Monday, March 23, 2015

Episode 100 - Final Episode (lost comments re-post)

Egh. Alright, many regulars have likely noticed that the Disqus comment-section under the original EPISODE 100 post has vanished, replaced by a mostly-empty thread using the default Blogger comments engine. I'm as annoyed about it as I imagine many of you are, and while I harbor no illusions that this explanation will satisfy anyone inclined to believe that I deleted the thread because I disagreed with certain posters; I feel I owe an explanation anyway:


Basically, Blogger's software really sucks; and I neglected to click one of the suck-proofing options. So it's certainly my fault, while not my intent.

Here's the deal: Blogger's default posting setup automatically includes a proprietary comments-section on each post. However, though it's a pain in the ass given the system's outdated programming, you can set an alternate comments-system (like Disqus, which is what I use) to override it and appear instead. For me, this was preferable because Disqus allows users to log-in using pre-existing social media IDs like Facebook/Twitter/etc rather than needing to create a Blogger or Google ID just to comment on my site... and yes, also because it allows a robust set of tools for eliminating spam and banning the IPs of users who exhibit abuser behavior toward other posters.

However! Because, as stated above, Blogger's software really sucks, opting for an alternate commenting engine doesn't REMOVE their default comments-section from existance on individual posts automatically - it just "hides" it, and if you don't check a small box in the making of a post that disables Blogger comments (it doesn't even specify that it won't effect third-party comment systems) the default just sits there in the background. And if someone ends up viewing the post on certain older browsers or a mobile device with certain web settings enabled (or disabled), they're sometimes able to see the default comment-box instead of Disqus... and if they post that way, Blogger brings IT'S commens to the front and the Disqus threads disappear.

That's what happened on the original EPISODE 100 post. It's a shitty bug and I feel bad about it since it was my mistake not to click the "disable" option originally, but it happened. As such, I invite anyone who so wishes to re-post/revive any conversations and threads they were participating in there in this post; and if any particularly web-saavy folks are able to conjure a cached/archived page of the original Disqus posts by all means please feel welcome to post it below: