I am very interested in the history here, can you provide a link to this bit of context?
Iâll admit it was kind of perversely satisfying. Kinda
No, those are your words on the topic
Well, honestly you should ask Mark, Cory or Teresa Nielsen Hayden. This might help, itâs the start of what somebody once called âTeresaâs Benevolent Reign of Terrorâ. The earliest link I could find in the wayback machine has the âboingboing salonâ at www.egroups.com, but I seem to recall there was something in between there and wordpress - vBulletin maybe? Something with an orange header, that hated my linux machineâs browser?
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I covered the history that I was able to find here:
I know that @noahdjango was finding working QuickTopic links on some older posts, but nothing earlier than that which would be 2001.
Man, that was so long ago. I think I was still hand-coding the sync values in Xwindows to keep from incinerating my monitor, and using lynx as my main browser whenever possible.
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An obvious problem with disemvowelment that hasnât been mentioned yet is that every single time the disemvowelled party would ask âwhat happened to my post??â and then someone would have to respond and then there would be a debate on disemvowelling again.
I mean, right now, every thread has a comment going âwhat happened to my post, why did it get deletedâ, but at least people usually ignore those.
I think youâre exaggerating a bit, but itâs definitely a real issue. Pâraps a standard link would be automatically added at the bottom of each disemvoweled post by the disemvowelment widget saying âclick here to find out about post obfuscationâ or something like that. Then the link would in turn have bold text saying âofftopic whinging and grizzling about your disemvowelment clogging up the post thread will be deletedâ? I donât think itâs insurmountable.
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Iâm not sure the people who typically get disemvowelled are the type to click a link to learn why. But maybe youâre right, maybe itâs not insurmountable. It still seems like a lot of effort to preserve something thatâs, letâs be honest, comes across as passive-aggressive.
When I first saw a disemvowelment I thought it was hilarious. But like most gags on the internet, it became stale after seeing it over and over and over, and frequently derailed the discussion. People would preemptively disemvowel themselvesâŠ
Either someone has something constructive to add to the conversation or they donât. Disemvowelling creates this ugly middle-ground where people endlessly game the moderation to see how repulsive they can be without being outright deleted.
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<comment deleted by moderator>
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Touché 
But again, thatâs just unambiguously breaking moderation rules, doesnât fool anyone, and wastes a lot less time creating a puzzle that people will inevitably unscramble and respond to.
Well, only because I didnât go to the trouble of making an exact mockup of a sanctioned post. Which I could easily have done, eh? I get your point, though. And clearly some people find disemvoweled posts a lot more distracting than others.
I donât think thatâs possible since we change the opacity of the post, and thatâs not an option in the composer or text formatting ruleset. Iâll have to doublecheck on our sandbox.
Yes indeed it is dimmed. Thatâs how it will show up to others. It shows up a little differently to the post owner (and to mods), since it is an invitation to edit.
Which goes back to my complexity argument. Complex things that have to be explained (and invite debate, even worse) are not sustainable over even the medium term. Everyone understands simple removal of content, just like they understand the goal of superfund cleanups of toxic waste: to get rid of it!
Well, if you really consider this a meaningful issue, make sure you filter any user-entered HTML against a carefully selected whitelist, or somebody will probably find a way to throw a transparent div over the text and effectively dim it.
The history of BB and comments.
Comment system 1: Quicktopic, in ~2002 or so.
Forum-like, comments on their URL, pseudoanonmity. FLAT. Strong USENET vibe, became filled with flame wars and various toxic patterns (impersonation, unmoderable, troll-friendly) and was eventually shuttered. Quicktopic is still alive, BTW, and you can find old BB threads there.
Comment system 2: Native Movable Type. 2007-2012
Inline-comments on the same URL as the post. FLAT. Moderated by TNH, then Antinous.
Comment system 3: Disqus. 2012-2013
Inline-comments on the same URL as the post. THREADED. Sucky.
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Haha, you know more about it than I do, Jeff! Thatâs a great post, gonna link
Rob, I really remember Disqus being added in 2011. Was there some big change in 2012 that you keep remembering that date instead?
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I know there was a switch from flat to threaded in Disqus settings but I donât know the date that happened.
The actual Disqus change was July 24 2011.
Was the suckiness attributable to the threadedness? Or was it some other flavor of sucky?
There were a few things I didnât like about Disqus myself. Wasnât that the platform where occasional uncommanded page reloads would wipe out oneâs post if one took too long to type it?
Thatâs what Iâve heard, But the comments to the first Disqus post up there were threaded, and so were the comments to a dozen or so posts I checked in August and September of '11. So if it was ever flat, it was after it had been threaded for a while.
Presumably itâs a UI switch so it is retroactive. Even Twitter stores in-reply-to and has for a long long time.
