Comments are FUBAR again.
Dear God,
I miss the old, small, no-constant-problems Munu.
Is there anything You can do?
Can You make it like it used to be?
Please?
I'll go to church, or not- if You're scared the church might burst into flames the instant I walk in the door- whichever You prefer, just make this STOP now.
Please.
Thank You...
Sincerely,
me
Fixed.
The people doing this are not reading Munuviana (at least I haven't seen this here), and just following instructions in MT Blacklist.
Blah.
The new comments system will be in place tomorrow.
Posted by Pixy Misa at June 24, 2006 09:46 AMPixy,
I do not envy you your headaches, and thanks once again for all you keep doing...
Posted by Rachel Ann at June 24, 2006 05:58 PMWhich is PRECISELY why that stupid Blacklist needs to be OFF LIMITS to the general, don't-know-what-they're-doing, one-person-has-the-"ability"-to-screw-up-EVERYBODY-else's-blog,
AGGRAVATING, "needs-to-be-drug-off-and-SHOT" public.
Do you wanna know how often I mess with the Blacklist?
NEVER.
Wanna know why?
Because I have the sense and the BALLS to admit that I don't know everything about it and I have the courtesy to NOT want to mess up a coupla hundred other people's blogs just because I don't want to have to delete spam individually myself.
I don't think it's a wonderful idea completely ban the entire English language, trying to keep spammers out.
I also don't provoke DDoS attacks on a blog community that's hosting me for FREE while I made shitpots of money off my blog being "political", again screwing up the works for everybody else.
If some spam happens to get by you, Pixy, you wanna know what I do about it?
I go to the "manage your weblog" page and DELETE IT THAT WAY and do a rebuild.
That way, the only blog I'm messing with is MINE and guess what else?
It's so friggin' EASY, even I can mange to do that without screwing it up.
Not to mention that if I did screw it up, it wouldn't affect EVERYBODY ELSE TOO.
It's quite OBVIOUS that the Blacklist being open to anybody who wants to have a go at it is BULLSHIT and it needs to STOP.
If people don't have the sense to leave alone that which they have NO KNOWLEDGE OF, well, then, somebody else needs to MAKE them stop.
Man, this is sad.
You, Pixy, and your Munu, have been a cornerstone in my "recovery" from depression and have been one of the best things that's ever happened to me, being able to blog my way back to semi-sanity over these last few years.
But, I've gotta admit, here lately, it's been an excercise in RAGE to continually find the works gummed up, fucked up and shut down by nameless, faceless, BRAINLESS morons who don't have the patience, courtesy and balls to admit they don't know what they're doing and either ask for your help or wait until you, or one of the other maybe 3 people who know how to, can "fix" it WITHOUT negatively affecting EVERYBODY.
Know what I mean?
And, believe me, I hate this, too, this having to spout off in your general direction about this MESS.
I've asked before and I'd still LOVE to know exactly WHOM to direct a "Thanks, ASSHOLE!" email to when this crap happens.
As it stands right now, I don't even really want to try writing at Xfire anymore.
I'm not Glen Reynolds. I LIKE having comments and feedback and if I can't GET comments, what's the POINT?
Not to mention that the longer this goes on and the more often it happens, the less our "regulars" are even gonna come by and TRY to comment.
And, THAT has been stated by several other non-Munu bloggers.
What you started out doing, Pixy, was a sweet and wonderful thing.
Now, I feel like you're being overwhelmed and taken advantage of in some cases and it seems to be getting worse all the time.
I hate it that this sounds like I'm ungrateful, because, believe me, I'm not.
I love you and what you've done for me for the last few years, but these days, I'm so completely pissed off about this constant interference from these "anonymous assholes", that I no longer have the ability to think clearly about it.
I just want BLOOD now.
I don't do this shit to others and, truly, to the depths of my SOUL, I'm sick of them doing it to ME and the community as a whole every other damned day.
Hell, if I was the cause and KNEW IT, I'd either make it stop or I'd take my blog and go someplace else where my idiocy wouldn't affect hundreds of others.
Which is EXACTLY what I wish whoever keeps DOING THIS would do... FOAD.
Ya know?
So, to you, Pixy, I say again... thank you for everything you've done and CONTINUE TO HAVE TO DO for us and to those making Pixy have to work harder and harder to keep this going and correct your stupid mistakes I say this:
I hate you and I wish you'd piss off already (and I'll bet I'm NOT the only one who does). You're ruining Munu. Karma is a bitch and I hope you, whomever you are, get the FULL MEASURE of what you've got coming for what you've done and continue to do to Munu, not to mention the extra work you constantly create for Pixy, you selfish, stupid PRICKS.
Posted by Stevie at June 24, 2006 06:19 PMDeep breath Stevie. Really - stop a moment and just breath deep and relax a little. (no I'm not patronizing you - just reading your comment had my muscles completely cramped up over your frustration)
Once Pixy gets the new system up I know things will be back to working more or less normally - there are always a few kinks to work out in new software, but I'm sure those will be negligible compared to the comment spam crap we've been having.
Remember, every blogging host has had these problems - including Hosting Matters who deal with DDOS quite often; Typepad - which had massive comment problems for months (people PAY to blog there); and Blogger which now requires that you enter one of those optical words just to publish a post!
On other systems bloggers have to take care of their own spam themselves - costing them hours of time when they get 2000+ comment and trackback spam a day.
I know of bloggers on all of these other hosts and they all have had hugely frustrating problems.
Pixy is working on it - it just takes a bit of time. Perhaps a solution for your case may be for you to migrate to WP for a short time until Minx is up and running. I know Pixy wants to get off both MT and WP, but this might be a solution since blacklist and comment problems have you so frustrated.
Just a thought or two. Hang in there! Keep posting, things will improve.
Posted by Teresa at June 24, 2006 08:28 PMStevie, you could always get a free WordPress blog at wordpress.com and point readers there until things are back to normal here in munu land...
I'm not saying leave for good, but if the frustration level is mile high, some new scenery might be just the thing for a bit.
There are no ads, spam is pretty much taken care of and plenty of lovely templates to choose from... 
Just a thought.
Posted by pam at June 24, 2006 09:40 PMThank you for the kind words, Teresa. And, for not taking it personally. I expect that anyone who DOES take it personally would be the ones fucking things up for the rest of us and Pixy.
I'm just soooo tired of this shit, now....
"Parasitic" is the one word I just CAN'T get out of my mind with this shit.
Parasite- n second definition... a person who lives off another or others and gives no useful return.
I just wish my handy-dandy dictionary had pictures next to this definition of the ones who do this. THEN, I'd know who to direct my vitriol toward.
They know who they are though and if they had any class or character, they'd either knock it off or go away.
And, probably, if I'd been doing little bitches about this bullshit all along, I wouldn't have blown up now about it.
I'm just beyond sick of it now and I hate, with every fiber of my being, the dirtbags who're causing it.
My apologies to the rest of their victims for being so pissed off... like you, Teresa.
Posted by Stevie at June 24, 2006 09:41 PMYou too, Pam, (thank you, I mean) but it think it'd be more fair to everybody for the ones who're causing the problems to have to leave.
Posted by Stevie at June 24, 2006 09:43 PMI have to agree about the blacklist thing. If you don't know what you're doing with it, please leave it the hell alone.
Posted by Stephen Macklin at June 25, 2006 02:45 AMI don't understand, what's the problem with the blacklist? For me it just picks out the urls in the spam. I think it's been right 100% of the time for at least a year now.
Posted by David Boxenhorn at June 25, 2006 06:16 AMThe problem is, it supports Perl regular expressions as well as plain text, but doesn't actually bother to distinguish between them. So it treats every entry in the blacklist as a regular expression, and if a particular URL turns out to evaluate as an invalid regexp, it crashes and blocks all comments for the whole of munu.
Hacking on the new comments system now. Won't be long.
"I go to the "manage your weblog" page and DELETE IT THAT WAY and do a rebuild.
That way, the only blog I'm messing with is MINE and guess what else?
It's so friggin' EASY, even I can mange to do that without screwing it up.
Not to mention that if I did screw it up, it wouldn't affect EVERYBODY ELSE TOO."
I really wish there were an easy way in MT to delete 1300 s p a m comments that show up overnight, but there isn't. Nor is blacklist an ideal answer. I've noticed that it won't reliably delete if the "rebuild" box is checked, and I always have to uncheck Jawa and Anticipatory Retaliation, because I apparently have comment deletions privileges on those blogs as well, and I don't want to go deleting comments by the truckload except on my own blog. It'd also be nice to delete by date, so I could back up to when the spam started showing up and just get rid of all of it, and also turn off comments until we have a system that's secure.
God, the vermin sure have our number don't they? I wonder if it's illegal to offer a bounty on s p a m m e r s? We could pay by the ear of the finger. Or the nose, I guess. Or something else that they'd just have one of...
Posted by Demosophist at June 25, 2006 08:32 PM