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No comments on A&A news

For whatever reason, whenever there's an AAISP article, about 2-3 specific people just turn the comments into a troll fest that often becomes abusive. I thus end up having to waste valuable time managing it, when I could be working on other things at a busy time of year.

Such posters tend to repeatedly rail against the fact that the ISP has data caps, which would be fine, if they didn't also repeatedly attack those who disagreed with their opinion - it is, after all, a simple matter of choice, people can go with a different provider.

So you get these 2-3 posters that each spam 10+ comments, making the same extraneous point over and over, while goading others. Anonymous comments are not protected content, so these days I'll often just save myself the hassle and disable them if I think it's going to invite excessive trolling.

I also have to remain mindful of libel laws and the looming Online Safety Bill (i.e. protecting ISPreview's liability comes first).
 
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Mark surely it’s time to let only registered (forum?) users post comments on your articles? Any comments from newbies would have to be approved, which in turn *should* massively reduce (if not completely stop) trolling or any abusive posts. Win win for everyone.
 
It could be interpreted as offering AAISP some protection by not having any negative comments allowed. The usual suspects could be weeded out and we'd only have one anonymous. :)
 
Mark surely it’s time to let only registered (forum?) users post comments on your articles? Any comments from newbies would have to be approved, which in turn *should* massively reduce (if not completely stop) trolling or any abusive posts. Win win for everyone.
+100 integrating the comments in the forum.
 
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Integrating the forum system's database with that of a separate CMS system is hellish, creating a dependency on a third-party bridge with lots of caveats for breaking changes during future updates. I did this before and to be frank, it caused me far too much stress - fighting bugs with every single update and costing more than a site of this size can afford. I instead prefer to preference deploying the latest updates without all that hassle, as the security benefits are worth it.

The alternative of adopting a membership system is also not so simple, as we then have to expose the CMS for articles to public access - creating a new potential attack vector. At present, I keep the CMS for articles tightly locked down. Not to mention the hassle of then having three separate member databases (forum, news and reviews).

The third way of using a third-party comment system, such as Disqus, also has big problems. At present, I use a lot of crafty tricks to stop anonymous news comments being destroyed by robotic spam (hardly see any spam now), but none of my custom code tweaks work with third-party comment systems. The result is that you trade greater control over who can post for needing to fight masses of SPAM on a daily basis. The third-party systems also have terrible spam management - clunky and slow - and add more remote java code to page rendering (often broken by ad blockers or slows page loading down).

So you see, from a work load and stress perspective, it actually ends up being easier for my sanity to just 'manage' anonymous comments or stop comments completely. I'd love to do more, but I don't have the budget or hours in the day to spare. I've had a new website design in the works for two years, but progress has stalled, as with so many altnets to report on, I've hardly any time left for development work.
 
It could be interpreted as offering AAISP some protection by not having any negative comments allowed.
I have noticed BT articles sometimes have the comments switched off, so its not only AA but any ISP article liable to be trolled.
 
@Mark.J yeah, makes sense, but imho you over-thought it.

An option not mentioned which is super simple:
- write article
- create a forum thread with same name in a new category "Site comments" or something
- At the end of the article put a "Comments" link pointing to the forum post created at the previous step and/or load that forum thread in an iframe etc.

No bridges or separate DBs required.

I think Phoronix do something similar.
 
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I thought the same Lucian, it's a bit clunky though, It also might drop engagement though as you're adding a barrier to comments.
However it also might drop engagement from people who probably need a break from commenting :ROFLMAO: naming no names:censored:
 
Kitz forum is discussing it, they are quite surprised by the 30 day term and the lack of any guaranteed speed.
 
@Mark.J yeah, makes sense, but imho you over-thought it.

An option not mentioned which is super simple:
- write article
- create a forum thread with same name in a new category "Site comments" or something
- At the end of the article put a "Comments" link pointing to the forum post created at the previous step and/or load that forum thread in an iframe etc.

No bridges or separate DBs required.

I think Phoronix do something similar.
I have links to IPSreview articles on my Discord that people can create threads to then speak about the news amongst eachother with all the trolls
 
was going to comment on https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...d-soft-launch-cityfibre-based-fttp-plans.html - about the city fibre plans being England only.
On topic? Or off topic?—

Somebody mentioned this on the original article where it was announced that A&A would be introducing CityFibre plans. A&A said unfortunately CityFibre's National Access product is England only. This feels like an odd choice from CityFibre.

Of course, there are several ISPs aiming for UK wide CityFibre overage: Vodafone, TalkTalk, Giganet, and others. Presumably each of these ISPs needs to deploy their own equipment, in each fibre area in Scotland. A hassle, but not completely impossible: there are only like 6 or 15 fibre areas in Scotland, depending on how neighbouring areas are counted.
 
A&A said unfortunately CityFibre's National Access product is England only. This feels like an odd choice from CityFibre.
Feels like the name fits to me ? "National" access product in England. I'm assuming they'll have to do something else for Wales & Scotland (e.g. Hybrid the National access product with the local platforms - or CF will get their act together and put a "NA" product for each of the home nations.)
 
Last edited:
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Feels like the name fits to me ? "National" access product in England.
It's not unreasonable for them to launch an England only product. England after all is a nation, as is Scotland as is the UK.

But their branding is misleading. They styled themselves as a major UK provider when launching their product, and nowhere in the title or press release do they qualify the product to England only.
 
The product can be used outside of England, using the local method (not the National product)? Unless i'm missing something.


There's significantly small footprint in Scotland currently though, but that's probably to be expected as they work through contractors they're already using etc.

CF are saying the National product is only for the English Hubs. I'm sure that'll change in time.

Edit for clarity:
My understanding is A&A have chosen to pick the "National" wholesale product only, Which is why for them its England only, because that's where the wholesale product is.

If A&A wanted to, they could have gone Hybrid, and served customers at any of CF's footprint.

This is an ISP choice and not the "fault" of CF.
 
Kitz forum is discussing it, they are quite surprised by the 30 day term and the lack of any guaranteed speed.
Lack of guaranteed speed is probably the same on any other CityFibre reseller [unless the price is adjusted to compensate for a higher committed minimum]; just A&A are open about it!
Probably reflects better on A&A that they tell people about it as others hide the fact?

Another vote here for somehow tying comments to forum accounts, this site suffers from another level of trolling! Some method of notifying or following comments on a news item would be welcome too; difficult to remember to go back and check for replies otherwise.
 
So CityFibre national access is for A&A like dealing with BT wholesale or talk talk, as in they get a bunch of 10G links in A&A data center and up to CityFibre to manage backhaul to each exchange.

I can see why A&A might not want to get in to having links to every CityFibre location, some would be very underused

I wonder if CityFibre do a similar product which includes Scotland(maybe they have one for all Scottish locations, if you have a datacentre in Central belt)
 
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