Editors Notes
Buffalo Chow's Editors would like to take this opportunity to wish a Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of our readers: we sincerely hope that you and your families enjoy a restful, fun, and filling next couple of days - our hope is to do the same. Once again, share your plans for the Christmas and New Year's holidays in our Discuss It article; your ideas might inspire someone else to tweak their plans in a positive way!
We also wanted to fill you in on a small change we've had to make to our comments system over the past 48 hours. As you probably know, we love your comments and want to keep them coming - they're informative and worthwhile for us and other readers. So keep posting!
Every web site, big or small, has problems with spam - the automated posting of advertisements by sleazy marketing companies - and we decided early on to combat it by moderating all comments. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to do that, but the result has been that you've never had to see all the bizarre posts that we get on a daily basis pitching flashlights and lingerie. Some are much more offensive, and we'd rather not have that sort of stuff on the site, even for a second.
As we've become bigger, more spam has come in - over the last few weeks, spam hit a fever pitch around here. So we used a second tool to stop it: a "captcha," or a little word box that appears right above the "Preview" and "Post" buttons to foil the spammers. You type your comment, then in the small box below it, type the text that appears in the graphic, and hit the Post button. It's simple, but the spammers get tripped up on it.
The first captcha we tested asked for 6 random characters to be entered into a box. It was hard to read, so after a day of testing, we settled on a different one that requests you to type two words before you hit the Post button. If the words are too weird-looking, you can hit the button with two circular arrows to load a different, easier set.
Thanks for taking the extra moment to enter the captcha. It's the best tool we have to keep the comments sections of our articles clean for everyone to enjoy. Happy holidays!
