Monday 6 July 2009

Moderating comments


Since last week, this blog has become a target of spammers. Long comments that force people to scroll down, insults, commenting under nick-names of other readers, taking controversial stands to trigger discussions, etcetera.

It seems that people setting up another Barcelona news project are putting more negative energy in damaging the "competition" than positive energy in building their own quality site, and deliberately want to harm this blog by heating up or slowing down the discussions in the comments sections, hoping that people will stay away. This has forced me to introduce the system of moderating the comments.

During European day-time, not much will change, there will most of the time only be a small delay of a couple of minutes. During European night-time, that delay could be a little to a lot longer, but we'll see what we can do about that. Since there are anyway no posts and so less traffic and comments during that time, this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Several people had commented me before that they were unhappy with the quality of the comments on the blog. I didn't yet have time to look into that but a pleasant side-effect from the moderating seems to be that most of the shouters and the people who are looking for instant satisfaction are going to other places to do their thing. As Johan Cruijff said: "Every disadvantage has its advantge."


My apologies for the inconveniences and thanks for your understanding!

27 comments:

Richard Richard said...

Keep up the good work and don't mind the people who have nothing better to do than to try and ruin everything for everybody.

This is one site that I read daily! :)

All the best!

2PAC said...

Pep,just want to thank you and the whole team who is working on this blog,you are doing a great job,and keep up the good work
Greetings from Croatia

Fabiano said...

Thank you so much, beloved pep & team, you are doing a ridiculously awesome job here! I can't say it often enough: I love this site every time I visit it, and that's multiple times per day.

Screw the competition, if your allegation is true. That doesn't sound culé-like. I'd rather expect something like that from madridistas.

I guess you have put together a nice moderation team. If you still need reinforcements, let us know.

Anonymous said...

i am the spammer.

i started spamming after pep deleted a message from me that was not a spam.

i hate people who delete what others write with no reason.


i wrote that i hate zidan , and this should not have been deleted because its not spam.

from the day you deleted this i started to spam with this empty long messages to explain you that this is spam and not the setece i hate zidan !!!

so to show you that i am the one who really spams you can make the moderation disabled and you will see that there is no spam .


i am not opening ay project or anything else ... i was ungry about pep for deleting a comment that does ot include any spamm.

bytheway could dont much bigger damage as a DOS attack but i didnt because i thougfh spammng will be enough to show u my point

Etsp said...

Anony: You really have nothing better to do? Really? Wow.

Pep: Long-time follower of both blog and Barca, keep up the great work!

Anonymous said...

The worst thing about the comments is the abysmal spelling, random grammar and incomprehensible use of punctuation marks that some people here post on a regular basis.

I know this isn't meant to be school but please if you're trying to relay a message to people at least have the decency to construct something that can be read; as opposed to being deciphered.

Carrer de Corsega said...

Well, he didn't censor that one! What are you going to do now, Pep?

blaugrana1 said...

ya i got a few stuff deleted which were not considered spam,,,watever tho!

I just hope our signings begin before our pre season tours so that the players will adapt faster

Unknown said...

keep up the great work and thanks!
does keirrison sign tomarrow?

Veruss said...

man, I would imagine you're angry with a lot of things in life, by the sounds of it.. i dunno, open a window or something, man..

andresrivera said...

Hey Anonymous! A DOS attack on a Blogger hosted weblog is practically unheard of & near impossible to be deemed succesful, as Blogger is owned by Google, thus it is hosted on Google's servers. You'd need more than a DOS attack to shut down Google, let me tell you that.

Anyhow, keep up the good work Pep. You're doing a phenomenal job here. Viva Barça, més que un club!

Jordi said...

Spamming because of a deleted post. Man, you seriously should look for life outside the Matrix.

Reminds me of: http://www.lightsoutfilms.com/assets_c/2008/11/fromtheinternet-thumb-300x400.jpg

barca4life said...

perhaps its indeed time we all took a deep breath and calmed down. I admit that sometimes i have gotten a bit aggitated on this blog and maybe said somethings that i shouldnt have.

We all need to take a long hard look at ourselves and try to remember why we came to this blog in the first place. Because we all love FC Barcelona and we all want the club to win. So let the healing begin. If i have insulted anybody or said anything that hurt somebody else's feeling I humbly apologize and from now on I will try to keep my temper and not insult other people for their point of views.

FCBarca said...

Spammers, among the worst lot on the planet...They should be subject to prosecution

Anonymous said...

what kind of retard are you, jeez.

stay in your basement scripting DOS attacks or whatever and spare the outside world of your pityful existence.

thank you.

Anonymous said...

Have you lost your freaking mind?

You spam cause your message got deleted?

You should be ashamed of yourself!

rObReV7 said...

What is that guy talking about? If it is him, he's really sad!

Just want to say thanks Pep for everything you do to keep this blog running :) Awesomeness Defined! =D

Unknown said...

Man ....anony. How old are you really? Can you ever not take a rejection? In life you try not to take things too seriously, man it's only a comment on a blog. Rephrase your comment then repost them. Simple as that without the heartache.

skanjos said...

to tell the truth i dont like the spam control but if it is needed you know better m8,and it wont make this amazing blog less good,

my opinion is that its because of the summer transfer policy of barca that some people are furius and express their anger in some posts but all that will end in august/september when they see again this beautiful team play football again.(i watched yesterday the real madrid vs barcelona game again and it showed me how much i miss the barcelona game this last month and sth.i really want the season to start so i can enjoy this team again)

anyway i trust you pep,i've been here since the start of this blog and you've always upgrading it,if you say it was needed then hands down it was. again thanks for your work and the people that help too ,especially now in the transfer window where news drop from the sky like rain,one thing only m8 try to tell your opinion more ,i dont see you post your opinion on news and i would like to know what you think(i know you have a lot of work to do and its difficult but i would love if you entered the conversation too even in the big news)

again thanks for the hard work :)

pep said...

The self-called spammer is ej, but he just started doing it afterwards, because he was unhappy with the fact that there was moderation. So it started before.

NouBarca said...

Are you for real? "EJ" OMG, I loved that dude.
EJ, please come back as "ej" and no longer as anon, I loved your views as "ej", you bleed Barca, you show so much passion and you sometimes over bleed Barca, but eh? its the passion we all want to see, even from the players. But there are some words that are not really good to use in this age, 2009. "hate, go and die, and so many swear words. Rather than say "i hate Zidan", if you said "I dont like Zidan", we would have gotten the point. Its all in the love of Barca.
So, My dear sleeping giant, great poster, "ej", come back on your google account as I love the way your name comes up in the blue lettering "ej" rather than this new found name "Anon". May you never be Anonymous in Life my brethen. Miss you mate.
NB: And how can you write "aguero aguero" with the anon username? The "ej" username suits that lovely request as I now also cry "SIGN AGUERO" -for your sake..lol

NouBarca said...

+ I think its best we all stick to our usernames. It helps a great deal. It gives you a "visual image" of each member. I have had some disagreements with b4l, Ramzi, marc4something recently on our transfer targets esp the Eto issue, but because "I know" these guys, from this blog, and chat room and know what they alwasy said, I know they are saying all that in the interest of Barca. But Imagine they didnt have usernames and come as "anon", i wouldnt be able to credit some good old post to any of them, as we dont know if we get say 40 40 posts from the "anon", would that be just 1 person or 40 people.
Please give yourself an identity.
I remain NOUBARCA of LONDON!!! Brrrap.

NB: I have had LOADS of post deleted so dont think I dont know how it feels. I got into "MEMO" so many times and I "knew" I was right so I didnt hold back at all, He made a mistake of calling me names. Come on, You know I wouldn back down. I gave it back to him". Posts after posts got deleted, then I realised theres no oint in just all that. I tried to make peace and moved on. We would all disagree to agree..!!

utility73 said...

Good decision, pep!

Maybe you should also consider not allowing anonymous posts?

pep said...

The "problem" there is this, utility.


You have four options:

1. Google Account
2. Open ID (don't ask me what it is, but it's there)
3. Nickname
4. Anonymous


Now when you want to delete the "Anonymous" option, you automatically (in the blogger set-up) also delete the "Nickname" option. And since a lot of people commenting here in a proper way don't seem to have a Google Account, that would limit their possibilities to interact with fellow Barça fans.


By the way, it wouldn't help against spamming because when I turned the options of, it seemed my spam buddies had several google accounts to work with. You're a pro or you're not...

pep said...

And if ej wants to contact me, he can mail me at:

fcbtransfers [at] hotmail [dot] com

SimonP said...

I guess it's needed but the consequence could be that the blog basically turns into goal.com. Everyone post a comment with a lot of delay regardless of what other people writes -> no discussion.

SJP said...

oh man i was just starting to understand blogs, now there's spamming! one day i'll get the internet.
just wanted to say thanks to pep for this ever growing beast of a website.
P.S ej should revert as we need more aguero fans!

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