some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

maniqui · 2007-04-18 04:22:41

Hi all you, my dear TxP friends,

This is a large post, awfully written (excuse my english), redundant, so, please, forgive me.

Some of the following ideas are in my head since some time ago, but today I decided to write them here.
The “triggers” of this ideas are the complaints from a client that uses TxP in his business site and from those threads (that always keep coming) about the TxP Comment Preview System and how to modify/disable it.

Summary: the Comment Preview system is a mechanism against spam. Some TxP users (webmaster and clients) complains about its usability: it can’t be disabled, it takes two steps to post a comment (and that leads often to previewed-but-never-submitted comments). The idea: to catch previewed comments (both real visitors and spam attacks comments) in the database and then, deal with them: publish them (if that was the original purpose) or analize them to fight against spam.
I think this idea is nothing new, I think. This is similar what Askimet does (right?).
The difference, maybe, is that TxP has got a preview step that may be used to fight spam.

Some complaints, demands and facts

my client complains that his visitors (clients who buy his products) write reviews (comments) about his products, but because of the Preview system, the visitors (non-geek users) are confused and they don’t know they have to take a second step (that is, to finally submit the comment). I have also read this complain from other users here, in TxP Forum.
people demands different anti-spam measures (captcha and etc), live previewing, disable previewing, etc.
developers are open to suggestions about the way TxP deals with spam.

What we all already know:

that the TxP Comment Preview System is more an anti-spam mechanism than a desired feature (both for visitors and site owners) for previewing an about-to-be-posted comment. That’s what the official FAQ about how to skip the comment preview says.
that it works pretty well (personally, the sites I have developed have never been victims of spam) but sporadically there are succesful spam attacks to TxP sites.
that most of other Blog/CMS comment system out there doesn’t require preview before submitting and so they are more exposed to spam attacks. But we also know that people out there is more used to direct submit mechanism for comments/posts (or at least, where previewing is optional).

Some current problematic facts are:

some visitors leave the page/site after previewing the comment but before submitting it.
usually, because they don’t ever notice that, or because of laziness, lack of time or lack of inspiration, they don’t come back to leave the comment, so the “original” and “real” comment is lost forever.
the spam keeps coming.

The main feature ideas:

to keep the previewed (but not submitted) comments somewhere in the database (not in the same place as submitted comments).
so, real comments (written by real people) that, by error/mistake/ignorance, aren’t submitted, are kept in the database and aren’t lost forever (and then, moderate them and publish them to the site, if that it what was intended but not achieved).
and so, spam comments (written by f*cking robots) that are previewed but not submitted are kept in the database and then, can be later used by us to fight against spammers (by analizing its contents, its metadata, its IP, etc) and marking them as spam¹ and then, have a better spam blacklist.

Cons about keeping the previewed comment

1. Some may argue that keeping a previewed real comments in the database could be something unfair to the visitors.
I can say two things:

that would be something that each webmaster will have to ethically deal with.
if we consider that commenters are more used to direct submitting than two-steps preview/submit, we can induce that commenters usually regret before hitting the submit button and not after hitting submit. Of course, sometimes, they regret after hitting the submit button but that’s another story and the fact is: in most blog/CMS tool there is nothing the commenter can do after hitting the submit button because the comment is already submitted.
So, concluding about this cons: in most cases, if the commenter hits the preview button is because he really wants to submit the comment. And in the case he regreats at that moment, he still can avoid posting the comment. +1 for TxP!!!

So, if the previewed comment is kept in the database, then we can contact the commenter and ask him if his purpose was to post the comment or if he regretted about posting it. Then, we can made the decision to publish it or delete it forever.

2. Some may argue that keeping previewed spam comments could lead to hundred of spam comments saved in the database.
As said, I think (correct me if I’m wrong) this can be used against fighting spam! This spam comments are real cases of real spam!

About how this could be implemented

Steps:

commenter writes a comment and then he hits the preview button -> the previewed comment is added to the database.
- if he previews it again, then the previewed version is updated in database.
- if he hits the submit button, all the previewed versions are deleted from the database and the comment is submitted to the proper location in the database.

That’s all!

Some questions

¹ About the previewing step as an anti-spam mechanism:

I would like to know how this mechanism works. I mean, when the mechanism works successfully, what did happen exactly in the background?
If I’m right the spambot previewed the comment, but the bot thinks the spam comment has been submitted, so then, the bot leaves the site.
Am I right?

More questions to come, if all this “choclo” (= a long text) makes sense.

Thanks for reading.

Mary · 2007-04-18 08:04:19

Please don’t feel like I’m shootin’ ya down for kicks. We need ideas and input. It’s only my opinion that with this, in the end little would be gained and potentially much lost.

On the ethical aspect, that’s comparable to automatic sending of any drafted email or letter you make. I don’t think much of anyone hasn’t started an email they decided against sending after some thought. Once I click submit, I live with the consequences of whatever I have said, but until then I can feel free to form my thoughts as I type and possibly think better of it. I think we come to expect the same of blog comments and forum posts. To save it but calling it “Preview” is at the very least deceptive. Next thing you know, people won’t preview at all, never mind hit “Submit”, for fear of something typed in haste but retracted being made known anyway.

It also underestimates the potential load that could cause to the database, particularly for any large/popular site. At present we track “nonces” during preview in the database, but this is a very, very small amount of data to simply check and occasionally add to, and it gets deleted after a short amount of time. Once we’re more or less sure we want the comment added, then it is added to the database once.

With this idea, picture a large site with many commenters. Someone posts a particularly discussion-inducing article… Next enter our very one-click-happy spammers… and we have a database ever-growing and having to be managed, on top of the “real” comments. This won’t deal with spam, but simply stockpile it. The ratio of real comments… “salvaged”… to spam, really wouldn’t be worth it.

Askimet temporarily stockpiles spam on a central server (not the user’s) and analyzes it. How? well, it’s like the special sauce… it’s a secret. Kind of like what Google does for searches. Replicating that is redundant: you could make an Akismet plugin and be done with it.

The only solution to help the easily confused AND hopeless for change/learning is to dispose of the forced preview. But in order to do that we need something that would function in its place, as well or better. As you can see, it is still here, and that’s because we’re thus far at a loss for something even as good. That doesn’t mean the answer isn’t waiting to be found, and if someone can find it I’ll buy them a large drink. :)

And I previewed this reply several times. ;)

hcgtv · 2007-04-18 10:20:56

Mary wrote:

That doesn’t mean the answer isn’t waiting to be found, and if someone can find it I’ll buy them a large drink. :)

How about an option under Preferences -> Basic -> Comments – Preview comments?

colak · 2007-04-18 12:17:30

I have only one problem re previews. The NeMe site uses commenting only for the texts it publishes. The texts are long and the preview appears where the comments are which – in ours site – like in most cases- is at the end of the text. What I would like to see is the preview in a page where no other text is visible. I think that this would be much more user friendly to non web savvy visitors.

zero · 2007-04-18 14:42:26

How about:
On the Comments_Preview Page putting in big red letters something like “This is Spam Protection. Press Submit for your comment to appear on this website”

Have the Submit button immediately below that, then the comment on its own without the article or other comments.

Last edited by zero (2007-04-18 14:44:23)

jm · 2007-04-19 00:12:34

colak wrote:

What I would like to see is the preview in a page where no other text is visible. I think that this would be much more user friendly to non web savvy visitors.

This is possible using popup comments, without the popup (example). I think you can probably use conditionals too, but popup comments are the easiest to modify.

colak · 2007-04-19 14:10:59

jm wrote:

This is possible using popup comments, without the popup (example). I think you can probably use conditionals too, but popup comments are the easiest to modify.

Maybe you are right… Using <txp:if_comments_preview />. I’ll have to experiment with this one

zem · 2007-04-19 23:12:24

Removing the forced preview would introduce a number of technical problems that don’t have good solutions. It’s also faulty logic to assume that removing the preview is the only solution to the problem.

There are several things we could do to make the Preview process more obvious: improve the default templates, use javascript, etc. (Perhaps: put both Preview and Submit buttons on both pages, but disable the Submit button on the first page, to help the user understand the distinction).

Mary · 2007-04-20 00:15:46

How about an option…

But in order to do that we need something that would function in its place, as well or better.

jm · 2007-04-20 01:32:42

zem wrote:

(Perhaps: put both Preview and Submit buttons on both pages, but disable the Submit button on the first page, to help the user understand the distinction).

Actually, that sounds like a great idea – just place a note above – “You must preview your comment first.” or something.

maniqui · 2007-04-20 04:00:47

Mary wrote:

Please don’t feel like I’m shootin’ ya down for kicks. We need ideas and input. It’s only my opinion that with this, in the end little would be gained and potentially much lost.

Hi Mary, don’t worry!
This is how bad ideas should be discarded, leaving some room for good ideas to come.
And after reading your post, I notice the idea I posted is a bad one.

I like zem’s idea about disabling the submit button until first previewing.

Logoleptic · 2007-04-24 01:50:14

colak wrote:

What I would like to see is the preview in a page where no other text is visible. I think that this would be much more user friendly to non web savvy visitors.

This is how Movable Type handles previews, and I think it does help somewhat. Someone mentioned using conditionals to achieve this. I think combining that with an obvious notice — “This is only a preview. You must press ‘Submit’ for your comment to be published.” — would be about as user-friendly as possible. Frankly, there’s not much that can be done for people who don’t get something that clear. Except maybe get them a bib to drool on. ;-)

jm wrote

This is possible using popup comments, without the popup (example).

I can’t really tell much about how this works from looking at the page. If this was your doing, could you share your methods with us? I do think the handling of the Textile help is great, but I’m not sure how this is a “popup without the popup.”

I’m new to blog-making with Txp, so I could be missing something obvious here.

jm wrote:

Actually, that sounds like a great idea – just place a note above – “You must preview your comment first.” or something.

As I prepare to launch my first Txp-powered blog, that’s exactly what I’m planning to do. When software must (for one reason or another) do something clumsy and unexpected, good/thoughtful design can save the day. :-)

maniqui wrote

spam comments… that are previewed but not submitted are kept in the database…

A lot of anti-spam systems do this, including two that I’m quite familiar with — Spam Karma for WordPress and Movable Type’s SpamLookup. Storing this stuff in the CMS database presents some problems, though.

If you get a lot of spam, your database becomes bloated quickly. Both the spam-prevention systems I mentioned address this by clearing out data more than n days old, where n is a user-configurable number with some sensible default setting.

That’s great in principle, but it contributes to table fragmentation as records are repeatedly added and deleted over time. Your table or tables eventually become slow and fat, and you have to perform database liposuction by running OPTIMIZE TABLE on them. Table optimization could be set up as a monthly cron job on Unix-like systems, but that’s way too geeky to force on an end user.

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#1 2007-04-18 04:22:41

some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#2 2007-04-18 08:04:19

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#3 2007-04-18 10:20:56

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#4 2007-04-18 12:17:30

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#5 2007-04-18 14:42:26

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#6 2007-04-19 00:12:34

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#7 2007-04-19 14:10:59

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#8 2007-04-19 23:12:24

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#9 2007-04-20 00:15:46

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#10 2007-04-20 01:32:42

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#11 2007-04-20 04:00:47

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

#12 2007-04-24 01:50:14

Re: some ideas about the comment preview mechanism

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