I wrote a little Greasemonkey script for Obsidian Wings that will automagically disemvowel comments from users you don't want to read. In addition to good old dsmvwllng, it also has options for replacing their text with a nice white-on-black REDACTED , or to make the text really small: Look at me, I'm small!.
Updated: Now with a sweet new "I Like Pie" mode - thanks double-plus-ungood!
Update: Also, a Washington Monthly version, here.
Download / install, if you wish (you'll need FireFox and Greasemonkey, first). You'll have to do some minor editing on the script itself - to add your list of targets, and optionally, to change the comment-abusing style. But, don't worry, all the stuff you need to monkey with (ha!) is clearly commented.
Note that it only matches against the user's name, so you might just find yourself playing catch-up, if your targets frequently change their posting name (as they are completely free to do, on ObWi).
Also, this probably won't work anywhere else, since it relies on the structure of ObWi's HTML. Though maybe all TypePad blogs are similar... ?
He’s doing his best to defeat it already, success?
It’s a start but needs some polishing. You need to hit the capital vowels. You need to externalize the banning table as well, so non programmers can customize it. But you knew that.
You need to hit the capital vowels.
thanks. fixed. install again.
You need to externalize the banning table as well, so non programmers can customize it.
i have no idea how to do that. all the GM scripts i’ve seen so far require a little editing.
He’s doing his best to defeat it already, success?
yup. not much i can do about that. ObWi doesn’t give much user info in the HTML – just a name and maybe a webpage / email – all of them unverified and untrustworthy.
Here’s a technique from “Dive into Greasemonkey”
link. I don’t know if it’s the best method. I’ve just been reading it myself, and have written my hello world script, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Of course that would manage storage and retrieval. You could probably do the same with a file:// manipulation. You’d still want a UI to manage the file.
in the Advanced Topics, there’s a section on ‘compiled’ scripts that mentions adding dialogs and whatnot. it turns the GM script in a full-fledged extension. sounds like a bit of work, though. not sure i’m up for it.
The infection has spread to ogged.
and i just added a link to ogged, today!
am i a carrier ?
no, he mentioned he was going to do it on ObWi.
he managed to stop ObWi for 24 hours. hope he doesn’t kill ogged, too.
well, hilzoy’s apparently away, and I haven’t seen publius for awhile. I imagine ogged will just ban him if he keeps it up for that long.
I have a workaround for Charlie’s efforts (so far) to defeat the script. Basically, it strips out all the whitespace and punctuation so that C.H.A.R.L.I.E. is the same as charlie.
Change line 57 from
if (commentfooter.childNodes[k].text.toUpperCase() == baddies[b].toUpperCase())
to
if (commentfooter.childNodes[k].text.replace(/W/gi,””).toUpperCase() == baddies[b].toUpperCase())
an arms race has begun :)
True, although I suspect that to defeat this he’ll have to resort to sock-puppeting or some other behavior that will make the kitty angry.
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