As the replacement Moderation page has developed the old bug so that permalinks no longer navigate to the appropriate comment, so here is yet another page for continuing discussion on moderating issues. The Rules can be found there so anyone with an issue should check that they are familiar with them.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
I have never touched the IP address blocking in TSZ. I’ve probably looked occasionally, because it happened to be on an admistrative page.
No, I have never blocked any IP address here.
Neil Rickert,
I’m sorry Keiths has made such a stupid allegation.
There are two options available on this site to
control IPsfilter comments*. Trigger words and IP addresses can be added to send such comments to the moderation queue or directly to the spam folder. In both cases the member can log in normally but if they try to post a comment, it will either show as “awaiting moderation” or will just disappear (though the comment appears in the spam folder). This second option is what was being used to block my comments to the UD website (on the same WordPress template).So Keiths’ scenario does not fit with any actions purported to have been taken by an admin here.
ETA clarity*
In the light of my previous comment, you might want to consider revisiting this statement. The scenario you describe is impossible to achieve except via .htaccess at the server level, which is not accessible through the WordPress admin panel. Only Lizzie has direct FTP access to the server.
Alan,
Are you suggesting that Akismet, for no reason at all, suddenly decided to block my IP address, and that it happened to do so just then? And that instead of doing the normal thing, which would be to hold my comments in the spam queue if it thought they were spam, it actually prevented my IP address from even accessing the blog?
Your hypothesis doesn’t make sense.
Do you have a more plausible explanation for why my specific IP address was blocked just then?
petrushka,
It depends on whether your ISP uses static or dynamic IP addresses. Some use both and charge a premium for static IPs. Mine is dynamic, which is why it changed after I power cycled my modem.
It may have been a transient blip in, say, your ISP’s BGP routing tables or somesuch, which would be why it worked on the phone via the cell network. I’ve had Facebook become unreachable before on a single line but not on others. I’d say if it happens again use “Tracert” or similar tools to determine at what point the failure is.
Alan,
Admins can block IP addresses, Alan. UD, which is also a WordPress blog, has done it many times.
Read for comprehension, Keith. The scenario you describe does not fit with what is possible on the WordPress template either here or at UD. IP blocking at UD was achieved by flagging (for example) my home IP address. This does not restrict the site visibility. It just tips any comments I type into the comment box straight into the spam filter. What you report happening is that TSZ site was inaccessible. This is not possible to do from the admin panel.
OMagain,
I can certainly recall some site or other becoming inaccessible for some indeterminate period and then becoming accessible again on occasions over the years.
I’m rather cross that Keith should jump to the conclusion he has on no real evidence.
You see, you do understand how things work. Your analysis is correct regarding Akismet, except that spam is no longer kept for review but dumped immediately by Akismet. Your IP address being treated as a spam source by Akismet would not affect your ability to log in, it would just “disappear” any comment you posted.
Alan,
That’s incorrect. WordPress has the the ability to block all access from a particular IP address. Not just comments.
And moderators at UD have used that ability.
I think you are mistaken. My research finds no such option. I’m willing to be corrected, though. Explain how this can be done.
PS and just to be clear on what happened to you, you say the site, TSZ, would not load for you via your usual IP address. Is that correct?
Here’s one way, and it is by no means the only one.
ETA: Yes, TSZ would not load for my particular IP address. I described my troubleshooting procedure in my original comment.
I’m treating it as part of the entertainment.
As far as I know, I do not have access the “.htaccess” file. The Admin controls to not appear to provide that access.
What has this to to with WordPress? I already told you .htaccess changes require access to the server.
And I noted it.
Alan,
I haven’t jumped to any conclusions. I was quite careful to say:
Alan,
You might want to take a similar cautious approach, rather than reacting as emotionally as you have:
I stand by my statement. Given the circumstances, it is very suspicious that my IP address was suddenly unable to access TSZ.
Well, I hardly expect you to admit your mistake. As far as I can see, the scenario you describe is impossible to achieve using the WordPress set up we have here. So I reiterate, alleging that Neil was responsible for blocking you is stupid. And I stand by that.
Neil Rickert,
Well, I’m glad you see it like you do. I’m just exasperated that anyone would suggest you’d do anything as underhand as that. I guess we can expect Keith to reflect and apologise at some stage.
That once happened to me at a fundie site. I tried to post a comment. Thereafter I couldn’t see the site at all.
But you certainly can’t do that from the admin panel. And if you can do it from the server end, I wouldn’t know how, didn’t, and none of the admins has access.
I hope you will retract your allegation, keiths.
Thanks for your admirably measured response. I would be spitting fireworks.
Alan,
That’s because you have reacted emotionally rather than thinking things through calmly.
First, I didn’t “allege that Neil was responsible.” I stated my strong suspicion that my IP address had been blocked, and I asked Neil directly if he had done so. I was prepared to leave it at that if he said no, but then you came in with guns blazing.
Second, my suspicion was quite reasonable, based on the evidence, and to call it “stupid” is itself stupid. For example, you are making a big deal out of the fact that moderators can’t modify the .htaccess file, as if I should have known that.
How could I have known that? Was I “stupid” for not knowing information that I had no access to? Think, Alan.
My suspicions were quite reasonable, and I will elaborate on that in a later comment.
I’ve seen this too often — keiths absolutely certain that he is right, even when he is clearly wrong. I guess that’s just the way that he is. WJM, walto and I are the three most often targeted. Both WJM and I have learned to move on and otherwise ignore it. Walto has tried other ways, such as sarcasm.
Neil,
Of course I didn’t claim certainty.
It’s quite easy to see that my suspicion was warranted.
I was evaluating two competing hypotheses:
1. Someone blocked my IP address.
2. A glitch of some kind prevented my IP address from accessing TSZ.
If it had happened at no special time, then I would have regarded #2 as being more likely.
But the prior probabilities had been updated, quite dramatically, because a) the previous evening, Neil had falsely accused me of harassment, and not long before that, he had falsely accused me of misrepresenting him; and b) he has done similarly impulsive things in the past, for example when he tried to impose a “timeout” on walto and me. Patrick had to intervene in that one.
He had a motive, he had tried this sort of thing before, and the symptoms matched exactly with what you would expect from an IP block.
The alternative was that for the first time ever, a glitch was preventing my particular IP address from accessing TSZ, that it matched exactly what you would expect from an IP block, and that it was purely a coincidence that this happened immediately after a hysterical accusation of “harassment” from Neil.
Which was more likely? The first, obviously. If anyone disagrees, I would like to hear your reasoning.
So of course I was suspicious, though I was careful to emphasize that I couldn’t prove anything. That’s why, after having registered my suspicions, I was willing to let the matter drop if Neil denied it. Then Alan made his emotional entrance, irrationally dismissing my suspicions as “stupid”.
I’m looking at you walto. How did you do it?
Posts should not be moved to Noyau, even if the parties “consent.”
Posts that belong in Guano belong in Guano.
What’s next? People who consent to having their posts deleted can have them deleted? People who consent to having their posts edited can have their posts edited?
There is no rule that permits posts to be moved to Noyau.
I’m guessing that over at UD the posts of “Aurelio Smith” weren’t actually deleted, they were just moved to a place where they were less visible.
What’s the problem here, really? If people engage in a flame war where their posts attack the person, it is quite clear from the established rules that such posts belong in Guano.
If it’s going to be a free for all where the rules are concerned please let me know ASAP. I have some posts I want to edit/delete.
My lengthy philosophical comment went straight into moderation again. Why? If it contains naugthy words, I assure you sincerely that they are all typos!
Erik,
Nine hyperlinks was the trigger. If in doubt, why not separate a comment into two? It’s released now.
Incidentally, WordPress does do some automatic filtering, which I can’t turn off. For exampling any discussion about probability theory gets bogged down by filters that are intended to exclude casin0 spam. So you have to write p0ker, for example.
So typos actually help sometimes 🙂
Your crass allegation annoyed me, certainly. The suspicion remains stupid however as it is impossible with anyone not having access to the .htaccess folder to prevent TSZ being visible to a particular IP address. You might have checked with an admin to establish whether there were other explanations for you finding TSZ inaccessible before asking whether Neil had blocked you.
It also annoys me that, in pointing out that Neil could not have blocked you in the way described, it almost sounds as if I’m allowing the possibility that he would have if he could. Nothing was further from my mind. You could still assuage my residual annoyance by saying sorry to Neil.
Yes, indeed. It annoyed me too. Jumping to accusations without checking the alternatives is behaviour that should be apologised for, in my view. Thank goodness Neil reacted with the objectivity that I chose my admins for 🙂
There is a list of such terms in the discussion section of”Settings” on the dashboard. Can’t see poker or casino there, though.
ETA seems poker doesn’t activate the spam filter.
Oh, cool. Poker.
Yup. It’s fixed.
As I’ve mentioned before, as the rules here are morphing, I think they need to be restated clearly so all will be on the same page. E.g., Can one request that one’s own posts be moved to Noyau? And can a mod then do (what I think) Neil (reasonably) did? Viz., move the entire conversation there pending any objections by any of the other participants–and move everything back if there ARE any such objections?
I personally think that’s a nice way to handle it. It will help clean some of the garbage out of main threads, while providing relief for anybody who does not want his/her posts moved (presumably because he or she LIKES keeping all the ostensibly substantive threads full of garbage for whatever reason).
The main thing is to be clear and consistent. Clarity needs to come first.
Incidentally, inadvertently pressing two ‘less-than’ characters instead of one (as in French quotation marks) makes the whole site hang immediately and irretrievably. Don’t know if that’s WP or my browser.
Hmm. Hangs for me too. Wonder if that is to do with
Let me comment on what I did.
I don’t think I broke any rule. The rules do not cover the particular situation.
The situation was this:
One member posted a message that was clearly guano.
A second member decided to have some fun replying to it, and that probably wasn’t guano. The “argument” continued for several rounds.
Personally, I thought noyau was the best place. But the decision was to not move posts there. So I let it ride for a while without moving anything to guano.
But then one of the participants (the one who was having fun) requested that it be moved to noyau. At that stage, it looked to me as if it should either be all moved to guano or all moved to noyau. And the latter choice seemed better.
My best understanding is that Elizabeth wants this site for a free flow of thoughtful discussion, with trolling behavior kept under some degree of control. I take that as a broad pragmatic principle, and use that as a guide when there is no clear rule.
In the unlikely event that keiths owned a forum and had appointed me moderator, I would be attempting to keep it going under my best understanding of the kind of forum that keiths wanted.
I didn’t see a hang here, so it wasn’t the site hanging. It was probably javascript getting into a loop. And it might be a wordpress bug (providing bad javascript), or a browser bug (responding badly to javascript).
I won’t try testing that here.
It’s nothing to do with
(just switched “site-wide” off for the moment) and trying it in Firefox instead of Chrome causes Firefox to freeze in similar fashion. Bizarre!
Again, I thought what you did was very sensible. You indicated that if the non-requesting participants objected, you’d undo. So, (a) you did nothing with respect to Noyau without a participant request–a position which I take Elizabeth to have recently endorsed; and (b) you indicated that you’d undo it if anybody else claimed they’d been harmed (or even just didn’t like it). I thought it was both fair to all, and in the interest of the board as well.
Is the LaTeX plugin working?
Let’s write an integral:
That was written with dollar signs before and aft, and …
(added just after posting the comment) … no, it didn’t work. It also strips my backslashes out from before the “int” and before the “infty”.
What am I missing?
That worked the first time. So you need square-bracketed “latex” and backslash-latex tags before and after, with no dollar signs.
But when I used the “Edit” capability the backslashes got stripped out. So you have to use the square-bracketed tags but never, ever use Edit on that.
[latex] \int_0^\infty e^{-x} dx \ = \ 1 [\[atex]
This never got Edit-ed.
Joe Felsenstein,
It took me a while to get the correct syntax in my OP yesterday. Putting “latexpage” in square brackets allowed all subsequent
10^7
eta No! Not if you want to use dollar as text it doesn’t (as I had at the start of that latexed line). I had to put in another dollar to break formatting. “l@texp@ge” alone is a trigger, bracketed or no.
[latex] \int_0^\infty e^{-x} dx \ = \ 1 [\latex]
Last one destroyed by a typo. This works, never went through Click-to-Edit.
\int_0^\infty e^{-x} dx \ = \ 1
[\latexpage]
\int_0^\infty e^{-x} dx \ = \ 1