Registering to comment
Posted by Ken Parish on Wednesday, September 24, 2008
We’ve always had a pretty laissez faire attitude towards commenting at Club Troppo. Contrary to the impressions of some, we have only ever banned two or three persistent trolls, and only ever delete comments that are persistently abusive or defamatory.
However, there have been a few persistent trolls of recent times who have shown us that the banning system doesn’t work well by itself. Accordingly we’ve decided to implement the Wordpress registration utility for commenters. I expect this will mean that everyone including longtime commenters (but perhaps excluding existing registered “users”??) will need to complete a once-only registration process to be able to post comments here.
We really hope you grit your teeth and take the time to complete the process, because we value your comments and the open, thoughtful, and mostly mutually respectful debate that takes place here.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 4:49 PM and filed under Metablogging, Site News, Uncategorised.
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You’d probably be registered already if you comment at Catallaxy, I believe. let’s see.
Posted on 24-Sep-08 at 5:58 pm | Permalinkgilmae;
Troppo is the last of the Terrible Trio to introduce a registration requirement. Catallaxy and LP have had it for yonks.
Posted on 24-Sep-08 at 6:04 pm | PermalinkI guess I just hoping – it springs eternal – that there was a better registration system around that you guys might be using. One that doesn’t email new passwords in the clear should you forget it, as I did just now. What a shemozzle; I am beginning to be as contemptuous of WP as yourself, Jacques.
Posted on 24-Sep-08 at 6:45 pm | PermalinkHuh. I thought Wordpress did the resetting thing where people get a temporary password and have to change it.
Posted on 24-Sep-08 at 6:53 pm | PermalinkTalking about comments, I have just heard that The Media Report will running a report tomorrow about the colourful nature of the blogsphere commentary.
Posted on 24-Sep-08 at 8:34 pm | PermalinkI’ve had to reset mine, Jacques. There wasn’t any indication that it was temporary but I was invited to write a new post….
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 4:05 am | PermalinkJacques, at #2 LP doesn’t at the moment require registration.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 7:07 am | PermalinkOh, and the arithmetic question for registration? That should itself defeat a few of the trolls I’m thinking of.
I’ve seen arithmetic tests a few times now – and I have to ask WHY? Since when have humans been better than computers at arithmetic? Even if they use images, OCR when you’re only looking for digits and a few arithmetic operations is pretty straightforward.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 7:33 am | PermalinkI just tried it again (after noticing that there’s no link to the wp-admin page from the main page, which appears to be the only place you can log-out and hence re-register from), and the question is in plain text:
“Please enter the result: 20 – 11″
I copied “20 – 11″ into Google, and incredibly it told me the answer was 9.
If there aren’t already bots that can detect and correct pass such arithmetical CAPTCHA tests then my faith in the ingenuity of hackers has been shattered…
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 7:42 am | PermalinkTesting… logged in as Troppo author, seeing if it works
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 7:48 am | Permalinktesting
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 9:30 am | PermalinkI am constantly amazed by the tolerance of incivility.
For me, it’s desirable to have contrary opinions.
It is unacceptable to attack the holders of the contrary ideas.
Personally I am more than willing to put up with the minor inconvenience of registering in order to have a blog that explores a wide range of opinions in a civilised fashion.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 9:36 am | PermalinkNPOV — the point is that the account registration requires a variety of captchas. The more the merrier. It’s almost certain that there are bots scanning for and solving arithmetic problems by now, but what adds 2 seconds of signup time reduces the economic advantage for the bot maker.
The anti-bot module also does a number of other checks as well — it tests for javascript (bots generally don’t run it), looks at how long they’ve been at the site etc.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 12:26 pm | PermalinkLiam — quite right. My memory is defective.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 12:30 pm | PermalinkShut up Mr T – you’re an idiot.
Thanks for your help, NPOV. I was hoping someone would give away the answer so I could cut and paste it in and get on the blog again.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 2:09 pm | PermalinkJacques, I have to say it would surprise me that bots wouldn’t run javascript, as it takes all of 3 lines of code under .NET at least to request I.E. to load up a webpage and return back the resulting HTML after all javascript etc. has been run.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 3:27 pm | PermalinkNPOV: it’s all about time to spam. Spamming works on the economics of mass, and that means hitting as many sites as fast as possible. Executing Javascript takes up time and so the bots just don’t do it.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 4:53 pm | PermalinkPutting it another way, the cost of the overhead of executing every piece of javascript you come across ‘just in case’ is higher — much higher — than the marginal cost of missing out on spamming a particular site.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 4:58 pm | Permalink“I am more than willing to put up with the minor inconvenience of registering in order to have a blog that explores a wide range of opinions in a civilised fashion.”
Registration won’t do anything for that. See umpteen other blogs.
Posted on 25-Sep-08 at 8:25 pm | Permalinkfatfingers — registration raises the cost of trolls and lowers the cost for banning. Registration forces people to supply an email address that has some degree of human action behind it, which is how I was able to identify who the pest was who sparked this policy. Previously he’d been giving a few fake email addresses and it was harder to stop him.
Posted on 26-Sep-08 at 2:47 pm | PermalinkJacques
seriously, it takes four minutes to set up an email account, it’s hardly the Great Wall of China.
Look, my point seems to have been taken up to a degree by a range of commentators, even as they were damning me in some cases. A blog like Troppo isn’t just a free-for-all – it has a de facto magazine/conversation approach in that posts are oriented and responsive to current events, new books, films etc, or events in a contributor’s life. To maintain quality and readability and standard, there’s an implicit expectation that someone will try and fuse their obsessions with the wider world.
Rafe’s travelling Austrian roadshow isn’t that at all – it’s like the last member of the Henry George league, somehow bringing a single tax on property or water fluoridation at any conceivable point. Cranks and obsessives will always drive out the vital centre, because they only have one thought in their head
Still, hey, yours to screw up
Posted on 28-Sep-08 at 7:36 am | PermalinkPaul;
Sure, you’re right about email accounts. But Troppo is small enough for me to weed by hand. Things like removing mockpuppet names, or finding similar email addresses, or reused nicknames. It’s easy when you have root access.
And our view on Rafe is clear. We like him and are happy for him to keep posting.
Posted on 28-Sep-08 at 11:24 am | Permalink