For several months, we have been battling an onslaught of bots and spammers on our site. Some of these characters have gotten notorious enough that you lovely readers have turned them into an inside joke. At first, we couldn’t do much other than edit their comments into something silly. Now, the Autopian’s bots and spammers may find themselves out of a job.
Welcome back to Comment Of The Day! Every day, we read every single comment posted on our site and pick the one that made us laugh, get informed, or feel warm inside. You don’t have to go into our comments sections and write thousand-word stories about why you love a car so much, but a lot of you do, and that means a lot to us. So we’re highlighting some of the most excellent bits of thought that you’ve formed into words and digitized onto our website.
Today, Matt gave you some good news about our commenting system. We’ve switched our system to Memberful, which you’ve likely noticed the instant benefit of cutting our loading times in half. Now, you don’t have enough time to brew a cup of coffee and do your taxes before an Autopian page loads. And for us, maybe we can get away with uploading a photo larger than 200kB without blowing up the site. Along with Memberful, we’re also soon to roll out a new commenting system, one where you can upvote comments, add in media, get notifications, have threads, and more! And if we can iron things out, we might be able to get you photo uploads, too. All you have to do is wait until mid-January!
There’s an extra benefit that comes with the new system, and it’s that we now have multiple ways to banish bots, spammers, and unruly commenters to the black tanks of Jason’s dead RV. In recent months, this site was flooded with spam and scam comments. Some of these were clearly bots, but some appeared to be humans acting like spambots. Weird. Back then, getting rid of them was a manual process, and often involved simply editing their comments into something ridiculous because we couldn’t actually stop them.
Now we can, and in response to this news, we’ve got a great one-liner from strangek. You’d been asking for one-liner COTDs, and strangek delivers on the humor; I’m chuckling right now as I write this:
What’s that girl who makes lots of money working from home gonna do? She’s a part of this community damnit!
Pour one out for Paula, for she is going to be blasted from our pages, and boy were those many pages. Look at the damage she left in her robotic wake:
Now we have the tools to get rid of the vast majority of these bots, and they might now find themselves unemployed. How else are they going to inform you how to make $80 an hour online, or that they are of a certain age and own photographs? Won’t someone think of Paula!?
Well, she can still be a part of this community, but she might have to shill headlight fluid, or perhaps muffler bearings. One of my last edits to her comments had her saying:
Hі.. Мy nаme іs Pаula, І’m a 224 yеar-оld elm tree. І lоve bеing phоtographed in the bark. Plеase ratе my phоtos аt onlytrees.com
(There is no onlytrees.com). I’m going to miss editing spammers’ comments, but only a little bit. Good riddance.
As a note, we are reading your feedback! I am serious when I say that we actually go through each and every comment posted to our site in a day. And since the launch of COTD, we even have discussions over who had the best comment. That’s how much we care about this community. So just keep doing what you do, including these one-liners. We love you!
Hi, my name is Paula, I like showing myself off in public, check me out at ratemyvolvo.com
Hi my name is Helga and I’m a 24 year old Boxster. I love being photographed from the behind due to a bad headlight job. I make $800 an hour replacing IMS bearings. Please rate my photos at OnlySix.com
Shh, Ray Wert might show up if Helga revs too loudly. Never know when he will show up from behind and try to dragon an innocent roadster :O
/Old old lighting company joke
Um, onlysix.com is an actual site (blog), and there are automotive pictures there.
That Paula! Great link, onlytrees gives me wood.
“I am serious when I say that we actually go through each and every comment posted to our site in a day.”
That is awesome, because in my experience it is the only really reliable way to ensure good moderation, and a robust, consistent moderation regime is absolutely critical to maintaining a healthy commenting community. It’s a little bit ironic because it runs so counter to the free speech absolutism that was such a big part of the Internet’s early culture, but at this point the evidence is pretty hard to ignore: if you want good conversations you need good moderation, and to get good moderation the moderators have to be engaged with the comments. I hope you can find a way to keep it up as the site grows, and may God have mercy on your souls.
“it runs so counter to the free speech absolutism that was such a big part of the Internet’s early culture”
We’re seeing how well that works on another site. Don’t let anyone buy The Autopian for anything less than $1B! (That would be a great payday for all concerned, free swag to every commenter, even Paula, and still enough left over to start a new site, perhaps The Pianauto, covering automobiles that incorporate keyboard instruments.)
I just loved that headline! I really LOL’ed.
So now I will read the article 🙂
A friend of mine hooked up with a girl from onlytrees.com and now he has Dutch Elm Disease. A friend of mine.
BWAHAHA!
You went there before I did 🙂
I wonder if Paula’s been tested for Dutch Elm Disease. She certainly sounds like she’s been pollinated hundreds of times!
Oh, it makes sense now. I thought that that site was offline. I mean, my friend thought it was offline. He is a weirdo. Not me. I’m into vines like a normal person, bark is weird and slutty! SHAME!
Oh crap! You all read all the stupid stuff I’ve said? Lord deliver me from the shame. I just assumed you were all too busy doing the magic you do. Seriously, I idolize all of you and wish I could be a part of it.
You are part of it Thad,
you are.
I vote Paula for the next addition to The Autopian staff. (But she must only appear in comments!)
I’ve been on sites that had a dedicated comment moderator position. Paula for Moderatrix!
Great to hear Mercedes! Excited for the new functionality! Interested to see if there will be a milk-crate-seat option for lower-income Autopians (I really think y’all might make more that way)!
Spam grows on robot trees?
Do you think they’d be spamming a place like this if they could afford a real tree? (-;
Now I want onlytrees.com to exist.
As of this instant, some interprising interpreneur is camping on that URL and demanding $3,400 for its use.
Oh! What might have been!
They beat me to it…. I was going to register it and redirect to this site. 😀
And someone has a thicc tree on onlytre.es, too.
11:18 https://youtu.be/DGvG7SpjZHw
I Wood, the definitive guide to erotic wood knots.
Did you see the grain on that slab of maple?
Honest-to-goodness laugh out loud from both the official COTD, and from Onlytrees.com. If you all knew the week I’ve had, you’d know how much a legitimate moment of joy means to me right now. So thank you.
Have an up vote as well, I think you deserve it!
What made me laugh was the sign-in confirmation email message;
“Here’s the sign in link you requested to access automotive nirvana. It can only be used once and expires after 24 hours, like most of David’s cars.”
I used to have to fight bots on another site I managed. (Business to Business software user forum). We ended up making the registration page include a question only a user of the product would know. Cut it down to nothing almost instantly. I shudder to think what sort of off the wall questions this crew might come up with to keep Paula off the site, though….
1. What is David Tracy’s favorite automotive brand?
2. What automotive part is Jason Torchinsky compulsively obsessed with?
3. What website did Autopian’s core staff migrate from?
Answers for those looking to register in the future:
1. I don’t know, all the badges have rusted off.
2. Is “obscurity” a car part?
3. hupmobilelistings.xxx
We need autopian jeopardy!
And here I thought some of these bots just had a screw loose. But it was you all along, Mercedes. You’re a national treasure!
“HÑ–.. Ðœy nаme Ñ–s Pаula, І’m a 224 yеar-оld elm tree. І lоve bеing phоtographed in the bark. Plеase ratе my phоtos аt onlytrees.com.” Now that’s funny! Made me snort laugh!
See, this is funny!!
“HÑ–.. Ðœy nаme Ñ–s Pаula, І’m a 224 yеar-оld elm tree. І lоve bеing phоtographed in the bark. Plеase ratе my phоtos аt onlytrees.com”
But I’m not sure anything will top the alligators on meth comment thread. I can’t find that now, I believe it was in one of those unhinged rants from our beloved Torch.
“I believe it was in one of those unhinged rants from our beloved Torch.”
Can you narrow that down a bit?
“one of those unhinged rants from our beloved Torch.”
You’re going to have to be more specific.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember. I’ve spent close to an hour looking for it. I’m not sure it was a rant so much as one of those fever dream description things he does sometimes. You know like a “thong wearing marsupial of your choice who’s eaten way too many tide pods.” Torch had a line like that in the article, and then the commenters found their own bad batch of brown acid and went from there. I think it also involver Florida drivers.
I remember this! It was indeed Florida related but that should be obvious from the combo of gators and meth, because those streets intersect in that godforsaken geographical schlong of a state. (Love you Florida)
My brain wants to say that it involved a specific car but idk for sure, I’ll have a look.
Ok well I found what I think *I* was thinking of but it wasn’t what you described. It was the comment “This reads like it was written by cocaine. Not someone *on* cocaine, by cocaine itself” from the rant about cream cheese and the Mitsubishi mirage.
I’m pretty sure that’s the thing that was in my head so I’m not sure what you were referencing but it sure sounds hilarious.
Yah, not that one. It was really early, first couple months I think. Might have been a cold start.
“(There is no onlytrees.com).”
But maybe there should be!!!
Nah. It’ll become a place where everyone signs up and then … leaves.
If a commenter posts at onlytrees.com but no one is around to read it, does it get an upvote?
I didnt see the editing before for spammers but changing it to elm tree or some other hillarious edit seems funny and worth keeping. Maybe some way of not allowing them to post a link to their site would keep them from posting.