Taking the Pulse on Anonymous Commenting

By the way, every time I comment now, my post gets held. So what it that about? Not the first time, but every time. And I have posted hundreds of comments. Weird.

I don’t mind guest comments. But it takes more time to moderate and pull the spam and over-the-top abusive posts, as well as those long repetitive cut-and-paste jobs. Setting up comments to avoid multiple posts will help. And quickly blocking IPs when appropriate. BTW, why don’t you decide what is out-of-line and post your policy? Sure, some people will object to any “censorship”, but at least you will be upfront about the rules. I post on other boards where it is clearly stated that threats and personal attacks are off limit, but you can be as passionate as you like about the subject of the thread.

And benno, it’s true that the atmosphere has drastically changed since the site began.

It would help if your password recovery system functioned. I’ve tried multiple times and everytime I paste the new password in I get “Error: Unknown user”. I’ve been posting as guest becuase of it.

Having been one of the old regular posters, benno, that is exactly why i stopped posting under my user name. And when I did register, the troll simply counterfeited it by adding a space before the name. I was not only constantly harassed (as have been quite a few others) but links to disgusting websites were posted using my name.

I’m one of those asking for a good registration system. You don’t have to eliminate the guest post, but at least you can see who is a fake. Still, trolls will have their day. At least have a moderator who constantly checks- I thought yesterday was awful with the resident troll posting miles of garbage text on nearly every thread. Stopped the conversations cold every time. As far as profiles go, the typekey system is awful. If you don’t know about this sort of thing you can inadvertently post personal information publically- for this and because they have no security features built in, they are a lousy registration system.

the other, more important factor is that cyberstalking and harassment are crimes and The malicious harassment of the troll(s) can be criminally prosecuted. take note Mr. B- you have a real case. Some of the trolls have posted personal info on others, any kind of registration a way to track them. Even if they use a rolling IP address, or post no profile info, they can be tracked through their isp. trust me, they can.

The first time registration was tried, it seemed to stop people from posting or saying what’s on their minds. I think that would have been temporary and by now we would still be having our- er- lively – discussions but on a higer level. At least a moderator could get rid of the worst stuff.

bxgrl