A helpful reader has improved his killfile script—now you don’t need to edit it at all, and it puts a little “kill” link in each comment so you can easily take out annoying commenters with a click. Again, this requires Firefox with the Greasemonkey plugin, so you IE users and us Safari people are out of luck.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Just installed it and gave it a test spin through this week’s posts. Looks like it works pretty well.
I have to say that Pharyngula is one of those blogs that doesn’t really need a killfile. The ‘trolls’ in here, if they can be called that, are so very low key and poor quality that they don’t much get in the way of discussion.
SWEEEEEEEEETTTT. Let’s see if we can get that for Panda’s Thumb, where it’s desperately needed. Now where’s charlie wagner’s name….
This is cool.
I’d totally use Firefox if I could figure out how to export all my Safari bookmarks.
-B
Hang on…someone made “Safari Bookmark Exporter”. It is free and works like a charm.
http://homepage.mac.com/simx/products.html
Thanks, rock on!
-B
Nice. I still wish I could figure out how to make this work for other sites, though. There are some grade-A trolls I’d love to get rid of. I’ve tried modifying the script to add other sites to the “include” line, which does make Greasemonkey decide to try running it elsewhere, but, sadly, it just doesn’t seem to recognize others blogs’ comment lines. Any thoughts?
Oh–I see, you commented on that in the script itself. Sorry.
I’m the author of the script. Thanks for the feedback, folks. I’ll monitor the comments on this post if anybody has any questions or feedback.
I’m interested in generalizing this for other blogs, but I don’t think it would be as easy. The html for this site is well ordered and that is not the case for most blogs.
Joseph H. Buddha! The ridiculous hoops you guys jump through just because you don’t like reading contrary comments.
And to think this all was started by little ol’ me. Brings a tear to me eye. *sniff*
Ah, well. Whatever makes you happy. What makes me happy is the knowledge that the more time you script kiddies use obsessing over blocking offending blog comments from your sight, the less time you have to screw up the world at large.
No, we love contrary opinions. They get some good back-and-forth going, and bring up interesting points.
We despise time-wasting, insipid blitherers who have nothing to say but whine, whine, whine. Paring them out increases the signal-to-noise ratio. Speaking of which, I’m still getting a spammy vibe from you. Say something worthwhile, or don’t bother to comment.
There goes JMcH proving why we need filters yet again. And not understanding why.
JMcH, [taking the troll bait, just this once]
Apparently,you do not understand the concept of a kill file. Allow me to explain.
It’s about giving individuals the option to block out what they consider to be noise. If *I* think someone is a troll, [like, say someone just, for no real reason, calls me a “script kiddie” or something like that] then *I* can make the personal decision to not listen to him/her. Others may or may not decide the same. The more trolly the person gets, the more people block him/her. This deprives trolls of the food they need to survive (responses) and they eventually move on.
Nobody is blocking you en masse (yet). Everybody that wants to read you and play whatever games you want to play can still do so happily. Some of us, however now have the option to simply tune it all out.
Stand–pleeeeeeze consider writing one of these for Panda’s Thumb. I looked at the script and I understand this is not a trivial undertaking. But consider it. Some of us would be mucho, mucho endebted.
steve s, I’ll look into it. Luckily, it looks like once you’ve done one, doing more is pretty easy. Send me an email and I’ll keep you updated. (my email address is in the script)
That JMcH troll just perpetrated the most bizarre misuse of “script kiddie” I’ve ever seen. In his ignorance, he appears to think everything called a “script” is the same.
Just so no-one is confused, a script kiddie is someone who thinks he’s a hacker even though he uses others’ premade exploits. It’s like someone calling himself a chef for making a TV dinner.
GreaseMonkey scripts are related to web design and have nothing to do with hacking. They’re used by the savviest internet users to get rid of annoyances, like trolls.
So in contrast to “script kiddie”, Greasemonkey scripts actually signify elite status.
JMcH, welcome to the internet, troll. I know it’s a scary world out here compared to AOL. Be safe, and stay away from pedophiles pretending to be Homeland Security agents.
P.S. Add another vote for Panda’s Thumb.
I’ll note that there’s Turnabout for IE and CreamMonkey for Safari. Both attempt to be compatible with GreaseMonkey for Firefox, with varying degrees of success.
http://www.reifysoft.com/turnabout.php
http://8-p.info/CreamMonkey/
It’s jumping through hoops to avoid banning people, even stupid, obnoxious people.
Just testing if this is a bug in the script, and am attempting to create an unkill-fileable user.
Heh. My attempt to create an unkill-file-able entry created instead an auto-killed entry, which is instead un-viewable if you have the killfile active.
Not that many people will read a week-plus old comment thread, but the existence of this killfile script inspired me to learn greasemonkey and write my own.
Assuming this script works where I think it does, it covers all of scienceblogs.com (including here), the panda’s thumb, some feminist-leaning blogs that were easy to cover with the same code, *.livejournal.com, *.typepad.com, and anyone who does their comments through haloscan.com. Other blogs should be easy to add, except that I’m now working on something to let people set their preferences through a nice interface, and allow individual users to add their own blog scenarios that way. (Which should take at least a week or two, since I can only find time to work on this on the weekends)