can we calm down on banning people's accounts? its like East Germany in here.

I get discouraged every time you put up these PSAs. I've submitted a dozen comments and have never been approved.

You'll notice that this is the first post mentioning the commenting code that allows comments.

I wonder why that is, hmm?

I would love to be able to comment.

But i guess it's not to be.

ban 'em, dan-o

Can't we get a button to un-disemvowel people? Seeing random consonants makes me wanna know what they said...

@ceriphim: It can be done just by looking at it. It DOES require more thought than the original poster put into writing the comment, though.

@whitefang2000: Welcome the The Show. Consumerist has the strictest maintenance of the comment code of any gawker site I read, by far. And if you get banned here, it's curtains for any of the other sites.

@ceriphim: I dunno. I kinda enjoy the "Wheel of Fortune" aspect.

What's with the hearts next to our names? Are they designed to help us write happy sappy comments?

@ChuckECheese: it's the new [+].

@bilups: I agree -- I was banned and I couldn't even figure out which comment might have triggered such a response. (Thankfully after emailing the moderator, my comment abilities were reinstated.)

People can comment here? Really? I signed up last month and still can't.

@bilups: You've obviously never visited Jezebel... ;-)

I think the whole banning thing is a Gawker effort to force all those comment junkies to de-lurk and feed their addiction via Fleshbot.

PS. Disemvoweling is the coolest thing Gawker has ever done.

THANKS for explaining how to link to a previous comment. I always wondered how folks got the little @ followed by the commenter's name in their followup post. Overall, Consumerist has great information & the comments really do make this an interesting stop on the web.

@ceejeemcbeegee: Oooooooooo! I'm glad you said it first. ;)

I got disemvoweled once on another Gawker site. If it happens again, is it curtains for me on all sites?

Also, if I'm a good girl for a certain period of time, does the disemvowelment roll off my record?

I've noticed it's either a feel-good comment or it's disemvowelled. Nothing realistic or critical of the OP (even if the OP couldn't realize that the government-issued DTV coupon is processed through the Visa network and CC wanted a signature so he emailed the Consumerist about how he wasted his coupon).

Just my $0.02.

@thatblackgirl: Disemvoweling basically means "you're on thin ice". It's worse than a warning, but less than banning.

Personally, I don't tend to consider what was said on other sites unless it was particularly nasty, and also, I consider how recent it was. If you behave yourself and have good comments for a few months, chances are we won't look at an old disemvoweling again. Usually people I ban have either one really bad comment or a whole bunch of kinda bad comments in their last ten or twenty comments.

@christoj879: @christoj879:

@christoj879: Ergh, sorry about that. The comment code specifies what we're looking for in comments. What we want to avoid is a ton of whining or a ton of trashing the victim. The former is boring, the latter tends to be but further discourages consumers from coming forward. I've definitely heard complaints even now, with our stricter guidelines, that submitters don't want to submit again after being ridiculed. This is a consumer advocacy site, but yet some individuals want to trash every person who gets scammed or screwed and blame it all on them. It's tedious. Constructive criticism (e.g. 'it may have been more successful to have tried this' and providing a link to pertinent information) is always welcome.

@Consumerist-Moderator-Roz: I believe the point the earlier commenter was making is that if you ban someone on Consumerist, they are banned from commenting on all Gawker Media sites.

@Pete Gaines: One login works across all of the sites; so does the banhammer. If you get banned on Jalopnik, you'll lose commenting privileges across the whole network.

@christoj879:

I've noticed it's either a feel-good comment or it's disemvowelled. Nothing realistic or critical of the OP.

This commenting stuff has become too complicated. I quit.

For tonight.

Since it's somewhat on-topic in this thread, can someone post here how to block-quote? Nothing I try seems to show up in the preview

type "blockquote" in like you would if you were entering a bold command. To end, just enter "/blockquote"

and you will get this

<blockquote> This text will be a block quote </blockquote>

This text will be a block quote

It's not in the LH guide, because that site doesn't support/use it. :)

@Git Em SteveDave is starlost: OK, b/c I just learned how to do this so the < and > show: Type <blockquote> to open the quote, then </blockquote> to end it.

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->:

Thanks!

-SM

First blink tags and now blockquotes. Kids these days.

@Consumerist-Moderator-Roz: I've done none of the things you're talking about, and only provided thoughtful / slightly comedic comments, but not one of them has ever shown up, what do I have to do?

MercuryPDX:

Why didn't your first one automatically convert?

@RedwoodFlyer:
I used the literal character codes for the "greater than" and "less than" symbols. HTML Ascii codes will work too
&lt; or  &#60; is  <
&gt; or  &#62; is  >

Kinda stunned that most of the commentors with a lot to say about the comments code in other threads are not in here having their say.

I've wondered a few times how to get strikethrough to work. <strike> and <del> do nothing, at least in the preview.

@Tiber: I haven't seen any comments using it, and all the variants I try don't work either (<s></s> can be added to that list).