Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Balloon Juice Troll Filter

I'm a big fan of Balloon Juice, but not so much the trolls that stink up the joint.  Inspired by cleek's awesome Pie Filter script, I decided to take it a step further and make something a bit more aggressive to make sure the trolls shut their, uh, pie holes.  So I give you Balloon Juice Troll-B-Gone, a userscript for Firefox and Chrome.

Differences with cleek's filter include:
  • You can block and unblock commenters with a link attached to each post
     
  • No pie, just a very skinny "trolling by Trolly McTrollson" sort of header.
     
  • Blocked posts can be revealed by clicking on the header
     
  • Replies to trolls are completely filtered (not just quotes)
     

Update 2013-05-15: I've updated the script to work with BJ's new look. GreaseMonkey and TamperMonkey are supposed to auto-update, but that doesn't always seem to be the case, so click here or on the script link to get the latest version. And for more BJ action, the filter looks best with the Better Balloon Juice stylesheet applied.

Update 2013-05-19: The script is now hosted on userscripts.org, which among other things, has install instructions for making the script work on lots of different browsers (I've only tested it on Firefox and Chrome though). If you already have the script installed, I recommend removing it and reinstalling it from userscripts.org instead (the links in this post are updated, so just click on them).

Update 2014-07-17: Link changed to userscripts-mirror.org -- next time I get around to editing it, I'll host it on greasyfork.org, assuming they're still around then.

10 comments:

Valdivia said...

so a quick question: is it supposed to allow me to give it a list when I go into extensions because it won't maybe I am doing something wrong?

Valdivia said...

sorry to ask--but do I need to have the cleek filter for it to work? I installed yours after erasing the pie one, but when I look at extensions there are no options present to add the list of banned trolls (which is the same problem I have had with the cleek filter since the upgrade of the site)

Chuck Adams said...

You don't need the cleek filter, and in fact you probably shouldn't run both at the same time, though I'm not aware of anything bad happening if you do. I didn't put any of cleek's additional features in like the blockquote button, but I might write a separate extension for that too.

I haven't provided any UI at this time for editing the list other than through the add/remove links, and since it's in HTML5 local storage, it's kind of hard to get to. I agree it'd probably be a good idea to add a list editor at some point -- I just really hate writing UI from scratch :p

Anonymous said...

Will you be posting an update now that BJ has updated the site again? I love me some Troll-B-Gone...

Chuck Adams said...

The script should be updated now. If GreaseMonkey doesn't auto-update, go ahead and click on the link in the post.

Ahasuerus said...

Have you given any thought to putting your script on userscripts.org? It would make it somewhat easier to find for updating/recommending to others.

Chuck Adams said...

Yah, considering I have my stylesheet on userstyles.org, I guess I should complete the package. Should have that done soon, thanks for the suggestion.

Chuck Adams said...

Ok, I got myself a userscripts.org account and uploaded it there, so like yay and stuff. I recommend removing the existing script and reinstalling it from userscripts.org so that auto-updates will (hopefully) work in the future.

aimai said...

I'm going to sound like a complete fool but how do I actually install and use this? I've never pied anyone but I've decided enough's enough. Where do I/how do I enter the troll name?

Chuck Adams said...

If you're on Firefox, install GreaseMonkey. If you're on Chrome, install TamperMonkey. If you're on any other browser, I recommend getting one of those :)

Once you've done that, get the script here

On that page, click on the green "install" button at the top right. Once you have it installed, you'll notice a "block" link that appears when you hover the mouse over a post. Just click it and you're done. You can always unblock someone by hovering over their blocked post and clicking "unblock".