Taking the Pulse on Anonymous Commenting
We’ve been getting more and more requests from readers to eliminate anonymous commenting. (The topic has also been on the front-burner because of a certain article this week.) There are clearly major flaws with a system that allows commenting without accountability, but doing away with it carries its own set of drawbacks in the form…
We’ve been getting more and more requests from readers to eliminate anonymous commenting. (The topic has also been on the front-burner because of a certain article this week.) There are clearly major flaws with a system that allows commenting without accountability, but doing away with it carries its own set of drawbacks in the form of diminished information flow, opinion and overall energy on the site. We’re curious to know how the community feels about the issue so please take a moment to fill out this survey and chime in below.
Thanks,
Mr. B
p.s. Just to clarify, just because you register, and comment under, a username, does not mean that your true identity is on display for the world to see. It means we can easily block a disruptive commenter, or contact him/her by email about bad behavior. It also means that other readers can begin to associate comments over time with a particular online identity, theoretically improving the ability to carry on discussions.
Hi everyone..
Guess who I am. Daveinbedstuy, BiffChampion, Nokilissa, Putnamdenizen, The What, The Whatever???
See how easy it is to register, login, become anonymous.
bxgrl….it never asked for a phone number…just the profile info thats up there now
Go ahead 4:37, I’m calling your bluff here and now. Do it or shut up once and for all…
I think we need more threads devoted to Buju Banton.
So you wouldn’t mind if some of the emails that were shown to me that you wrote to a poster here were cut and pasted into this thread, Biff?
I’m more than happy to do so…
Dave- the typekey registration did not make it very obvious that you had to opt to hide your information. If you filled in all the information for your profile and hit ok, your profile was public. It was caught immediately but not before the troll started posting really disgusting messages with the numbers and names. I’m always careful about filling in that kind of info for most sites but a lot of people thought typekey was secure and trustworthy.
johnife, it’s a matter of trust. In a restaurant you trust the business to protect you (not always the case of course, but the business is accountable.
The internet is open to anyone and everything and it’s like the wild west. Maybe its just the idea of the devil you know over the devil you don’t?
bxgrl
4:14#1, thanks for proving that your threats are idle. Not one thing to say, huh? You know nothing about me. Sorry, but I have no fear of you. You’ve been threatening me for awhile so I’m sure you would have done something by now if you could have. And even if you had information that wasn’t available to anyone reading this, it wouldn’t matter; as johnife said, there’s not much you could do with that information, especially in my case.
“denton, did you have to tell them that?? I think there are countless people here who could never have thought of that on their own. Now you have ruined it. And I’m not being facetious!!”
“Because, as much as you hate us, we; as logged in users, have integrity.”
Contradiction?
That’s actually quite an interesting idea. Instead of focusing on all the ‘guests’, instead focus on some of the regulars and how they should be reined in. I can tell you that several of the regular posters here are among the most hateful and troubling I have seen. And as for the idea of imposing length cutoffs on posts, this would pretty much ban Montrose Morris from the site.