rank initially. Either way I know that the current system I am using is starting to creak heavily and I need to make a decision. Any suggestions or advice gratefully received.