Jason Kottke applies the broken windows theory of social behaviour to online environments. Does the design, or appearance, of a blog or discussion forum adversely influence the conduct of commenters or forum members?
Does the aesthetic appearance of a blog affect what’s written by the site’s commenters? My sense is that the establishment of social norms [...]

In ten plus years of online journalling/weblogging/whatever else, the comment facility here has only been operational for about the last eight months of that time.
That was mainly because disassociated ran off hand coded static HTML files for most of the first ten years, and installing a comment feature, though possible, would have been tricky.
I was [...]

How to successfully spam blogs (and how to fight back)
Now I know why Superman has comments disabled on his blog (… with apologies to Batman)…
You may have noticed legitimate looking comments on your blog from people with suspect names. Usually the name will be a brand name, service or literally anything that sells. The commenter’s [...]

Australia’s world first ’smoke free’ city: and that could be the South Australian capital city, Adelaide. Only for a day though.
The Tobacco Products Regulation (A Smoke-Free Adelaide) Amendment Bill 2007 would ban smoking in Adelaide for at least one day of the year, with maximum penalties of $200 to go to the Cancer Council.

A [...]

From the Akismet homepage:
92% of all comments are spam

92 per cent?! That’s amazing…
I’ve seen one or two bloggers mention heightened problems with comment spam in recent days, and it looks like the tidal wave has reached disassociated.
There’s always been rubbish to remove but it has quadrupled in the last couple of days. Anyone else likewise [...]

EarthBook: Satellite Art. High altitude, high resolution photographs of the Earth’s surface, sourced from Google Earth, presented by Sydney web designer Craig Rozynski. “I often find myself breathless, trying to make sense of impossibilities on the Earth’s surface.”
Neoclassical Theme for WordPress: an elegantly designed three column Wordpress theme, that includes a rotating random header script. [...]

I don’t know if I like to whinge, or just like to whinge about whingers, but here I go anyway.
Most Wordpress bloggers will be familiar with Akismet, a plugin that helps control comment spam.
Like anything it is not 100 per cent fool proof, but overall I think it does a pretty good job of quarantining [...]

I have often thought about implementing some sort of commenting system on disassociated. A lot of sites, usually weblogs, provide readers with the facility to make a comment on a particular post or article. Often they can add value to the original post and they also promote discussion and sharing of ideas.
Since I continue to [...]