Sorry, that was I didn't know what spam was. I deleted it.

You can flag a comment yourself, it's by the Reply button>>

I did flag them, I was just wondering if Instructables has a mechanism to block or complain about abusive users as well. I was wondering if there was a formal way to do this and what procedure Instructables follows to ban people that are spamming users with offensive comments.

no, there isn't a way to report a user, except by PM'ing an admin/mod(they're listed in the About page) although this is a feature a lot of us would like. =)

-I also think when the mods. view a flagged comment they will check the users other comments/profile too.

I flagged him and reported him to the federal child predator / anti-child porn investigation folks since he was talking about getting off on naked pictures of my child. He can explain to them why he's so funny. But it would be nice if Instructables had a more effective way to for users to respond to anti-social behavior.

Well if you don't have "pictures" of your child, (or your child isn't a member on here) then why worry? But I honestly would not get so concerned about a sick joke on the internet, unless of course you feel you have a stalker. =\

I have pictures of my son sitting in a kiddie pool as part of my Instructable on making a pool. Having someone talk about masturbating to pictures of my 1 year old seems a bit far over the line for a website that's based on community participation.

You might not realize this, but much of the traffic to the site comes in from search. So even if your project isn't on the front page, there are still a bunch of people finding it. Dump "How to choose a microcontroller" into Google -- you might be surprised.

AN IDLE MIND IS THE DEVELS WORKSHOP

STOP COMMENTS FROM SEARCH BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONES WITH MOST OFFENSIVE VEWS -- ONLY MEMBERS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO COMMENT.

If you just unpublish and republish your Instructable maintains its original publish date. To do this, you'd have to create a new Instructable with the same content plus the new content. We've reached the point where it's becoming difficult to keep track of all the new Instructables. So, we'll be releasing categories and a bunch of other fixes by the end of the month. All the new stuff is geared at making it easier to find the things you're interested in.

It does seem like there ought to be a choice for sorting any list by current popularity (based on criteria selected arbitrarily) at least. That would bring the meat of the act to the forefront. Recent doesn't do it, neither does New or Comments necessarily. It's definitely something I would look at.

Maybe I'm a little too new here to know if there's a reason why instructables and forums cannot be automatically sorted by current popularity. I imagine it would be easy enough to do, and it's usually the first thing other sites do (in one way or another). If I am missing something about the culture here, then it would be nice if someone could tell me what it was.

Either way, take a look at my last instructable. It's got about 10 votes and more than 70 comments, already. But if you wanted to find it, you'd have to go back a few pages on either Recent or Comments.

Instructable: Keyboard System

Now take a look at my first instructable. It quickly reached the top 60, in terms of all-time ratings, out of more than 3000. And, you might have never known about it, had I not said anything.

T-Shirt Rack

Sorry, I am not simply trying to toot my own horn. But, it's almost like you have to, if want the site to be better.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Right now, sorting by pageviews is what you want. It isn't perfect, but it shows you a list of Instructables ordered by the most pageviews in the last week. We've been brainstorming on a popularity sorting that would take into account recent comments, ratings, pageviews, and some other data, but we're not there yet.

right now i would leave it alone and let it have just as much front page time as any other project just to be nice some feature suggestion maybe "sticky" instructables will help? or how about a special "republished" section? subscribe to changes option?

The way you handled it seems fine to me. You may want to edit it, so the link works though...

Good call, fixed the link, thanks.

The ability to block a user is on our to-do list. So for now I'd recommend just deleting annoying messages and if it's really threatening or obnoxious we can deal with it. I checked the message you were talking about and while it was annoying it wasn't terrible. I'd say you should just delete it and not respond. I've had hundreds of nasty emails sent my way over the years and the only thing that makes the people happier is an angry response.

the only thing that makes the people happier is an angry response.

Yep, some people use it to feed their own anger, kind of justifies it for them, if someone "returns fire".

. Click the About link at the bottom of the page and send a msg to anyone on the team or intern list. Their organization appears to be "loose" and it will get to the right person.

forward the email to one of the moderators. they will take care of it for you.

You don't need to forward the messages - they are admin, and can look at your inbox (oo-er!). Just report the user by name, give a brief outline of their activities, and leave the rest to them.

They can?!?! Ah crap... There goes any hope for an internship... waaahhhh!!!!

I believe they generally wait for an invitation, though. Or a good reason, like lsloan's.

Yeah or if someone starts a discussion on "assassination for fun and profit" LOL

Thank you. I guess I should not have deleted my comment here and posted on the main.