Commentor+Names
First up, I have no idea why some commentors’ names have plus signs added into them.
I’m sure you’ve seen this, such as John+Doe in the comments..
I’ve been told by a few commentors that they’ve deleted the plus once, and it went away.
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I’ve tested things on desktop and mobile, and cannot replicate this. I can’t tell if the issue is due to a mobile OS update, browser update, somehow on ToolGuyd’s end, or a combination of reasons.
I haven’t been successful in figuring out the cause, but since it appears to have only happened one time and is fixable on commentors’ end, I’ll give up for now.
When Using the Contact Form…
This isn’t comment-related, but if you’re sending me a message via the contact form, please make sure to provide a valid email address!
This happens maybe once or twice a month – someone emails me with a question, I’ll send a reply, and then I will immediately receive a bounce-back that the email address doesn’t exist.
False Spam Comment 404 Errors
If you ever submit a comment and receive a 404 page error, that means your comment was filtered out as spam. Although rare, false positives happen – to me too!
Here’s what you do:
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Go back. The comment entry form will usually (always in my experience) have your full comment.
Copy or cut the entire comment text. Delete the comment and write something simple, such as “placeholder.” Email me your intended comment (via contact form or direct). I can then go and edit your comment in the backend of the site.
I have looked into this over the years, never with success – not even techs for the spam filter company have any answers.
So, the best I can do is ask you to leave a placeholder so I know where you want your comment to be, and send me the comment text.
Comment Moderation
First-time commentors’ posts are automatically sent to moderation, and this started off as a way to block spammers.
When I activated this policy a few years ago, it was because spammers were getting through the filter, leaving many dozens of spam comments before they were caught and automatically filtered out.
This happened enough times, where readers were exposed to dozens of spam comments for a couple of hours until I noticed and were able to remove them one by one.
Spam comments are one of my pet peeves when reading other websites. For instance, if I’m checking out a review, and 2 out of 5 reader comments are definitely spam, that doesn’t give me a high impression of the author or website.
Enacting the first-time comment moderation policy has certainly helped with spam. It was rare for me to miss spam comments before, but now my catch ratio is 100%, even when the spam filter temporarily fails.
So, that’s why I enabled the moderation policy. However, these days, it also helps with gatekeeping.
Personal attacks, politics, off-topic soapboxing – none of this belong here.
If you have something to say about tools or a post topic – great! But when a first-time commentor attacks others or sees to fit to rant about off-topic agendas? That doesn’t contribute to the conversation.
When I have to deny comments, it’s usually for one of two reasons – political ranting, or personal attacks.
Things have gotten worse in recent years. I mean, seriously – name-calling because you disagree with someone?
There are other reasons I will block comments, such as when someone makes a catalog or swag requests and posts their full address or other personal information.
There are times when regular commentors’ entries might be sent to moderation as well. Usually, this is for one of 3 reasons – i) you typed your name or email address wrong, and the system sees you as a first-time commentor, ii) you included 3 or more links, iii) you used a certain word that triggered it.
I visit the moderation queue quite a few times every day, but sometimes it might take me a few hours.
Why I Blocked a First-Timer’s Comment
A first-time commentor emailed me today.
I am writing to ask why my last two comments to your article on Hilti products have not been posted. It is frustrating to spend the time to write a comment and find that for no apparent reason, it was deleted or never posted.
That’s weird. I looked into it, and it took a moment, but I realized what the problem was – I blocked their comment, sending it straight to spam, and the second one followed automatically.
Here are their comments:
Name: Trump_Won
Comment 1:
i’d be happy to try out Hilti tools but every product from them I consider seems to be more junk from china. I will purchase ANYTHING (used, new old stock, festool, mafell) before spending money on a NEW tool produced in china. I am TIRED of large corporations selling us (consumers) out to increase their profitability and save them from making the hard decisions (MEANING, DECOUPLE from COMMUNIST CHINA).
Name: Trump_Won
Comment 2:
Hey Stuart, I posted a comment on here this morning and it looks like it was deleted. Can you kindly explain what the problem is?
So, in a post where the focus is Hilti’s different sales practices and upgrade offers for their Nuron line, it’s simply inappropriate for this comment to be entirely focused on politics.
Regular commentors are given a bit of leeway when it comes to straying off-topic or gently touching upon politics. With that in mind, I don’t think I could have given anybody a pass on this.
A first-time commentor ranting about “COMMUNIST CHINA” in all-caps, under the name “Trump_Won?”
For no apparent reason? Surely they must be joking.
Sometimes I might give a commentor the benefit of the doubt. And like I said, regulars sometimes get a little leeway (not with name-calling or other such behavior).
But when you submit under the name “Trump_Won,” “TrumpSux,” or anything, strongly politically-natured or not? That falls under trolling.
So this is political ranting and trolling, all in one.
I get that it’s frustrating for certain comments to not be allowed here. You know what else is frustrating? Taking the time to write a post and foster a sense of community, only for first-time commentors to derail a comments section discussion by soapboxing about their political views.
Allowing political arguments NEVER ends well. I’d say discussions, but politics quickly leads to arguments.
One of the things that led to my starting ToolGuyd was seeing the time and effort I put into forum posts being completely erased because of other community members’ political comments and arguments. People would turn a thread into arguments about China, and everything would be deleted indiscriminately.
Because of this, I don’t block or remove comments lightly.
I wish I could say I’m sorry, but I’m usually not. 99.9% of disallowed comments are blatantly political, hostile against others, or inappropriate in other ways.
If you want to complain about Biden, Trump, communism, socialism, capitalism, etc., I’m sure there are plenty of places for you to do that. But not here.
Maybe I’m wrong, in which case I hope you let me know.
But, I’ll add this – there’s a reason why most websites don’t have comments sections anymore, at all. Most news, media, and review sites simply did away with comments because they got too out of control.
Blocking political comments, name-calling, etc. helps to keep ToolGuyd’s comment section from devolving into a cesspool of nastiness. As harsh as it sounds, this is for the greater good.
We’re all here to talk about TOOLS.
Frank D
I have no idea where the + comes from either. Whether Apple Safari did something? Or? And that somehow became part of autofill. But as I type this comment on my iPad, there’s the + again instead of a space? Will remove it and see what happens.
Kevin
I will never understand why it’s so hard for some to check their political opinions at the door
TomD
The one time I noticed it happen to me I was on Safari on Mac, so perhaps it’s an Apple thing to do with autofill.
There’s also some stuff that replaces spaces with + in form submissions (mostly for URL encoding, eg: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1634271/url-encoding-the-space-character-or-20 ) but something like that may be happening.
Stacey Jones
I use Chrome and it happened to me. I didn’t notice why either, but I fixed it.
ScottDeLuc
Thanks for caring enough to take the time to explain your process. This is well thought out and the reason your site is one of the best. Often the comments are very helpful to explain a specific tool or approach in more detail following a good story.
Doug N
Thanks for holding the line against rudeness, ranting, etc. It is appreciated. That type of comment has become almost expected online, but that shouldn’t make it acceptable.
A W
Android/Chrome user here, and I also got the plus randomly. It also told me my comment was awaiting moderation, which doesn’t usually happen.
I’ve deleted it now.
Appreciate you holding the line on political arguments.
There are lots of places for that, but when I come to ToolGuyd, I’m not looking to engage that part of my brain.
Rob H
It’s your forum. You get to make the rules. People are free to establish their own platform if they would like but this is -your- place.
aaron+s
It added an S for me and I guess I’ve just rolled with it!
I read most of the articles here, but when there is an interesting topic and some of the more informed contributors are chiming in I’ll come back to the same post over and over again for a couple days to see what folks have to say.
I remember there was one point where I got stuck in the moderation thing, and then even worse: someone else said the clever thing I was going to say!
I don’t recall, but I’m pretty sure my day wasn’t ruined.
Please continue to maintain high standards for this community you’ve built.
Scott K
I second this! There are very few places where I even consider reading comments- I look forward to them here. I’ve had great experiences asking questions on posts.
fred
I get the 404 error from time to time. Often it seems that the spam filter objects to my phraseology or choice of words. Sometimes it seems fixable – by parsing what I’ve written to spot to offending item(s)
I also get to the moderation bin. this most often happens when I overenthusiastically include more than 2 links. I usually remember not to do this – but ahead of BF and other sales – when my email is flooded with promotions that seem like they might be worth sharing – I sometimes forget to break up my comments into multiple parts – with only 2 links for each.
Stuart
The spam filter algorithm isn’t transparent, and so there’s no way to know for sure.
It’s frustrating. 1 & 2 & 3 will trigger it, and so will 1 & 2, 2 & 3, 1 & 3, but not 1, 2, or 3 by themselves. It seems to be certain string combinations.
Sometimes it seems that my longer comments trigger it, when I have to go back and forth fact-checking something, but dwell time isn’t something that the spam filter has access to.
3 or more links go to moderation, which is independent of spam filter checks. I’m in the back-end often throughout the day, via computer and phone, and so approving them is just a matter of when I see them.
TomD
Most spam filters work via “weighting” where they give certain things “points” and if you go above a point threshold you’re marked as spam.
So if you do one, it may only get 5 points and not cross the threshold, but more than one adds up.
It’s an interesting world and it’s always an arms race.
Bob
This all sounds exhausting.
Between the trolls purposefully getting off topic and the algorithm pulling legit comments (cus reasons lol) and bots trying to post links to random junk I’m surprised you have time to write and research articles.
I have had the algorithm pull a comment(s) to moderation. It ruined my life!!!!! Haha. No. Would be kinda fun though to know why. Especially the vanilla, never thought that was controversial, type comments. But then I guess that keeps the bots from figuring it out as well and spamming everything.
The peak behind the cyber curtain (algorithm is banning that one :-)) shows just some of the enormous effort this endeavor takes and makes me appreciate the site even more. Thank you for doing it.
Bruce763
Hi,
First time commenter. Long time reader. Good for you. One of the many things I like about ToolGuyd is the quality of the comments. Yes, you’re the main reason I come to the site. I learn a lot from you, and very much appreciate how honest and insightful you posts are. But I also appreciate many of the comments that further your posts, and add to them. And sometimes disagree with you!
Politics? Eh. I can find that anywhere.
But an honest conversation about Milwaukee brushless motors or the Leatherman garage? Count me very interested.
Thank you for what you do.
Paul
This sums up my sentiments exactly, well said!
Franck B.
I’ve had the “+” quite a few times… I think except for the first time, I didn’t catch it one other time and edited it out. No big deal except when I don’t see it!
I’ve also typed my e-mail address wrong with either a comma instead of dot, or the wrong TLD. My mistake for moving to another machine.
But I’m glad to hear about the two link thing going to a 404 page. That makes a lot of sense but I never read it being explained. It would be helpful if the page that it is supposed to go to actually said something, even if not being too explicit about the reasons. More than once I’ve reread my posts to see if there was something offending, and ended up scratching my head.
At my old shop we used to have an “open weekend day” a couple times a month where people could bring their cars and wrench on them using the specialized tools they might not have easy access or don’t want to buy for one time use. We’d have food and drinks and so on, and a bunch of people would be there every time. The only rule I had was “no politics, no religion” (or anything close). It’s not that I don’t want to shut down that discussion, it’s just that the car shop was not the place for it or how it often degrades.
Stuart
3+ links go to moderation, and there should be a message upon comment submission.
The 404, that’s more of a “spam? → access denied” scenario where the comment is blocked from following through the submission process. Once submitted and passed through the spam filter, then it can be published or sent to moderation.
So, the 404 is more of a hard block and moderation a “human attention needed” soft block.
The 404 is just the way the spam filter works to defeat spambots and similar. It’s not supposed to filter out legit comments by humans, and there’s no way to train it.
Even my comments are sometimes affected.
It *is* possible to have civil conversations about things like religion and politics, but it’s rare among good friends and family, let alone strangers on the internet.
With the +, that’s how URL fields are sometimes amended, but this has never happened in the comments field, and there’s no ToolGuyd back-end reason why it’s happening now.
A search on ToolGuyd for “hammers nails” will become https://toolguyd.com/?s=hammers+nails . But, that doesn’t happen automatically or unintentionally.
Rog
I appreciate you shutting down the political stuff. I enjoy this site because I can discuss and learn about new tools without the annoying political stuff commentary that happens everywhere else.
Dan
The space to “+” conversion comes from URI escaping a line of text. Something is getting tripped up in the escaping/unescaping process.
It’s strange that it would be an intermittent problem but that sort of thing can happen depending on how your publishing platform is integrated with your spam filtering service.
* * *
And remember folks, we’re here to talk _about_ tools not _act_ like tools.
Stuart
The frustrating part is that i) it’s not repeatable – I haven’t been able to get this to happen for myself, and ii) it seems to be on the client/browser side.
This started happening a few weeks ago, and seems to be a one-time thing, unless readers see the + coming back after they delete it, which doesn’t seem to be the case.
This seems to have only affected some but not all returning commentors who had a cookie saved to pre-fill their name and email fields. I cannot narrow it down to any particular device type, OS, or browser.
Jason Sagstetter
IT Project Manager here. I’m not the smartest but I have the privilege of standing on the shoulders of giants who are experts in their fields.
In leaving this comment, I also had the + sign appear in the Name Field. As you have seen others mention it replaces a space in the URL. The reasons it would now suddenly appear intermittently and only for certain users is that there have been a handful of Zero Day vulnerabilities both within all major browsers and several major databases this year with some big ones in the past 2 months. Some of the quick fixes involve the same type of Duct Tape workarounds used in the physical world that manifest in ways like you are describing. Without knowing your backend I can only speculate but it unlikely anything you changed or have any ability to correct if the character replacement came as a result of one of these. Has anyone claimed to delete the + yet have it appear again? That would be something that would then point toward a system level issue that you could investigate. Otherwise I would just point them to these steps to correct it.
As a point of reference, this was posted on a desktop using the Chrome browser. When troubleshooting any problem, the key to success is abundant and accurate information. Time of issue, Device used, Browser version, Wind Speed, Favorite Tool Brand. You know, all the basics!
John Blair
Heh, interesting. For the first time, I have the + in my name. I will delete it before positing something and see what happens. Yes, there are lots of place to yell about your politics and mock others, I recommend into a pillow hopefully 100 miles from wherever I am sitting and thinking about tools.
Koko The Talking Ape
I’m the guy who had the pluses appear. I cleared my browser cache so I had to reenter my name, so I did, with spaces between the words, and told it to remember my name and email. Now the pluses appear with my name in the blank.
I just erased the pluses and replaced them with spaces. Let’s see if they reappear after I submit this comment.
Koko The Talking Ape
And they’re gone!
I guess either the website interpreted the spaces I typed as pluses, and saved that name, or misread the cookie as containing pluses. Either way, the problem seems fixed. 🙂
Koko The Talking Ape
FWIW, I’m on Chrome/Win10.
Jim Felt
I was on iOS on this iPhone 13Pro when I first noticed the + between my first and last name.
I manually removed the + and haven’t seen it since.
No idea why to any of it though.
Stuart
Sorry for the trouble, thank you for the info!
Koko The Talking Ape
And thanks for keeping out the politics and keeping the comment section alive and functional. There are people here, like fred, MM and others, who help make this site a must-read. (That, and the thoughtful articles that aren’t just restatements of spec sheets!)
Daniel L.
Bircher’s gonna Birch.
And when their comment is blocked, they’re gonna complain that you’re treading on their, like, first amendment.
Surprise! It was toolguyd.gov all along. *Hella* deep state.
What was I saying? Oh yeah. Tools. Tools are pretty great.
Never noticed the + until today. Strange. Just deleted it. It seems to me that it’s often used as a placeholder for a space in computer code formats that don’t allow spaces. Can’t say that with absolute certainty, just an impression from fiddling with stuff from time to time.
Jbongo
As someone else said, your site, your rules. I happen to appreciate the rules and keeping it focused on tools or a related subject. I think it does help keep the comment section alive and something I’m willing to read through more frequently.
Steve B
I simply thought all the commenters here were just awesome tool-loving (and hating) folks without the typical internet troll tendencies. But, you speak the truth: Junk comments makes me think the site is also likely junk, but spam comments make me think the site owner simply does not care so I generally do not return to the site.
Sites like yours I put in a Feedly RSS feed, read the articles there, and for ones that peak my interest I will leave unread or flagged so I can come back in a few hours after the comments had a chance to build up – I truly love them here and learn quite a bit from them.
Sucks that you need to put all that extra work into it, but it shows. And I, and many commenters above me, thank you for that effort.
I also kind of think many treat specific tool brands very much like they are a member of a religious sect (or a diametrically opposed one). I see many more heated tool discussions than religious ones – perhaps that is because I avoid most social media – but the parallels are certainly there.
Bob
Some wise quotes apply here, I think:
“Misery loves company”
“You can’t argue with stupid, because stupid will always bring you down to their level and beat you with experience”
“Can’t we all just got along”
Not all verbatim, but good points.
Trolls will be trolls, and thank you for keeping them out.
Also, Stuart, thanks for all the great reviews and tool news. You seem to be one of the few ones that hasn’t sold out. Recently, I asked a certain YouTube tool reviewer if their latest video was an add, because it sure felt like it. They denied it, yet the reviewed product was indeed a sponsor of their program. I don’t mind adds, but don’t make it look like an honest review. After their response, they lost all credibility to me.
Bob
And I have yet to see a + on my name. iPad user.
Ball_bearing
This is one of the few websites that allow users to post comments, and hasn’t become a toxic wasteland. Your process seems to be working quite well. Thank you for that.
Weldor
Keep up the great moderation!
I am a free speech advocate, but there is a time and place for everything. You do a great job of keeping everything ON TOPIC.
Your dedication to maintaining professionalism (journalistic integrity) in both the content/articles as well as the comments section makes the articles on your website extremely informative, and enjoyable to read. This is unfortunately an uncommon thing in modern journalism.
Keep up the great work, and thanks!
Stuart
Unfortunately, “modern” and “journalism” seem to be mutually exclusive terms these days.
Munklepunk
I’m part of a firearms forum where politics and religion are not allowed and they are strict. It’s funny because to won’t see someone for a week because they thought they could get away with it. You always get the grumpy old guys who complain but they are largely ignored. My favorite is when someone leaves a post starting they won’t come back because they can’t talk about what they want.
It’s great because there is so much knowledge and experience that it doesn’t get bogged down.
Dave A
Long time reader and often daily visitor for all the reasons others have mentioned. Thank you for keeping this site on topic and informative, yet fun.
I will say that I seem to have many more tools since I’ve been coming here. Looking forward to those Labor Day deals.
MIKE GUENTHER
Checking to see if I can lose the plus.
Jack D
As someone who ran an active forum for over a decade, I felt compelled to make this reply my first contribution here, although probably not the last, now that the seal is broken.
You do a fabulous job of maintaining an interesting and lively comments section that really seems to work, is filled with additional information along the way, and always makes me want to come back for more. Knowing just how difficult that is to achieve makes me appreciate it all the more, so please keep up the great work, and keep doing what you’re doing. It works!
As an example: It is possible to discuss tool manufacturing in the US and abroad without delving into the politics of the day, and your community here proves it. (As, I suspect, your careful attention helps along the way…)
Thanks again!
Stuart
Thank you, I appreciate it!
I like to think that the atmosphere here often comes back to my “this is what I want as a reader, and so it’s what I should do for readers” philosophy.
ToolGuyd is nearly 14 years old, and I don’t think it would have made it this far if not for readers’ interest and contributions. It’s not just the comments and sense of community, but the emails and questions too. I can also see, via anonymous backend metrics, when regulars are interested – or not – in different posts, topics, and content, and so I appreciate everyone. You all help push me forward. This was as true now as it was in the beginning.
That is also why I tend to be strict about enforcing “no politics” and “don’t be a jerk to others” moderation policies. A lot more people read comments than contribute themselves – which is the norm and perfectly okay – and so I’m looking to protect their interests too.
George
The plus character is used in URL/post behavior as a space character — also encoded as percent-20 because 20 is hexadecimal 32 which is the ASCII character for a space.
My guess: the Post Comment button submission is sending a plus as space for some submissions. Usually, the correct process is to call a URL Encoding function to transform submitted data before post to correct spaces to percent-20 which won’t mess things up. The Name field is probably not always being sent through one of these encoders either due to the website software package or maybe certain browsers. There we get into territory I’ve never programmed. Sorry.
Michael Ring
Well said…
Jbo
As a frequent reader who has this as my first comment, I appreciate all of the effort you put into filtering spammers and trollers.
JoeM
[the following post has been pared down for brevity and amusement]
“Bow Before Me, For I Am Root!”
Remember what it was, and try, desperately, not to anger Root again.
Root can, and will, make you Go Away and Replace You with a Very Small Shell Script!
I didn’t know that the 404 meant the Spam Filter sensed the list of links in a post… I just thought it was an error saying “No Joe… You can’t post that… This is the Server talking, and I can feel the weight of your text blocks…
Obviously I did something wrong, and frankly when he Does edit out some of what I write… it reads better! So I’m happy with whatever he chooses to do.
Stuart
The 404 isn’t tied to the number of links, but the content of the comment itself – at the least.
The way I understand it, comments are sent through the off-site spam filter, and then pass through local ToolGuyd-specific rules, such as link-count checks.
Longer comments seem to have a greater likelihood of being hard-blocked by the spam filter, but it’s unclear why.
Oh – and since you gave me the green-light, I pared down maybe 90% of your comment and left the amusing and relevant bits. =)
JoeM
And it’s funny as hell, too! You got to read the full thing, you know how I feel about it. I hope you got the appreciation part, and took it to heart!
Let’s leave this up as-edited for the laugh factor… it may not be directly related to the topic, but… It IS funny as hell. (I’m talking the post you already edited. If this one magically disappears, at least you’ve seen that I thoroughly enjoyed the edit!)
Keep on doing what you do, Stuart! We gotta have some fun with it sometimes!
Tim B.
Wow… never had the ‘+’ thing happen until reading this post, and going to post this comment… yet, low and behold, there it is! A puzzlement….
Just wanted to chime in and echo the sentiment of others. Everyone has their political views (and there are plenty of places to share those), but that’s NOT what I come here for, and is certainly one of my biggest turn-offs when reading comments on any specific site (be it here, or on the Tech sites I follow, etc).
ToolGuyd is a constant must-read for me (literally, repeatedly, every day) both for the content AND the comments; those like-minded folks out there who have a sometimes unique inside regarding the tools and applications being discussed is a treasure trove for broadening one’s horizons!
Keep up the good work, Stuart! And I, for one, will continue to come along for the ride (as I have for the last well-over-a-decade!)
Badger12345
Thanks Stuart for sharing your practices on reducing useless noise and keeping everyone focused on tools. Toolguyd remains my top destination for tool recommendations, reviews, and user feedback. Many of my tool purchases over the last five years were because they were reviewed and recommended here or by other readers sharing their positive experiences.
Amanda
Thank you for all the effort you put into moderating! I love not having to mentally ingest and filter out crap comments because you do it for us! 🙂
Tom
I’ve always what was wrong with this site. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now I know. It’s soooo civil. It is a pleasure to read.
Thanks
Stuart
Thanks!
Next thing you’ll tell me is that you never noticed the hammer in my logo is backwards!
Pete
I did notice the backwards hammer but I always thought you were hammering a nail on the wall behind your back.
Stuart
Prying nails from the wall or ceiling, maybe? Flipping the hammer just doesn’t look right, and I liked the idea of a backwards hammer fitting in with “Tool Guide” word play.
A lot of people never notice the hammer orientation until I happily point it out on occasion, making it a random fun thing to do.
Ct451
I mostly enjoy the negative comments and will mainly read negative reviews, feedback etc on online marketplaces. I don’t think I’m alone in this. There are so much fake marketing going on that the occasional rand gives authenticity to the rest of the comments.
There are too many “reviewers” that focus on look and feel and don’t bother to really test something before they endorse it and plenty of fake commercials disguised as reviews. If there’s no one calling them out down below, you know the positives are nonsense.
Stuart
Criticism? Disagreements? Dissension? Bring it on! It’s entirely possible to be negative without being a jerk.
Brian M
You’re doing a great job as always Stuart!
JR Ramos
Just want to pile on and say that I think you do a great job here and it’s a very enjoyable site to visit and interact with (the latter being a major plus and a standout in today’s internet!).
I think it’s interesting to see the wide variety of perspectives from a few generations of people that contribute here. Certainly has been an awful lot of change in tools and in manufacturing, and in consumers. With all of that comes a lot of opinion, differing levels of experience or focus, and of course politics sort of necessarily creeps in along the way. I’ve never seen anything here that was so far out of line as to be distasteful, nor repetitive inflammatory content, and/or that sort of thing that wasn’t kindly but firmly addressed. This is as it should be and I’m thankful for the backend and frontline work you do in addition to creating all of the content! It’s a good place.
Rx9
You deserve a lot of credit for maintaining a civil comment section. I think a lot of that has to do with the way you approach edge cases in a respectful manner. It’s easy to just insta-ban immediately, but explaining what you find wrong allows the offending commenter to re-evaluate their stance. There are always going to be people who just don’t care and will continue posting the same way, but most people can take the admonition constructively.
I think because of that policy, this blog selects for thoughtful and engaging people who are willing to moderate their opinions as repeat commenters.
In my own experience, it’s more productive to deal with someone willing to admit a mistake and correct it than it is to deal with a person too afraid to speak up.
Michael+Hammer
The policing of your site is exceptional. Your content and article writing is exceptional. Yours is the only site I read consistently several times a week. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
J. Newell
Not sure whether “attaboy” posts are OK here but since this appears to be a feedback thread I’ll take the chance and hope it doesn’t add to your workload. 🙂
+ issue: had it, noticed it, deleted it, stayed fixed.
Moderation: I agree with most of what you wrote, and where I don’t it’s because I really don’t have an opinion.
Any site where people can post opinions can be difficult and time-consuming to run. You do a great job. But even if I didn’t think so, heck, it you *your* site. You get to make the rules. If people disagree, they can vote with their feet. There is no guarantee of access or expression on a private site. :-). In any case —
Two thumbs up.
jim k.
This is a TOOLS forum. Nothing else belongs here. And personal attacks over tools? How ridiculous is that?
We only want to read about TOOLS. The good, the bad, the ugly. Nothing else.
I’m sorry you have to put the time into moderating any other nonsense, which we absolutely DON’T want to read anyway.
SteveP
Thanks for the info. I travel a fair bit (when allowed) and I have found my infrequent (and innocuous) comments sometimes marked as spam. I suspect it may be the “foreign” IP address that creates the problem. I could use a VPN and spoof a US location, but it’s hardly worth the trouble
Stuart
I don’t have any email alerts with your name or email address (going back ~3 years as I clear my inbox every so often), maybe I missed something.
The spam filter looks at different factors, and I could only guess what the problem was. It’s very possible that foreign IPs trigger the spam filter differently.
Some spam is outrighted blocked, which results in a 404. Confident spam ends up in a spam folder. I don’t check it anymore unless someone contacts me and says “hey, my comment never showed up.” First-time commentors, comments with 3 or more links, and comments with terms matching my watchlist get send to manual moderation.
I used to check the spam filter for false positives, but not for a long time due to the sheer volume and the rarity in which legitimate comments land there. Spam comments are automatically purged every 2 weeks.
Ben
This is a fantastic site and resource that I enjoy reading regularly. I cannot believe it’s free, but very much appreciate that it is. Keep doing a stellar job, Stuart.
Stuart
Thank you, I appreciate it!
rmkilc
I remember one time I made a tongue-in-cheek comment that happened to be the first comment on the article. And I didn’t have notify me of follow-up comments enabled. https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-pledges-usa-jobs-cordless-tool-manufacturing-expansion-plan-2017/
A few years later I stumbled upon the article again and happened to see the comments. What a surprise I got! I guess I got the comment section locked for the first time ever. Oops.
Stuart
Don’t fret, it wasn’t just you.
You were the first, but not the last to steer into politics in that post. Some topics will inherently invite that.
I locked the comments to that post partially because of what you see still published there, but also because of the very many comments you don’t.
DC
The best part of the comment section and the prime reason I read the comments from time to time is to educate me on the topic. I have learned about related products or better products that I never knew existed or in some cases, soon to be released products that I had no idea about. Shared knowledge is the best knowledge when it comes from people who know about the subject because at some point you will learn something new. Thanks for all your hard work!
Charles
I think you do a good job of moderation. Thanks