wingologA mostly dorky weblog by Andy Wingo2023-12-14T14:28:45Ztekutihttps://wingolog.org/feed/atomAndy Wingohttps://wingolog.org/service updatehttps://wingolog.org/2023/12/14/service-update2023-12-14T14:28:45Z2023-12-14T14:28:45Z

Late last year I switched blog entries and comments to be written in a dialect of markdown, but there was a bug that I never noticed: if a text consisted only of a single paragraph or block, it would trigger an error that got reported back to the user in a very strange way, and which would prevent the comment from being posted.

I had never seen the error myself because blog posts are generally more than a paragraph, but it must have been quite irritating when commenting. Sorry about that; it should be fixed now. Should you experience more strange errors, please do send me an email with the comment to wingo@igalia.com. Cheers.

Andy Wingohttps://wingolog.org/99% spamhttps://wingolog.org/2021/03/08/99-spam2021-03-08T14:36:22Z2021-03-08T14:36:22Z

Hey all, happy new year apparently! A quick service update on the old wingolog. For some time the site has been drowning in spam comments, despite my best efforts to point a bayesian classifier at the problem.

I don't keep logs of the number of attempts at posting comments that don't pass the classifier. But what I can say is that since I put in the classifier around 4 years ago, about 2500 comments a year made it through -- enough to turn the comment section into a bit of a dump. Icky, right??

At the same time of course, that's too many comments to triage manually, so I never got around to fixing the problem. So in fact I had two problems: lots 'o spam, and lots 'o incoming spam.

With regards to the existing spam, I took a heavyhanded approach. I took a look at all good emails and URLs that people had submitted for comments prior to 2017, assuming they were triaged. Then I made a goodlist of comments since 2017 that had those comments or emails. There were very few of those -- maybe 50 or 70 or so.

Then I took a look at when comments were made relative to the posts. Turns out, 98.3% of comments were made more than 21 days after their parent post was published -- and sometimes years afterwards. I used that as a first filter, that if a post wasn't from a known poster, and was made 3 weeks or more after the post, I just classified it as spam.

The list of comments made within 3 weeks of the parent post was small enough for me to triage manually, and there I was able to save a bit of wheat from the chaff. In the end, though, the result of winnowing was less than 1% of what went in.

As I don't really want to babysit this wobsite, I'll keep this policy in place in the future -- comments will be open for a while after articles are posted. Hopefully that should keep the ol' wingolog in tidy shape going forward, while still permitting people to comment -- something I have really appreciated in the past.

So happy 2021 to everybody, may the vaccine gods shine upon your shoulders, and happy hacking :)

Andy Wingohttps://wingolog.org/a wingolog user's manualhttps://wingolog.org/2014/08/27/a-wingolog-users-manual2014-08-27T08:37:17Z2014-08-27T08:37:17Z

Greetings, dear readers!

Welcome to my little corner of the internet. This is my place to share and write about things that are important to me. I'm delighted that you stopped by.

Unlike a number of other personal sites on the tubes, I have comments enabled on most of these blog posts. It's gratifying to me to hear when people enjoy an article. I also really appreciate it when people bring new information or links or things I hadn't thought of.

Of course, this isn't like some professional peer-reviewed journal; it's above all a place for me to write about my wanderings and explorations. Most of the things I find on my way have already been found by others, but they are no less new to me. As Goethe said, quoted in the introduction to The Joy of Cooking: "That which thy forbears have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it."

In that spirit I would enjoin my more knowledgeable correspondents to offer their insights with the joy of earning-anew, and particularly to recognize and banish the spectre of that moldy, soul-killing "well-actually" response that is present on so many other parts of the internet.

I've had a good experience with comments on this site, and I'm a bit lazy, so I take an optimistic approach to moderation. By default, comments are posted immediately. Every so often -- more often after a recent post, less often in between -- I unpublish comments that I don't feel contribute to the piece, or which I don't like for whatever reason. It's somewhat arbitrary, but hey, welcome to my corner of the internet.

This has the disadvantage that some unwanted comments end up published, then they go away. If you notice this happening to someone else's post, it's best to just ignore it, and in particular to not "go meta" and ask in the comments why a previous comment isn't there any more. If it happens to you, I'd ask you to re-read this post and refrain from unwelcome comments in the future. If you think I made an error -- it can happen -- let me know privately.

Finally, and it really shouldn't have to be said, but racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism are not welcome here. If you see such a comment that I should delete and have missed, let me know privately. However even among well-meaning people, and that includes me, there are ways of behaving that reinforce subtle bias. Please do point out such instances in articles or comments, either publicly or privately. Working on ableist language is a particular challenge of mine.

You can contact me via comments (anonymous or not), via email (wingo@pobox.com), twitter (@andywingo), or IRC (wingo on freenode). Thanks for reading, and happy hacking :)