Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Comment registration enabled


I just enabled comment registration, so anyone who wants to comment on the blog will have to register. The tantrum-throwers had gotten out of control. We'll see how it goes.

The easiest way to register is to sign up for a Google account. Then, when you submit a comment, you'll be asked to identify yourself by entering your email address.  You can still use a fake name for your account, but it should make it more difficult for our serial attackers to hide behind different names each time they want to insult someone.

Posted by Steve Sinai

6 comments:

Kathy Meeh said...

Am I registered now?

Steve Sinai said...

Looks like it.

Unknown said...

test

mw said...

I hope this does not depress the participation in this site. I understand why you are doing this, but must admit I find many of the creative anonymous comments here to be laugh out loud funny.

Steve Sinai said...

The registration requirement is bound to reduce participation.

I was going to do this in August anyway, and then eliminate the requirement after the November elections, but things were getting out of control, so I decided to go ahead and require registration now. Everyone can go back to their insulting ways in November.

A few years ago there was an open forum called Pacifica-L where it was anything goes. While fun to read, all people did was yell at each other, and it wasn't very productive.

(I agree that some of the insults were ingenious and entertaining, but lately they've gone beyond that to simply being angry and unintellectual.)

My hope is that people can come to the blog for information during the coming election season. We've lost elections in the past because we've been identified with divisive, immature personalities, and I'd like to keep that to a minimum during the upcoming election season.

Kathy Meeh said...

MW and Steve, without allowance of "untracable" havoc commentary, I'll take the positive bet that dialog will improve, and eventually more people will feel welcome to post, and tell their friends about this blog that values moderate views and city improvement.