by hilzoy
After I wrote my post on McCain and Obama’s websites, I got an email pointing out that McCain’s website seems to be having some issues with its comment filters. I tried to check it out for myself, but after spending something like twenty minutes trying to post a comment, without being able to get far enough to so much as engage the comment filters, I gave up. (Even after I got an account, an ordeal in itself, clicking ‘Post a comment’ or ‘Reply’ made the ‘Take Action!’ page appear.) So I’ll have to let those determined souls who somehow managed to post comments describe the problem. One writes:
“If someone can help me understand, there seems to be an automatic moderation in place. The most innocuous of words seem to be off limits, but I’m having a hard time figuring out which ones. I find myself editing my posts until they become almost meaningless and barren of information. Any ideas anyone?”
And gets this reply:
“The filters are indeed very frustrating and incomprehensible! I am pretty good at finding the offending words after many, many hours of practice. Many of us have complained to the folks who run this site, but for whatever reason, the problem has not been completely resolved. It seems they do not like words that contain common URL suffixes, like plan et, Geor ge, intern et, or ganize, etc…Other common words iclude treat ment an ni ght. There are too many for me to list here.One way to isolate the offending word is to post a comment piecemeal. In time, you will learn the taboo words. If you would like me to help you, you can e-mail a comment to me at [Email address deleted] and I will try to fix it for you and send it back. Good luck.”
Apparently, any word containing combinations of letters like ‘net’ or ‘org’ or ‘gov’ gets rejected. Likewise: “Just to add a couple more that trip the filter: words that contain the three letters such as in com.p.a.s.s as well as anything requiring an .a.n.a.l.ysis.” This leads to considerable frustration: people find themselves posting comments like this:
“Y e p, h e a r d i t a c o u p l e d a y s a g o. S e e m s t h e y w a n t t o a d d m o r e t a x e s to f i x r o a d s. The s a d p a r t i s, i f y o u c a n ‘t a f f o r d t o d r iv e, r o a d s a r e k i n d o f a m o o t p o i n t, d o n ‘t y o u t h i n k? Y e t t h e y w o n’ t r e l e a s e t h e b u d g e t on w h a t h a s b e e n s p e n t o f t h e r o a d s, n o r w h a t i s a c t u a l l y n e e d e d m o n e t a r i l y t o f i x t h e m.”
Which got the following reply:
“Armymom: Filtered word is n.e.t. in mon.e.t.arily”
So to those of you who are (quite understandably) bothered by our stupid comment filters, which seem to mark anything with five links as spam: things could be worse.
You can’t avoid Darwin, you can only postpone him.
the guy can’t run a friggin web site and he thinks he can run a country ?
“I find myself editing my posts until they become almost meaningless and barren of information.”
Heh. It’s a Republican candidate’s site. This is most likely considered a feature, not a bug.
wow. s.o.me of the co.mme.nts o.ver t.h.e.re look ex.act.ly like V!.@g.ra Spa.m !
My friends, that’s straight talk you can, with sufficiently effort, just manage to express, if you are patient and willing to abuse the English language!
Given the apparently preferred workaround, it looks like McCain is trying to bring the internet back to its roots in Morse code telegraphy. Now that’s true conservatism!
This plus the supposed open (but actually handpicked) town hall meetings are more indications of McCain being like Bush. They can’t handle criticism, so they do everything in their power to avoid any voices of dissent.
It’s also funny that McCain is offering some kind of “points” program to get people to comment nicely about him on various blogs. Talk about pathetic.
You are aware of what Obama’s site has let be posted, with no moderation, and even let stand for months? I’ll have to give you LGF links…
Um, OCSteve, I’m not aware of the stuff that’s been permitted through lack of oversight to remain on the Obama site’s boards, because I read neither those boards nor LGF, and because I don’t much care.
I would however make two points:
1) The fact that some troll comments have been there for months while LGF froths about them suggests that our media may have finally begun to show some common sense about the difference between what a campaign does and what some nitwits scrawl on the walls of its virtual bathrooms. After all, their existence hasn’t been a problem thus far.
2) You certainly know the difference between pseudonymous blog commenters and official statements, and also between isolated nitwits and the community consensus.
Moderation, comment flagging, etcetera are all good things; and there are prominent places other than message boards where lack of oversight can really make you look dumb. But censoring message boards in such a way that their users practically have to use semaphore is just absurd. The censorship being applied isn’t just heavy-handed, it’s dumb, and ultimately self-destructive.
So you can’t post anything that reminds the site of .org (non-profit) or .gov (government), but commercial interests (.com) are fine. I see.
“I’ll have to give you LGF links…”
LGF, of all places, is complaining about what’s let stand in comments somewhere?
Talk about ultra-triple-super-duper irony.
That’s rich, indeed.