Secrets of the City

Are there any of you guys that have JavaScript turned off in your browser? That might be a problem.

Well, I guess you can just register if you don’t like JavaScript.

I’m just testing this out…. in a non-registered way.

I would register but I don’t want to shorten my name.

This should also help filter out potential posters who can’t spell MNSpeak…sorry Big G.

Btw, you can use all those naughty spam words like Viagra again.

viagra

Socialist.

Hey, I like it.

Gangbang.

car insurance.

Mazaspa, bud jr. ….seems as though it’s not working as well as max would like.

Matt, aren’t the spammers just going to register?

Speakingof which, it seems to me likea lot of peopledon’t register because they don’t want to truncate their names. Is there a way to allow people to have longer user names?

Speakingof which, it seems to me likea lot of peopledon’t register because they don’t want to truncate their names.

That’s my complaint.

Sure, italian guy, but I can just delete their accounts.

I just emailed Rex to see why he did that. If there isn’t a big reason, I think I’ll change it.

The Spam tasted better when Rex was here.

(I actually suggested this manner of handling the spam, which has really gotten a lot, lot, lot worse.)

ALTER TABLE MODIFY mnspeak_user VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL;

Would this be a good time to re-request that there be some mechanism for allowing us to remove notifications to several-month old posts that only get spam responses now?

By the way, some busier sites (i.e. digg) require a captcha even for registered users, if only to slow the pace of commenting.

And as long as we’re talking about the MNspeak guts, I’ve been getting a lot more JDBC errors lately, especially “malformed GUID”. Hitting Back then resubmitting ends up working, though. Then there’s the thing about logins expiring much too soon.

I’m using FireFUx 2.0, by the way — but the problems go back farther than that.

You may call me El Mpls Simpletonirino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

Ouch, that was horrible SQL syntax… why not switch the table name with the field name, and just forget about the field altogether?

ALTER TABLE mnspeak_user MODIFY username VARCHAR(32);

I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s causing the malformed GUID error. The calendar on the homepage doesn’t load a lot of the times either because of a ColdFusion error.

I’ll check on removing email notifications from old posts.

I’ll check on removing email notifications from old posts

Bless you. I am getting mucho notifications from this old post, when Rex was here.

While this is a forum for local news, tobacco taxes and bans will be on the ballot in a number of states, and Big Tobacco is spending millions to try and stop ‘em. I’ll let y’all know how it turns out.

Closer to home, Mankato residents will vote on their smoke ban next week.

“I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s causing the malformed GUID error.“

The “malformed GUID error” (racial insensitivity aside) is caused by an impedence-mismatch between the entry-headers of the posts themselves and the recombinant-display properties assigned to the registered user. I don’t remember the exact code-string needed to fix this, but it does involve a live chicken and Vasoline, so you might want to simply live with it for now.

.

Oh no! The spammers are adapting! It’s a Halloween nightmare come to life!!!

VARCHAR2(32)

stereos stereos portable cd equipment lancaster skillet snarfing clambake

OK… I guess my brilliant SPAM stopper didn’t work very well at all. Keyword stopping is back in place for now.

No worries Matt. It was Rex’s dumb idea. He said so above.

(My idea was to do it server-side, not client-side. But trying the javascript option was a good idea.)

(Is this rex whispering?)

social ist back in the hizz ouse

I didn’t know any Cold Fusion until I started doing this site, so I thought I’d try the javascript before trying to figure out the server side script. But here goes…

wait, GUID error, italian spammers, viaxxgra … I get it now!

Captcha was already mentioned as an option, but another possible solution that I’ve seen is to have people solve a simple math problem (I know, I know—mathz r hard n’ shit!). This also makes it a little more friendly for the vision impaired and those who generally loathe trying to decipher the characters in those wacky, swirly captcha images.

“Before we post your comment, please solve this simple math problem. This is to help reduce comment spam. (random number between 1 and 25) + or – (random number between 1 and 25) = _______”

I would register but I don’t want to shorten my name.

I would register but I don’t like my posts being googleable. (And yes, I understand that I can use a pseudonym and create an e-mail account specifically for this purpose. It’s more principle than practical.)

I hear you on that Davey. I’ve considered the fact that if I ever apply for a job somewhere else (and why would i? WCCO is the best employer in the world!)…. a potential employer can google my name, and MNSpeak is the number 3 and 4 thing that pops up.

oh sonofa

how do I delete my profile? I don’t want to be googled back to MNSpeak.

Another change on my list is to make sure those links have no search engine tags in them.

That’s done. All author links should now have a rel=”nofollow” attribute in the link tag. Most search engines are now abiding by it.

Wow! Cool, Matt. Thanks. Now I can go back to be a moron here.

What do you think about the profile pages? Are they worth it? Should they just list the information you put in there or should they list comments and posts as well?

JD, um, like when did you stop?

De-tagging won’t alone kill your search indexing. Will help but won’t kill.

Even though I’m registered, when I figured out everything I said was google-able, I stopped using that login. Is there anything else that can be done?

Yeah, that’s why I was wondering if the profile pages were all that useful to being with. Maybe we should just dump them.

You people are so gutless.

I wouldn’t dump them…I’d expand them. Give everyone a blog. Because the world needs one more blog.

In all seriousness, I’d go for more voluntary disclosure than anonymity because, as you now know, the small minority of crazy pop goofballs feast upon being anonymous. I’d say give MNSpeakers the ability to come forth as much as they wish and be honest contributors to this community. If people want to come in and post crap they themselves don’t even believe in or are doing so to simply to become the playground bully they always wanted to be, well, screw ‘em.

In the future it’d be most excellent if people who more tightly attributed to their profiles than not. I consider MNSpeak to be an honest discussion of topics, not a frat party of blowhards.

Then again, there’s nothing wrong with straight up debauchery and foolishness. I consider myself a connoisseur.

I kind of like the profile pages too. And I agree with Andrew. I like being able to see who people are, and read about their posts and comments. The search engine thing doesn’t really trouble me too much. On a google search of me, you also find Ironic’s satirical blog entry, and some classic Slanderous stuff too. MNSpeak isn’t that bad, by comparison!

oh look the spam is back already