Memo: spring cleaning

Hey everybody, just a little memo since we're doing some spring cleaning around Engadget. We just wanted to take a moment to respond to everyone who's written asking about a few reoccurring matters, so here ya go! Oh, feel free to sound off in comments if we forgot anything.

Breaking news and featured stories feeds

We know not everyone can keep up with the flow of news most days, which is why we have two channels for keeping an eye on the most important stuff: breaking news, and featured content. The breaking / featured boxes are off to the right in the center column and are updated instantly when new stories are added, but if you're addicted to RSS like we are, you can get the feeds as well. Subscribe to breaking news here, and to featured stories here.

Linking in comments (spam and blogspam)

Linking your site in your comment (especially as a signature): don't do it. It looks like spam, but even if you're not a real spammer, the real spammers have started doing it too, and now it's ALL getting reported as spam. Besides, ultimately our comments are a place to discuss, not promote yourself/site. (Likewise, don't use TinyURL or URL obfuscation tools -- those can also get you banned.)

So the bottom lined: people caught URL spamming will be banned. Sorry, we just have to take a hard line, way too many people are complaining about the amount of URL spam showing up in comments.

US vs. worldwide contests

We don't expect everyone to realize this, but we're often prevented from making our contests open to entrants outside the country. If we had our druthers every contest would be available to everyone of any age, but due to legal restrictions or requests by the company whose gadgets we're giving away, that's not always the case. So we'll continue keeping as many contests as possible open to international readers -- and you'll stop freaking out when it's US-only, ok?

Popups or way annoying ads

Believe it or not, our editorial team has as little to do with our advertisers as possible. In other words, when you see an ad you find annoying or that pops up, that's not our doing. Honestly, most of the time it's an ad network that slips something in... but please let us know! Send us a nice, non-accusatory message in our comment form, and if you can, get the URL of the ad link, ad images, and any other data you can collect so we can wipe that mother clean off the site. Thanks!

Number of comments increased to 50

Oh yeah, and after much prodding of the admins, we've increased the number of comments per post-page to 50. Finally!

[brian baigorri @ May 28th 2007 12:40PM]

Can we please change our passwords?

[Ryan Block @ May 28th 2007 12:43PM]

The thing on that is our current comment system is a half-complete version that probably never should have been rolled out. (But we figured lame passwords were better than being unable to auto-authenticate.) We've got a far better comment system in the works, but I can't say when it will be done.

In the mean time, I encourage you to use your browser's password manager to remember it for you!

[Owen V @ May 28th 2007 12:44PM]

sweet, engadget rocks

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ May 28th 2007 2:46PM]

Wait, I have a question:

Does Engadget allow you to register actual accounts or is it just a email-based system? I'm not even sure what to call this.

I noticed in the past once or twice a few comment posters whose account names were actually a blue color; meaning that the comment poster had a special type of account or registered, not sure.

It just seems to me anyone can register/alter their usernames because there isn't a fixed account system. I hope that is understandable, lol.

[Fernando @ May 28th 2007 12:45PM]

"people caught URL spamming will be banned"

FINALLY!

www.google.com

[Karl Viklund @ May 28th 2007 12:54PM]

I think that it's really good that you will start to ban Blogg-spamers. It's really irritating and people are just trying to ride on the success of Engadget.

[tom @ May 28th 2007 1:17PM]

i agree that being able to change the passwords would be huge, but we'll work with what you've got i suppose.

i cant comment on anything while at work because they've got our browser settings on lockdown and my puny mind cant remember any more random alphanumeric strings.

[Ryan Block @ May 28th 2007 1:25PM]

Thankfully our old system still works -- submit a comment, receive a verification email, and you're set.

[violajack @ May 28th 2007 1:28PM]

The ads that jump out of their space and cover things are the flash ads that live in the middle bar between the main articles and the list of links on the right. Most recently for me it was an iPod ad that took it's space in the middle and covered with white space the same width to the left and right of the ad. When I right clicked on it, the flash setting thing came up and the whole area was selected. The Kaiser ad and Netflix ad in the same space seem to be be playing nice and staying in their box.

This is from Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Ubuntu Fiesty. It could just be an artifact of the linux flash player sucking. I'm not sure if it happens in windows as well. But I would like to able to read engadget from whichever system I'm on.

[strider_mt2k @ May 28th 2007 1:34PM]

Awesome.

You stay classy, Engadget.

[Phil Perman @ May 28th 2007 1:37PM]

Just a little one, get rid of that "Discover whats new at Engadget" link on the right hand side? Its been there for over half a year and I'm pretty sure everyone is up to speed with the way everything runs now

[paul34 @ May 28th 2007 1:45PM]

Thank you for taking care of the URL spammers!

However, I do have a question. Let's say I want to share a *relevant* link (not spam), and its a very long link.

Would it be ok, in that instance, to use something like tinyurl so that I don't take up so much space in my post?

Thanks for all your work, Engadget.

P.S. I hope that next comments system revision includes post editing/deleting! =D

[Ryan Block @ May 28th 2007 4:26PM]

If you do a TinyURL you look like one of the spammers who is trying to obfuscate their link. So don't be mad if your comment winds up deleted!

[tiuk @ May 28th 2007 1:53PM]

How about being able to change out password to whatever we want?

[ddaw735 @ May 28th 2007 1:53PM]

When are we going to see a gizmodo link under the web blogs links.
that would be funny.
Be the bigger man engadget.

[Stewart McKane @ May 28th 2007 2:05PM]

On the Worldwide-vs-US only contest thing - I wouldn't mind so much if it was made obvious at the START of the post, it's getting all hyped up and then scrolling down 20pages to see right at the bottom "US-only, sorry".

Make it obvious guys, then you won't annoy people.

Either that, or compel your suppliers to realise that there's more than a couple of people outside the 50 states that read this!

[BobbyW @ May 28th 2007 2:09PM]

I like sites that show the posters name as a link to their chosen web site. I find lots of interesting offbeat sites that way. Does Engadget plan to allow or disallow this kind of link?

[Ryan Block @ May 28th 2007 4:27PM]

The spammers took that over years ago. We don't allow it anymore because of them. Sorry!

[Ondra Soukup @ May 28th 2007 2:16PM]

Thanks for banning those self-promoting assholes :)

[Matt @ May 28th 2007 2:26PM]

Just make it obvious that the competitions are for people in the US only. At the moment the "US only" bit is usually hidden away like some sort of ebay-scammer hiding the "You are bidding on an empty PS3 box" in the middle of some copy-pasted spec-sheet.

It is extremely annoying to see the competition and the picture and think "oo shiny!", then to get disappointed.

[AL @ May 28th 2007 2:27PM]

How about more regular podcasts? That would be swell

[Matt @ May 28th 2007 2:28PM]

Oh and another thing, stop with the stupid 1984 crap about the UK.

I am sure if you counted all of the CCTV cameras included in american shopping malls and super markets you'd have a similar number per capita too. Just to make this absolutely clear: of those 4.2 million CCTV cameras, 99.9% are operated by Starbucks and McDonalds and not the Police/Government

[Mark A. Mandel @ May 28th 2007 5:37PM]

And 87.468% of statistics cited on the Web are made up on the spot. Whoops, you and I made it 87.469%.

[Ryan Block @ May 28th 2007 4:30PM]

It's always been that way. The only tangible differences between our comments now and the way they were in 2004 is 1) we don't allow commenters' names to link to their sites and 2) you can use an auto-assigned password if you verify by email.

[Scooter @ May 28th 2007 2:52PM]

thanks for this.

I suggest you go global and simply insist to suppliers that you only run international competitions. That would put you on side with your readers, rather than the gadget marketers, and prevent you alienating thousands.

Keep up the good work.

Oh, and any thoughts of banning fanboy flaming, 'first comment' posters, and robot overlord jokes?

[Jypson @ May 28th 2007 2:53PM]

Great update, ban the spammers! Also, I agree, we need to be able to make a password. I'm lazy, sorry.

[TC @ May 28th 2007 4:10PM]

Yay! A significant reduction in Next Page clicks and good riddance to the spammers.

[Mark A. Mandel @ May 29th 2007 10:36AM]

I should have made it explicit that my comment about statistics was in reply to Matt's "of those 4.2 million CCTV cameras, 99.9% are operated by Starbucks and McDonalds and not the Police/Government"

[J L @ May 28th 2007 6:10PM]

About the ads:

Can you guys get rid of the ads that move w/o being asked to?(Like the apple ad that plays w/o sound.) When they are on, FireFox takes up 50% of my CPU!

[Ryan Block @ May 28th 2007 9:00PM]

No, but you can by using a selective Flash-blocking plugin.

[Ryan Block @ May 28th 2007 8:59PM]

We let our columnists decide whether they want comments. Ross chooses not to have comments on his columns, and we honor that.

[Artr @ May 28th 2007 10:06PM]

Nice to see the changes, more international contests are always fun. Now please get a new podcast out already!!!

[Rex @ May 29th 2007 2:37AM]

first of all,thanks ryan for listening and repling, its nice to know some body bothers...
firstly, i thought u had a "not more than three url" thingy...
secondly yes, get rid of the middle column(breaking news) we have RSS for heavens sake!
thirdly, THEMES! even wikipedia has themes, cant u?
fourthly, thanks for the 50 per page, i hope it increase to 100 ;-)
fifth (wow!5th?) yes international contests are needed
i could rant on forever, but i should realise my limits...
its just that i like engadget too much to ignore it...
rex