Commenter Police

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The recent SEO case is basically the reason for introducing the comment policy here on the MikeSchnoor.com. The question is – who creates comments that may disturb others resulting in a) a law suit and b) the installation of counter-measures for your own blog’s protection?

Spammers
Of course, none of the spammers will ever create scandalous or pesterized comments, instead they’re interested in increasing the pagerank for their sites and of course lure visitors to their grounds. That for sure, the only help against them is an automated process like BadBehavior for WordPress and the idea to put every incoming signal (comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks) into the moderation queue before auto-approving the sender. As example, the Angel Blog just wrote about their own attempt to fight the comment spam.

Real People vs. Trolls
This leaves us with comments that are usually written by real people with a brain to think. The vast majority of blog readers know how to behave properly, and most blog authors hate to censor their readers. I have censored two times in the last years for a good reason. But who knows what may happen if people are commenting about whatever is on their mind including their emotional break-thru of anger and hatred? Or their thoughts concerning something else which was mentioned in the blog? As example, I write about the XYZ-ABC company and review their website, but one commenter explicitly makes sure that he/she does hate the company for a reason. While loving the idea of free speech, does this mean I have to delete it in order to prevent myself from the XYZ-ABC company and their legal machine? And what about myself as blog author – what if someone has the urge to pull a plug and unleash their personal hatred towards the blog author for no real reason but the birds in blue sky?

A blog is not the place to read a comment filled with hatred, and the decision about deleting or leaving it untouched is even more difficult for the blog’s author. Leaving it untouched will disappoint other readers as they see the poor comment and wonder why such crap exists on their daily read. Deleting it will only anger the one who got deleted – resulting in even worse comments from that person.

Its a thin line to walk on, and by informing the reader about what to do (writing comments!) and what not to do (the stuff explained the comment policy), you minimize the problem – I think. Of course, things can turn out wrong and even worse, but isn’t this what makes life interesting?

For example, German law requires one to declare that the website owner / blog author is not liable for external links. This is done via the classic disclaimer, which has to be of course in German within the Impressum or contact area of a site. I even declared that authors of comments are liable for their writing. As result, by German law, I am apparently not liable for that what you, dear reader, write. Now there’s the idea of the Commenter Police: Wouldn’t it be best for a blog author to get the comments being rated by the commenters themselves in order to create a mini-social-network? Leaving it up to the commenters to fight among themselves, and not the blog author? But on the other hand, a comment policy is still the best to use to keep everybody informed.

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Wahl-O-Mat

The upcoming elections in Germany appear to be quite a festival of political stubbornness and illogical reasoning by each party. But this time the politicians don’t play a major factor. The Wahl-O-Mat (in German) offers all citizens the opportunity to check their conformity with the major parties BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN, CDU/CSU, DIE LINKE.PDS, FDP and SPD.

Of course I had to give it a try – twice! After deciding about my point of view on 30 topics from the entire political spectrum, I was surprised to see the result: Yesterday, my choice was meeting the SPD’s positions, and today I was in for the FDP? I probably changed my opinion on one or two thesis which I answered previously with „neutral“ and today with a more yes or more no answer. By now I really don’t know what to vote for, because all major parties don’t really offer me a solution to the things I’d like to see being solved in Germany. They are anti-students and somehow anti-me.

Screenshot Wahl-O-Mat

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Google Syndication Problem

Is it just me or the feistiness of Germany’s telecommunication backbones? I’m unable to reach pagead2.googlesyndication.com and receive a timeout error.

Update: I guess this was just another evil glitch of the backbone network. I couldn’t ping through… thanks S A J Shirazi for checking it with me.

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Expand the Blogstream

Its a small note, but one I’ve enjoyed reading this morning. All those who participate in the Weblog-phenomenon have perhaps understood that blogs are the alternative to the mainstream media. David Gibbons summarize his thoughts on why the blogstream beats the mainstream:

Mainstream media feeds up popular opinion – you learn nothing! The Blogstream randomly knocks ya sideways as you delve into the mind of the individual – jarring opinions make you think – by thinking you learn – give me the Blogstream!

If the definition per-se explains the term blogstream as a play on the term mainstream. But the authors of weblogs do not necessarily reference the overall beloved points of view created by the media. Instead they offer their own (sometimes most personal) alternative by presenting input coming from both professionals and hobbyists authors. With the blogstream as a network of news and information, it grows faster than the mainstream media. Can one set up a radio station within minutes? Are you allowed to send your broadcasting signal without interferring other signals? The mainstream media has regulated itself and is bound to a variety of laws, rules and of course their own corporate culture. Who wouldn’t want to keep all advertisers in line without flaming on one of their product – it’s the mainstream media. What can one do in the blogstream? You may investigate it deeper and strive for your personal expansion as a unique part among many others. As a Citizen Media journalist, you offer things which cannot be caught by the mainstream media, and by offering, you let others think and learn. And always remember, don’t just read the Stars of the blogosphere because they seem to be Dogs after a while – move on to the Cash Cows and Questionmarks, too.

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Push and Pull: The Blog Herald

This is amazing. Not that I haven’t expected it, but we’re mentioned on today’s pick for the 100 blogs in 100 days campaign by the Blog Herald. I already love the discussion in the comments on the post, because the commenters were mostly striked by yesterday’s article about introducing a comment policy for the MikeSchnoor.com. Usually, a comment policy is part of any major blog (just google along), and since Germanic law has some tight restrictions on provinding and maintaining a website (or blog) by applying the idea of „you must identify yourself“, the idea of informing your readers is much better than receiving a plaint from some commenter who has been removed or edited.

Now remember the discussion about the blogger who got sued because of the comments? Watch the discussion about this free-commenter idealism and you’ll notice that both sides have good points. But in the first set of comments, the comment-policy is an evilish concept, and in the others, the commenters cry for hunting down the real people who are responsible for their comments. Now where’s a solution for this paradoxon? So far, I have none. But a major thanks to Duncan for including us!

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Community Journalism: J-Learning

Many people still have no idea on what to do with the internet except browsing other people’s websites. The free to read service offered by J-Learning.com enables the reader to do the same as everyone seems to do in the new millennium: Being present on the internet.

It is designed to help individuals, civic groups and school groups jumpstart their own community media projects. It offers basic training in Web site creation, HTML, page design and use of photos, audio, video, animation, surveys and databases. It also offers tips on advertising, fundraising and e-commerce to help sustain these community efforts.

Their tutorials easily instruct you to become a web publisher within a couple of hours. This is done by showing four main steps including many in-depth articles, seemingly obvious but hidden details – and a lot to read.

Sometimes you strumble upon this stuff on accident, but this time it happened just after exploring the so-far mentioned blogs on 100 blogs in 100 days campaign by Duncan Riley. Is it time to open your eyes and open yourself to the blogosphere? [via Solution Watch]

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Announcement: Comment Policy

This is aimed to those who honestly misbehave. Dear Trolls, you appear in the moderation list and just… don’t fit with all others out there. ;)

During the past, there’s been a few comments which did not fit the MikeSchnoor.com for various reasons. These occasionally appearing comments were removed from the weblog, which includes the silent removal of detected just spammers, but real people, too. This new comment policy shall give you, dear reader, the ability to understand why your comment may not appear on the blog, and why your comment might be a candidate for manual removal. Violations of this comment policy will result in nothing else but a removal. Since the idea of the „common sense“ does not meet the standards of every human being on this world, and since some people are truely stupid, it is time to publish the comment policy which is based on Jeremy Zawodny’s own policy. Update of this post may occurr from time to time as much as the rules change. Notifications of these changes do not happen. This comment policy is linked from the comment form to avoid any claims of ignorance or „I did not know that!“ excuses. Continue to the full comment policy with all the dirty details.

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GMail for free!

No more invitations, no further posts questions about having another 50 free invitations. The internet got freed from Google’s webmail service GMail. The Googleopus allows anybody to get a GMail account by confirming you are a „real person“ via your mobile phone. GoogleVideoPhone as next after GoogleTalk?

[via GoogleBlog, Basic Thinking]

Update
You will not receive an invitation to GMail from me. You can do whatever you want, but you won’t get one. I will not help you, I will not support you because I’m not some Google Support guy. And if you want something at all, leave some correct and realistic email addresses for me to get in contact with you, or nothing (NOTHING!) will happen.

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Searching for German Blogs…

This afternoon was meant to become boring: I decided to search for preferably German blogs which weren’t on the cover of every other blogroll. I used Das Weblogverzeichnis to scan through blogs that interested me, and until I found 14 blogs after scanning approximately 560 blogs for content. I ended up at number 150 of the letter D after finishing A-C… about 1/5th is done, more later or tomorrow!

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Photoshop CS3 Details

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Think Secret has obtained several notes regarding Photoshop CS3. What strikes me most is that it took only a couple of months to overtake CS2. Further, the report indicates that Adobe may be developing two other yet unannounced products: Adobe Acrobat 3D and Adobe Full Frame.


More details about the standard and premium editions including the package „on-top“ programs can be found in their article.

Another product is their new idea of Apple Photo Pro: A survey by Adobe presented Photo Pro as software tool for especially photographers, but at the moment, none could confirm the product’s development status. Might be a trick, might be true.

read more | digg story

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