We’re feeling used

Perfect Duluth Day hit a seemingly significant, though maybe not legitimately significant, milestone recently when it crossed the threshold of having 2,000 registered users.

Registered users, of course, are the people who have created an account on this site and are able to create posts and comment on posts. (Anyone can read PDD, but in order to be involved in discussions here you must create an account and log in.)

In recognition of 2,000+ users, we present a bunch of yammering, er, useful information, about PDD user accounts. Call it answers to frequently or not-so-frequently asked questions.

Why aren’t we jumping up and down in celebration of PDD’s 2,000th user account? Well, we’re pretty sure about 5 percent of our users are spammers who haven’t revealed themselves as spammers yet. Every day we have to remove a handful of user accounts after spammers attempt to create posts titled something like “The Best Strategies For Effectively Reducing Acne,” or “All you have to Are familiar with Trademark Registration Presently.”

Is there any chance legitimate accounts have been deleted during the trashing of the spam? Yes, we know this has happened at least once and suspect it may have happened more than once. Please e-mail help @ perfectduluthday.com if you ever have trouble logging in. If your e-mail address happens to be at all similar to hotseopackage @ articles.com or anything345 @ hotmail.com we can pretty much guarantee it got dumped.

Does PDD have spam filters that might be preventing legitimate users from creating an account? Why yes, we do. A handful of people have contacted us in recent months mentioning that they keep getting a prompt to type their e-mail address after they have already entered it. That happens when the spam filter doesn’t like your e-mail address. If it happens to you, e-mail help @ perfectduluthday.com.

Does PDD reject a lot of posts from legitimate users? We wouldn’t say “a lot,” but we do reject about one per day. If you read PDD’s blogging policies you’ll see we explain in great detail what kind of posts we disapprove of. We do try to e-mail people when we reject a post, but sometimes rejected posts come in clumps and we just throw up our hands, delete them and move on.

For those of us too lazy to read your long-winded policies, what are the three main reasons you reject posts? 1) It’s an event announcement that should have been submitted to the PDD Calendar instead of the blog. 2) It comes off like advertising copy and makes us feel icky, even if it’s about something we like. 3) It has nothing to do with Duluth at all.

What about the questions not answered here? If you are a registered user, you can ask away in the comments to this post. If you are not a registered user, or even if you are, you can e-mail help @ perfectduluthday.com.

So, with all that out of the way, we’ll just add that although we can’t legitimately get all celebratory about having 2,000 users, we’ll still throw out a meek cheer and say thanks to those of you — however many you are in number — who keep this site humming along with your Duluth wisdom.

Have yourselves a happy New Year.

21 Comments

quirtep

about 11 years ago

You do a good job; there's not another blog quite like PDD with its local, eclectic perspective.

brian

about 11 years ago

We should aim for 2013 users by the year 2013.

Paul Lundgren

about 11 years ago

Actually, we're already at 2,080.

Joel

about 11 years ago

I'm not a spammer, but apparently I have a lot of long lost relatives in Nigeria who want to send me money.

brian

about 11 years ago

Then don't accept any more until the year 2080.

BadCat!

about 11 years ago

First off, I appreciate PDD immensely, and I understand that running websites does involve personal time and cost, so I appreciate that you're willing to do all that just so I can hang out. Thanks to all the PDD staff/admins! :)

However, I do have one question about the commenting policy about comment editing. Again, refer to point A, this is your website and anything I give you is yours to do with, but when some mysterious force shows up behind the scenes to change what I said, it makes me feel icky.
I know I'm not the only person this happens to, as I've seen the "What the heck, I didn't say that?" fallout several times. Honestly, I'd rather you just trashed my comment completly, rather than re-write my words for me.
Also, it just seems like it must take a lot of work to go in an properly bold/italisize/spellcheck every one of my comments.
Your thoughts?

Paul Lundgren

about 11 years ago

If we were to edit your comment so the words completely and italicize were spelled correctly, how would you know unless you spelled them wrong on purpose?

But to answer your question in a non-snotty way, there are generally three things we try to fix:

1) When people misspell the name of something or incorrectly add a possessive apostrophe to it (such as "Tycoon's" instead of "Tycoons" when referring to the restaurant/bar). 

2) When people improperly embed a video, which happens a lot.

3) When people make a sloppy link in a case where a neat one could exist.

We fix other issues from time to time, but those are the big three. The basic reason for doing this is to make things easier to read and prevent confusion. 

We never try to change what anyone intends to express in a comment, and if that ever happens we certainly welcome you to comment again and clarify what you meant.

We generally don't remove sections of a comment unless someone writes something that seems otherwise intelligent but then uses a sentence or two to call someone a name. So, for example, you can love or hate guns all you want in a comment, but don't call someone who disagrees with you a twit or whatever.

BadCat!

about 11 years ago

Heh, I suppose I did open myself up to that. ;)
I'm at work so my IE has no "hey dumbass, you spelled that wrong" setting.

Ok, I totally see fixing technical issues (videos, photos, weblinks, etc.), but sometimes if a person's comment is full of "Yo, your gf wuz drunk at Tycoon's", you may want to consider leaving it, as the incorrect comment reflects on the person, and the reader can choose to silently mock them in their head.

And yea, name calling (I'll own up to my name and my bad habits). If I'm outside of the TOS, I personally would rather see my comment get trashed, rather than edited. However, other commenters may feel different (and it's up to you anway), so I figured I'd at least bring it up as a talking (typing) point. :)

Rougement

about 11 years ago

"when some mysterious force shows up behind the scenes to change what I said, it makes me feel icky." 

Yep. It stops me posting here more often.

baci

about 11 years ago

IWANTMYALLCAPS Thank you Paul for making me seem like less an asshole than I really am .. no easy feat to be sure.

wildgoose

about 11 years ago

I feel precisely the opposite of Bad Cat on comment revisions. I welcome edits to clarify my meandering sentences and fix my messy links and help me figure out the video embedding (which is harder than it looks, I swear).  I feel dirty when something is just removed.  

But this could possibly be a case-by-case thing for people wit Bad Cat's perspective and one more like mine.  Because I'm sure the PDD brain trust just love's making exceptions case-by-case.

TimK

about 11 years ago

I know that I've been saved a couple of times from coming off as a bigger jerk than I already am. To that I say thanks. It's helped me to keep a cooler head in the long run. Personal pecadillos aside, this blog is pretty darn special. Thanks to the PDD staff and users for making it so.

vicarious

about 11 years ago

I still miss -Berv's weird MS Paint drawings.

Barrett Chase

about 11 years ago

"you may want to consider leaving it, as the incorrect comment reflects on the person, and the reader can choose to silently mock them in their head."

The problem with that idea is that, after years of moderating this thing, we know that there's a significant portion of people who aren't content with mocking them in their head, and instead need to do it in the comments. Which would your rather read: 1) a conversation that stays on topic, or 2) a thread full of people mocking someone's grammar?

So like I said, it's murky.

Tom

about 11 years ago

Barrett, that should read "in their heads." You're referring to multiple mockers.

Paul Lundgren

about 11 years ago

It's always good to have an example within an example.

Barrett Chase

about 11 years ago

The people to whom I'm referring only have one collective head.

vicarious

about 11 years ago

Excellent grammar on that last comment, Barrett. Though, it could be argued that "only" and "have" could be reversed in order. My partial head hurts.

Barrett Chase

about 11 years ago

It would make sense to reverse those words if you were a frilly Victorian ponce.

Jim Richardson

about 11 years ago

Are we still allowed to post the entire works of Shakespeare in the comments?

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