Comments on: Site Related Issues

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 11:03:22 +0000

An appropriate time to express appreciation for all the work Gaufrid does on this website. I too noticed the unusually high traffic in those strange messages in the last day or two.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:32:25 +0000

Hi linxit
This was just one of the many spam comments that the site receives. Most are intercepted by the Akismet spam filter but yesterday half a dozen or so from Poker slipped through. I deleted them manually but of course by that time it was too late to prevent the automatic email notifications from being sent out nor to stop them appearing in the RSS feed.

By: linxit

linxit — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:54:47 +0000

One for Gaufrid (or anyone else who’s had a similar comment):

I used to blog Guardian and Mephisto puzzles here, but stopped due to workload a couple of years ago. Today I received a comment on an Araucaria puzzle I blogged on Jan 30th 2008 (see below). While I’m feeling slightly flattered at the gushing praise for my (no more than average) posting, what’s the crack? Has anyone else had similar messages from “Poker”? I assume it’s just a stealth spam hoping for people to go to his website gadgets.elliotback.com? I can’t see any other angle, and I can’t believe it’s for real.

———————————————————-
New comment on your post “Guardian 24298/Araucaria”
Author : Poker (IP: 83.171.169.254 , DSL01.83.171.169.254.ip-pool.NEFkom.net)
E-mail : Frier5@yahoo.com
URL : http://gadgets.elliottback.com
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=83.171.169.254
Comment:
Simply want to say your article is astounding. The clarity in your post is simply spectacular and i can take for granted you are an expert on this field. Well with your permission allow me to grab your rss feed to keep up to date with succeeding post. Thanks a million and please keep up the respectable work.

You can see all comments on this post here:
http://fifteensquared.net/2008/01/30/guardian-24298araucaria/#comments

Trash it: http://fifteensquared.net/wp-admin/comment.php?action=trash&c=125224
Spam it: http://fifteensquared.net/wp-admin/comment.php?action=spam&c=125224

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:29:03 +0000

Hi Stella
Are you offering to write the blogs?

I have no objections to the Quiptic being added to the site if there is some interest in it but this would depend on finding one or more people prepared to cover it. I will post an announcement and will see what response it brings.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:21:17 +0000

Thanks sidey, error now corrected.

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:19:31 +0000

I’m not sure if this is the right place for this suggestion, which I also made last week in the general blog, but here goes:

Given that the Guardian Quiptic puzzles are often on a par, regarding difficulty, with Rufus, for example, and that one of their purposes is to encourage newcomers to the world of cryptics, I think it would be interesting to cover them in a weekly blog

By: sidey

sidey — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:15:55 +0000

Tiny point Gaufrid, Azed 1992 is labelled 1192. Might confuddle searching in the future.

By: FumbleFingers

FumbleFingers — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:25:36 +0000

Sacre bleu, Gaufrid! I now almost regret pointing out the problem, in that you’ve probably already spent more time on it than is justified. I am ever aware that fifteensquared is a labour of love, and would not wish to make it burdensome to you.

Speaking as an (ex-) programmer myself though, I would say that I’ve often got a buzz out of diagnosing the precise reason for a problem even if it turns out to impractical or impossible to resolve. They say knowledge is power, but sometimes just the satisfaction of knowing can be reward enough!

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:45:10 +0000

FumbleFingers
I have looked into this further and have found the reason for this discrepancy. Some time ago I installed a plug-in which pages the comments in posts that have more than 50 comments in order to speed up download times for those people with a slow connection or using a mobile device.

This ‘paging’ plug-in is only activated for some of the posts in the Chat Room because we seldom get more than 50 comments in a post on other parts of the site. It is this plug-in that is preventing the auto-fill of the name/email boxes when you want to add a comment to one of these posts in the Chat Room.

When I have some spare time this evening I will have a look to see if the plug-in can be modified to rectify this but I am not optimistic that I will be able to find a solution.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:50:54 +0000

Hi FumbleFingers
The posts in the Chat Room were created in exactly the same way as those in other parts of the site and so they should contain the same code and scripts.

The only difference is that these posts have been linked to via a page so that there can be a ‘chat room’ button on the menu bar at the top of the screen and this may be affecting the auto-completion of the name/email boxes.

I will investigate further and will let you know if I find a way round this problem.