archGFX » geekery

Comment Authority

adam — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:17:25 +0000

Every few months, a new service comes out with their own WordPress plugin, to add their centralized service to the standard wordpress comments. Dutifully, I try them all out, and inevitably decide that there's no value add for me. A lot of this has to do with my relatively complex comment layout. Most of these services aim to get as many members as possible, so they try to make installation as painless as possible, often at the cost of losing customization. Most of them hook the comment's content. Disqus, the newest fad, actually hooks & replaces comments_template(); forcing users to completely restyle their comment section.

The issue that most of these services seems to be trying to mediate is "truthiness" or "authority". Assigning some sort of integer to the value that a commenter typically brings to a discussion. The first such plugin that I tried was Buddycards, which were relatively non-invasive as far as layouts go. The problem being that not enough people use the 30boxes service, or were willing to create another profile just to have an identity to map to their truthiness.

The next one I tried (that I remember) was SezWho. All of my comments were imported there, so that users can claim their comments here, to obtain better karma elsewhere. Disqus followed later this year, you can claim your comments at archgfx.disqus.com. The problem with both of these is that the company's entire business revolves around comment authority, which is inherently tarnished by a profit motive. If we can't trust the company, how can we map real trustworthiness to their scale of authority?

Centralized anti-spam services play largely the same game, and indeed disqus appropriately cuts out Akismet, Defensio, or any local spam prevention measures. Ultimately, anti-spam services don't try (yet) try to merge disparate communities. That's the biggest problem I see with comment authority - The authority I would have on a music blog is different from the authority I might have on a tech blog. The comments I might leave on a feminist blog would be little more than conjecture or anecdote.

Ultimately, the reason that I, and most people choose to run our own blogging app, instead of using a hosted service like wordpress.com or blogspot, is that we don't want to be dependant on the standards and defaults of a larger, authoritarian group. By removing the ability to customize, and normalizing the authority of commenters, commenting services like disqus take away the things I like about having my own blog, even while they attempt to mitigate the unpleasant elements of spam and trolls. Anonymity and decentralization are linchpins in the present nature of the internet.

I haven't bothered installing Intense Debate or JS-Kit yet, because each new plugin from a non-reputable source is another security risk, as I allow it to rummage through my database for comment information, and email addresses of people who wordpress assured wouldn't be shared.

Buckshot Ep. 10: Feedreading

adam — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:50:19 +0000

apophenia: knol: content w/out context, collaboration, capital, or coruscation.
Knol is something like a communal blog, it's closest competitor is about.com, not wikipedia. Actually, with author-based archives, shared categories/tags, and embedded adsense, it's a lot like wordpress.com. Given google's attrocious splog record with blogspot, i doubt they'll be doing as much competing as they think they will.
via Prunings - Chicago is inverting itself
It's a very interesting article on what's been happening to american cities since the 90's drop in crime. I heavily doubt their predictions for the future, though. The factors that drive people to the suburbs are still present, and haven't been entirely outweighed by the price of energy, nor will they be anytime soon. Also, centralization benefits immigrants much more than it benefits the wealthy. Immigrants aren't going to be taking over edge cities any time soon. They'll be taking over other cities that aren't so expensive.
via Ian Dixon - ReadyBoost works.
Cool trick, my laptop runs faster now, much less likely to turn into molasses when I open photoshop and illustrator at the same time. Nonetheless, making Vista a little bit faster only reminds me how slow it is on the whole. I'd love to switch to the recently released OpenSuse 11, I just need the free time to do it.

Freedom of Speech has a new home

adam — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 03:02:25 +0000

Torrent Freak: The Pirate Bay launches an Uncensored Blogging Service. This is great news. after the many altercations whereby wordpress.com has broken and muted both the voices of those it finds distasteful, and those who disagree with their policies, it's great to see someone stepping up. Well, I'd be remiss not mention tumblr's clearly written and transparent content policy, but choice is always better. The Pirate Bay has a history of fighting hard for even the edge cases of freedom of speech, so the service will be interesting to watch. via Violet Blue.

Migrating a WordPress Install to a New Domain

adam — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:57:48 +0000

When you develop a site on a test server, it's tricky to make sure that none of the old links get carried over to the live site. This tutorial also works if you're moving to a new domain. While using a WordPress export is easier, this method catches everything, which can be important if your theme links to specific pages, since WordPress exports don't preserve post ID's

Download the exisitng /wp-content/ directory (all of it ( some plugins (cforms, wp-eCommerce) contain modified or uploaded files)).
Install wordpress on the new domain. Very few of the settings matter, because they're all going to be overwritten. Nonetheless, it's easiest to use fantastico or Simplescripts to set up the database, and create the basic file structure.
Delete the new /wp-content/ folder, and upload the existing /wp-content/ folder. This step may take a long time, so you can do the next few steps while it's uploading.
Export the old database, using PHPMyAdmin:
Open the exported *.SQL file, using a code editor (Eclipse/Aptana, Notepad++, or (god forbid) Dreamweaver), and find and replace the old domain name with the new one.
After step 4 has completely finished (so that all of the plugins and themes exist before WordPress attempts to use them), use PHPMyAdmin on the new host to delete the newly created database tables
... and import the new ones.
On the existing install, set the blog address to the new URL. this ensures that any google juice that the development server may have picked up will be transfered to the new domain (this isn't necessary if the development server doesn't face the internet).

New Competencies for Theme Designers

adam — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:26:08 +0000

Wordpress 2.5's new image uploader solves the longstanding bug of using deprecated XHTML attributes to float images (align="left", etc.), rather than it being done in CSS. This is handled by applying classes to the image when it's inserted into the post, rather than via inline CSS. This is good, in terms of semantics, clean markup, and separating presentation from content. It's something that Scott suggested a while back, that I've been building into my themes and designs since.

This places the responsibility on theme authors to support the new classes. They are:

alignleft
alignright
aligncenter

I'm not convinced of the need for the align prefix, but it's great progress nonetheless. If your theme doesn't support those classes, here's the code you can insert at the end to handle them:



.alignleft,.left {
	float:left;
	margin: 0.5em;
}
.alignright,.right {
	float:right;
	margin: 0.5em;
}
.aligncenter, .center {
	display: block;
	text-align: center;
	margin: 0 auto;
}

archGFX » geekery

Comment Authority

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