Ken, There Seems To Be A Growing Number Of Wierd Anonymous Comments To Some Of Your Posts

Mike | Mar 28, 2010 | 323 posts since 2010

Ken,

There seems to be a growing number of wierd anonymous comments to some of your posts. And I think the same person(s) scew other comments by clicking on the thumbs up/down in an irrational manner. Is it possible to require commenters/voters to be logged in? Hopefully that would make it easier to eliminate the unstable from continually insulting you or others. And, you would know their email address to contact them directly, if needed. And, ultimately, you could disallow their ability to post, as a "timeout."

You truly do a great job here. And I enjoy learning from you and others. Thank you, Mike

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carnholio | Jun 27, 2010 | 11 posts since 2010

And some of the blog comments keep getting goofier and goofier.

Perhaps you should consider blocking anonymous commenting, or impose some comment moderation.

Ken Tumin | Jun 27, 2010 | 5,896 posts since 2009

Mike, Carnholio, thanks for the suggestions. One feature that is currently active is if a comment receives a certain number of down votes, it is no longer shown. So please make sure to vote down any insulting comments.

Eliminating anonymous commenting and voting is a good idea. However, there have been many anonymous people who have provided valuable comments.

After the 4th of July, we'll work on making improvements in this area.

mariafalter | Jun 27, 2010 | 57 posts since 2010

I'm not sure if it's a good idea not to show any voted down comments. I would not mind seeing comments that a lot of people disagree with. These comments might not necessarily be insulting. They could be informative and conducive to discussion.

tomlawler | Jun 27, 2010 | 22 posts since 2010

Eliminating a comment by using the thumbsdown icon sounds like censorship to me, too. Surely there's a better way to eliminate classless remarks vs opinions of which we dislike.

PS Wouldn't it be ironic if my post receives several thumbs down and gets deleted!

Mike | Jun 27, 2010 | 323 posts since 2010

mariafalter and tomlawler,

My original post (noted above) was March 28. At that time, there was at least one anonymous poster really ripping at other posters (and Ken) with true nonsense, not a difference of opinion or constructive viewpoints. It was that poster(s) who was giving thumbs down to people who were actually opining on banking and finance.

It would be that individual(s), who would give you a thumbsdown and squelch knowledge and learning. I gave you both a thumbs up.

glxpass | Jul 10, 2010 | 37 posts since 2010

I'm curious about something: Is anyone, unregistered or not, allowed to rate comments and posts on DEPSOSITACCOUNTS.com? Naturally, I'm biased, but it seems that I'm getting negative votes on a lot of my comments that are undeserved. To me, if a comment is on-point to Ken's post, I wouldn't give it a thumbs-down. Ironically, Ken even cited one of my posts, yet that still received either a zero or negative net rating.

I really enjoyed taking the time and effort to contribute to the old Bank Deals site, especially as a way of giving something back to Ken's great efforts in gving us news and insights about deposit account products, and I've always tried to put some time and thought into my comments, but seeing net negative ratings makes me wonder if it's really worthwhile to participate any more.

Perhaps all this sounds very egotistical, but I don't think I'm the only one this is happening to. Regardless of my future participation, I've a few suggestions:

1. Don't let unregistered people post to the forums, make comments on blog poists, review banks or products, etc. Everyone who does these activities should have a user name (whose anonymity should of course be protected, if desired) and should be logged on.

2. Only allow ratings of comments of blog entries or forum posts by registered users who are loggied on.

3. Allow logged on users to see who rated a post or comment positively or negatively. Alternatively, allow some sort of reputation system that somehow can reflect the reputation of someone who posts and comments. I admit I'm a bit fuzzy on the details of this reputation system, but I know they exist. Note: I see you have "rep points", but I'm not sure what they are, whether they apply to forum posts and comments on blog entries, and so on.

4. Take a more active moderating role in order to eliminate off-topic or insulting comments. I'd hope the steps mentioned above would actually reduce the need for this.

Regardless of the issues I mention above, thanks for the great site and all of the work you've ;put into it.

Ken Tumin | Jul 11, 2010 | 5,896 posts since 2009

@glxpass, thanks for your thoughtful suggestions. My technical partner is back from vacation, and we are now planning improvements.

Ken Tumin | Jul 13, 2010 | 5,896 posts since 2009

We will be releasing a change to the blog comments and the forum posts that should help with the issues that have been mentioned in this thread.

Here are the changes that will be released:

No more thumbs down - Spammers weren't the only ones to abuse this. Some regular readers were voting down all other comments to apparently improve their own comment ranking. We thought by eliminating the thumbs down, we will promote a more friendly atmosphere. If you don't like a comment, vote for the other comments so those will rank above the comment you don't like.

New spam reporting link - Instead of a thumbs down button, we have added a "report spam" link for each comment or forum post. This will flag the comment for review by moderators who will delete the comment if it is spam. Also, this can be used for comments that attack other readers or are blatantly offensive.

More methods to deal with spam - We are more actively reviewing for spam. Modifications have been made to fool spam bots, and we have done cleanup of old spam/votes.

Blog commenters can continue to be anonymous - We decided not to require readers to log in to comment on a blog post or to vote. Based on our log reports, many readers who have provided valuable comments and votes have preferred to remain anonymous. We realize that we may continue to see several low-quality comments, but we feel the benefits of the valuable anonymous comments outweigh the low-quality anonymous comments. However, we will continue to require a reader to log in to post on the discussion forum. Note, the anonymous posts that are now on the forum were carried over from the old Open Discussion Thread and from the old Notices section.

Thanks! We will see how this goes. If we continue to have problems, we can make additional changes. Please continue to provide feedback in this forum. Your help with making this site a valuable resource and a friendly community is very much appreciated!

51hh | Jul 14, 2010 | 1,706 posts since 2010

Ken,

I agree with all the enhancements, except that I still feel that one should register for posting comments (for the sake of accountability, and to some degree, reputability as stated by Glxpass). Also, I hope that one can edit one's post since there is no spell-check feature available.

As for offering only positive voting, I fully welcome it in this already-too-negative world:-)

Thanks for the great job, Ken!!

glxpass | Jul 17, 2010 | 37 posts since 2010

Ken,

I agree with 51hh's post above about restoring the edit capability, at least in forum posts.

Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but it seems that when someone creates a new forum post (I'm not sure about a blog post) that the post is automatically given a +1 rating. Especially now that negative voting has been removed, I think all posts should start at +0 votes. Please disregard this suggestion if my assumption is incorrect.

While I can understand the rationale of allowing anonymous blog posts, I think voting should require logging in.

glxpass | Jul 20, 2010 | 37 posts since 2010

Another item I've been meaning to mention. (See, if you had restored the edit function to forum posts, I could have just added it to my last post. <g>)

Now that negative voting isn't allowed and we have a spam reporting feature, for blog posts, I'd like the default to be all comments displayed rather than just the useful comments. I like being able to see comments in chronological order and it seems important, especially since deal information changes or gets refined over time. An alternative would be to make this a user-profile configuration parameter for logged-in users. Thanks!

Ken Tumin | Jul 31, 2010 | 5,896 posts since 2009

@glxpass, thanks for your suggestions.

We discussed about starting comments/posts with a 0 rating instead of a +1 rating. We wanted to allow the poster to give himself a +1 vote without requiring extra effort of voting for his own comment.

About comments in blog posts, all comments are displayed in order of submission, but these are in the comments page. This comments page is accessible when you click on the "comments" link at the top of the blog post or with the "view all comments" link at the bottom of the blog post. This comments page is more like a typical blog page with the newest comments on the bottom. The blog post page just has the top rated comments (the featured comments).

The idea of having the featured comments on the blog page was that this would allow the useful comments to be more readable for the average reader. When a blog post has 50+ comments, it can be difficult to find the useful comments. Unfortunately, we haven't had many posts lately with that many comments.

glxpass | Jul 31, 2010 | 37 posts since 2010

@glxpass, thanks for your suggestions.

We discussed about starting comments/posts with a 0 rating instead of a +1 rating. We wanted to allow the poster to give himself a +1 vote without requiring extra effort of voting for his own comment.

About comments in blog posts, all comments are displayed in order of submission, but these are in the comments page. This comments page is accessible when you click on the "comments" link at the top of the blog post or with the "view all comments" link at the bottom of the blog post. This comments page is more like a typical blog page with the newest comments on the bottom. The blog post page just has the top rated comments (the featured comments).

The idea of having the featured comments on the blog page was that this would allow the useful comments to be more readable for the average reader. When a blog post has 50+ comments, it can be difficult to find the useful comments. Unfortunately, we haven't had many posts lately with that many comments.

Ken, thanks for your reply. I don't wish to bug you about this -- well, perhaps I do, just a little bit <g> -- but I'd like you to reconsider your automatic +1 voting rationale. You state that automatically making the vote +1 saves the trouble of the poster voting for themselves. The point is that IMO a poster should *never* be able to vote for hiimself/herself. There are plenty of posts whose content might not warrant getting removed from your blog or the forum, yet whose contents might not be deemed useful by anyone other than the poster.

When I see +1 votes for a post, I think to myself that someone else found the post helpful or useful, and it draws attention to the post. +0 votes clearly says that no one else (perhaps not even the poster!) thought the post had some positive qualities. For example, if this post earned +0 votes, that would indicate no one agrees with me strongly enough to make my suggestion worthwhile.

Just as you noticed that some users were voting down other posts to elevate their reputation, you might find people posting for the sake of posting in order to increase their reputation points. Repectfully, please re-think your decision, even if it means a little extra programming effort.

As to displaying only featured comments on the blog page, perhaps a compromise could be made. When one clicks on "Cllick to Continue Reading...", then only the featured comments would display. When one clicks on the blog entry title, however, then everything displays for the blog entry, including all the comments in default date-time ascending sequence. (Alterntively, the default sequence could be a parameter in the user options of logged-on users.

I feel much more strongly about the voting situation than the comment situation. Regardless of what you decide, thanks again for listening.