Slashdot Mirror
Washingtonpost.com Wants Identities of Posters
mytrip recommends a News.com account of a panel discussion in which the Washington Post's online executive editor Jim Brady argued against anonymity on his site. He's welcome to try to carve out a space for civilized discourse, but it seems that he can't help alienating the Net-savvy whenever he opens his mouth to speak of it. "... he would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards — and if need be — automatically kick them off for good. ... Brady also lamented that closing user accounts doesn't keep bad eggs off a site. They just come back and create new ones ... Brady believes that in the next five years people will be required to identify themselves in some way at many sites. 'I don't know whether we do it with a credit card number, a driver's license or passport ...'"
We all know that the best Slashdot comments come from anonymous cowards, right? This guy is nuts to require registration!
Just require people to come down to the Washington Post's office and deliver messages in person.
So I guess the Wapo won't be quoting anonymous sources anymore.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
One user = one login. It is the stuff of internet legend.
God spoke to me.
this is the death blow for any forum, NO ONE is going to give you their CC or drivers license (atleast their real one)
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Breaks my heart.
No it doesn't.
Maybe I'm not as 1337 as "the Net-savvy" but what on earth is wrong with requiring registration, logging IPs and banning abusers?
I appreciate the submitter's generosity in allowing him to try, though.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
He can simply require anyone who wants an account on his site to present themselves at his office with three pieces of photo ID and a completed application form. He can then interview them, check their references, and decide whether or not they are acceptable.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
He wants to take economic advantage of the Web, but doesn't like the way people use it??? "WAAAAAAAH!!!" "MOMMY!!!"
We know how people will use the web, and how they won't. If he can't adapt to the technology, he should stop bitching and get the HELL off the web, and go back to what he knows: newspapers. If he can't make it there these days either, then... "WAAAAAH!!!" yet another company fails to adapt, and everybody will go on to the next. He will be a bit less rich next year. Am I supposed to feel guilty? Strange, but for some reason I don't feel anything like that at all.
"Brady also lamented that closing user accounts doesn't keep bad eggs off a site. They just come back and create new ones..."
Hey, that's life. I wish I could figure out a way to keep every kook and asshole from coming near me but it's impossible. Why is it any different on the internet?
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Seems to me that they should be free to require any identification that they like in order to gain a posting account. If you do not like the policy, then don't post.
Oddly, this guy has a point. Most reasonably popular unmoderated forums quickly degrade into meaningless flames, trolls, and drivel. All it takes is a few bad apples to turn the rest of the barrel rotten, as the saying goes. Funny enough, I think Slashdot has the most effective and elegant user-moderation system I've seen. Sure, it's not 100% perfect, but more times than not, the random trolls and other crap are already modded out of my viewing range by the time I get to an article.
Most people associate bad Internet behavior with anonymity. That's true to some extent - obviously people are much less civil when dealing remotely and dispassionately with other people. Put a random Internet troll in a biker bar, and I guarantee you he'll be *much* more polite to his fellow patrons. But Slashdot has proven that you don't need to lose anonymity to create an effective flame and troll filter. Let your most trusted users do it.
I'm always surprised that more sites don't copy this system. Or maybe someone has, and I just haven't heard of it?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'm not sure how anyone can have any issue with what he's discussing. Accountability on the Internet is sorely lacking, and it shows. Users have to sift through so much garbage to find anything resembling discussion because we're so concerned about making things 'democratic.' The real problem is there are usually only a few points to be made, and the rest is mostly noise punctuated by flawed analogies, poor logical reasoning, and tired memes. But, somehow, users just HAVE to get their two cents in -- regardless of whether it is actually a point for discussion or for the sake of talking. Sadly, even lack of knowledge of what one is talking about is not considered grounds for shunning because there are so many users.
Moderation systems merely measure how far opinions deviate from the norm. They do filter out some noise. However the collateral damage from them tends to be high, and legitimate points get lost because there's no way to tell if moderators are intellectual weaklings who can't stand to evaluate their own beliefs.
The world needs a site that is ruthlessly moderated by people committed to facilitating discussion. Too many Slashdot threads are little more than idiotic "rah-rah root for the home team" banter in the flavor of corporations. So much for nerds being above fashion, eh?
I look forward to the Web 2.0's notion of "user-generated content is valuable" being exposed for the sham that it is. A very small percentage of user content is valuable. Random users do NOT need to comment on every little page on a site. Usually, they have nothing worthwhile to add and they often add things that are just plain rude.
The easiest way is to authenticate by cell phone number. When you register for a site, your password is sent to your cell phone as an SMS message. One registration per cell phone number. Yes, it's possible to buy multiple SIM cards to get more phone numbers, but they're not free.
This costs the site about $0.05 for each message sent. For sites that derive some value from having members, it's worth it.
Slashdot would have paid about $50,000 or so in SMS fees by now.
And I have even seen modding down for typos that lead to "all bold"... :0)
I know you're just joking... but online polls still wouldn't be scientific. Preventing people from voting multiple times is only part of the problem. Self-selection is a big problem, too: the people who chose to vote on a given topic will usually have some statistical bias in their opinion of that topic. Truly scientific polls require sampling randomly from the target demographic.
There is also the problem of getting people to vote honestly. This is of course a problem with offline polls, too. (Conceivably, though, people take online polls less seriously than offline polls, and thus lie more frequently...)
Sadly, sites that adopt this will still be cesspools of hateful comments. Because, ultimately, they don't have the courage to edit fairly and won't adopt ./-style moderation.
So... newspaper cite will still be cesspool of hate. Fair-minded users who value privacy will still ditch. Phhht.
The real lesson is that old-media sites still haven't learned what makes internet comment boards successful, and they revert to old-school control tactics that won't help and will harm.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Shut down the forum, which is what they might as well do if they start asking for real verification. Would YOU give the Washington Post your credit card number? Or your driver's license? Also, they would have to actually check the validity of the info, which, in the case of credit cards means they need accurate billing info. If they don't do this I can use a credit card generator to make a number that will pass any passive verification they could use. Trolls on forums are a fact of life. Deal with them.
You really must have some form of user moderation. Slashdot is one example, but I know it confuses less savvy folks. The Houston Chronicle has finally gotten what I think is a reasonable and yet simple recommendation system ( http://www.chron.com/ ). It's amazing how I've come to expect user comments after stories. Sometimes they're even quite informative, insightful, or whatever. Sometimes in local news the people involved or witnesses may even post about inaccuracies in the article.
expandfairuse.org
My experience goes, the reason people don't some things at the dinner table is fear they well be attacked and bashed over the head with the (real-life-equivalent) of a steel pipe. In real life, people can't readily speak their mind at times. Now, perhaps this can be viewed as a good because it keeps descenting views quiet. Me? I'd rather hear the KKK and neo-Nazi members speak. Sure, there's the risk that they'll be able to recruit more members. But, history has shown that desegregation and other *real-world* things are what have life-changing effects on people's opinions on things.
Now, maybe the internet is really so revolutionarily different that there is no history to extrapolate from. But, if that's the case, it still seems the case that the good would intrinsically outweight the bad. Will people's feelings be hurt? Will there be trolls and flamers who are more interested in creating dischord than having actual discussions? Sure. That's the reason for things like moderation, editors, etc. The only thing attaching real-world identification to a username will do is either (a) keep the threat of steel pipes to the head from other users running so high that we're back to the self-censorship that leads nowhere (and open up places the Washington Post to wrongful death suits) or (b) keep the threat of editors and their reign of power so high that some people will stop posting entirely.
In short, being an online editor against a seemingly endless flow of trolls, spam, etc seems impossible. But, instead of trying to revert back to the comfortable and easy, perhaps more consideration should be done on tackling the problem by engaging it the hard way? Ie, hire more editors and stop treating online posting as some quirky, cheap add-on that you can control with a few lowly staff or some magical technological fix.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Ever read washingtonpost.com's comments?
Guess what they're anonymous and they're basically worthless, consider the lack of any meaningful moderation system ala Slashdot. Comments in articles quickly become long, barely threaded and filled with idotic or worse comments.
It's the rule of internet forums, without some party moderating the debate, the troll wins and the comments suck.
Slashdot's answer is to allow the mob (users) to moderate, but Brady, since he's from the more traditional media, is wary of the mob. The mob has all sorts of biases and tends to reinforce its beliefs. It may be interesting discourse, but it can be difficult to get a balanced discourse -- and this is something the Post is committed to, for better or/and worse.
End result: The Post has moved slowly on user moderation and tried to keep moderation in the hands of a limited number of editors, which becomes overwhelming with so many posts and so many trolls.
His answer, is to require require people's ID to post on his company's web site. Throw in a little potential shame of trolling and see worthless comments decrease -- certainly people will think about them more.
Honestly, I think Brady's wrong on this point, I think the right answer is closer to Slashdot than what he envisions, but it's silly to try to slur the man as an enemy of free speech. Remember he's talking about the policies of the Washington Post on the Washington Post web site, not for the internet as a whole.
The biggest enemy to free speech can sometimes simply be too much noise.
Oh, and on a related note, you may be interested in reading an article Brady wrote on the event that CNET describes as a "notable history." It's available here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021100840.html
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
It would be like a librarian asking for censorship.
No, it would be like the librarian asking for quiet in the reading room. It's not the dissemination of ideas or the idea of anonymous communication that bothers him. It's the disruption of discourse by people who refuse to adhere to simple rules.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I wish I could figure out a way to keep every kook and asshole from coming near me but it's impossible. Why is it any different on the internet?
Please. You mean to tell me you've encountered as many kooks and assholes in your entire life as you have in one day of reading c|net comments, Digg, and Slashdot?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
mark my words - big newspapers and publications are going to start their attack on the internet very soon
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I find it amazing how naive some people really are. How can you be in a role like his and not grasp thje fundamentals of the internet and how things work.
Some of the comments he says are just gems:
We don't want our site to be sanitized, but we have the right to create a different kind of community
Right, so you want people to not swear and not have to ask them not to swear?
I don't know whether we do it with a credit card number, a driver's license or passport, but I think making people responsible would raise the level of discourse.
Of course, because no-one knows how to enter in a fake passport or credit card number.
People clearly as uneducated and internet-NON-savvy should not be in any sort of role that contains something related to internet - like "executive editor of The Washington Post's online division" for example.
Give the bumbling fool the same job in printed media and he would probably do a better job - maybe people could send him mail via little notes with name tags stuck to them, or he could have caller ID on his desk phone so that he saw the bad people and didn't have to pick up.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
The best solution is to embrace political cliques. Do I hate MS with my dying breath? No. So when I post something that could be anything but an extreme dislike for MS, I'm modded troll.
A better solution, especially for Washington Post, where emotional politics are the norm, is to embrace different views.
You're new to the site? Ok, you see everyone's comments -- stupid, insightful & hateful. Add a button where you can choose them as a friend, or never see their comments again. Once you've got enough friends built up, you can switch to a friend view, where you don't see anyone BUT your friends -- maybe you can add an option for occasionally putting non-friend, popular comments into your view.
This solution enables the nutcases to talk to each other and the reasonable people to talk to each other -- all at the same time, but on different "channels", if you will.
(By the way, MS sucks and I hope they DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!!!!!)
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Maybe someone should clue him in on the rules of the internet?
#8 There are no real rules about posting
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
A 5 day waiting period before being allowed to take home a 1st Amendment tool would solve his problems. After all, there is no more violent crime in America thanks to Sarah Brady!
Newspapers have dealt with provocative letters to the editor for years: the editor reviews comments and tosses the worse ones into the waste basket. A good letter with a poorly thought out comment may receive some editing. Works well, and it allows both sides to talk without this tit-for-tat.
But this idea is almost forgotten in the modern cult of efficiency. Why have an editor review a comment when a computer (with the comprehension of a lump of silicates) can do it for you? An ideal breeding ground for flame wars. Yes, there are moderated lists out there. But they are relatively rare.
OpenID, so that people actually care about their identity, no matter who they choose to be -- while still allowing somewhat anonymous cowards.
Then, block IP addresses and OpenID providers.
Honestly, if the entire Department of Energy is behind one gigantic NAT, that's a retarded design. It doesn't have to be permanent, and I suspect the number of readers you'd lose by requiring driver's licenses is far greater than the number of readers you'd lose by blocking a rather large NAT.
One more thing: This guy should read Slashdot, if only to see how it works when it's done reasonably well.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
all your identities are belong to us
Always. Never show ID for credit card purchases, ticket pickups, etc. If everybody does that, they will stop asking for IDs.
Sounds like a fantastic extension to an already existing business idea. Get some venture capital together and start realid.com.
More likely is that someone like Paypal, Amazon, eBay or Facebook should / will jump on this one.
Dear Washington Post,
In order to comply with the standards of identification for posting on your site, I submit to you my e-mail address:
hAx0r7331@washingtonpost.com
Please allow me to post. I promise not to troll.
Using government issued ID to comment or otherwise utilise a web site would only increase identity theft. There are already web sites that require OpenID which is more than sufficient.
somecanuckchick dot com
my cold dead hands.... er, something like that. If I wanted to be identified on the damn site, I'd have applied for a job as a journalist!
.hahahahahahahaha a sure sign that they have no clue. oh well, hope the wake is fun.
Guess where I won't be commenting from now on? I'm willing to bet a couple pints that I'm not the only one. Apparently, he does NOT get IT... meh, there will be plenty of sites to replace that one.
Yeah, don't tell me that it's special because of it's history. There are plenty of things that had a great history but went down with a bang.. or worse.
IMO, either you get it or you are dieing and don't know it yet. If you don't have the pride of putting something out there and letting it stand, modifying as needed to suit the audience then you don't have anything. That, my friends (except you AC) is what IT is about. This is a brave new world (so to speak) and if you are not going to participate on it's terms then you are not participating, but merely slowing the inevitable death you are going to die.
It is not about ID, it is about participation. When there is credit to be gained people do ID themselves, mostly. When it is just noise there are few that will ID. Letters to the editor do little good if anything other than letting the writer vent, and who needs ID for that?
ID does not work as a means of control on an anonymous medium..
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Watch and laugh as his site traffic slips to nothing. Good by Ad-Revenue jerk. Maybe he's thinking that this print-media thing is bound for a "come back".
My name is Benjamin M. Duckworth. I live at 1594 Sweetwood Drive, Greenwood Village, CO 80111. My credit card number is 5312 0830 9546 2162, expiry 10/2010, SSN 522-68-2397. HTH!
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
Kind of insightful, actually, when you think about the topic.
Sounds like what they're really looking for is some system for providing accountable pseudonyms - "user accounts" that can't actually identify the user (even if the service is hacked or malicious), but nevertheless ensure that one user gets only one account. That way users could be really anonymous but outright trolls could still be banned without them just coming back under another identity. The gmail-style one-account-per-cell-phone method provides some approximation to this, but still associates the user's account with their cell phone number and hence their identity, and thus fails to provide the real anonymity that many users would want in a forum that might try to discuss sensitive topics.
I'm gonna come clean... I visit slashdot (AC, always) many times throughout the duration of a poll (often from multiple locations) and (this is the confession part) vote every time. I apologize for the over misrepresentation of all CowboyNeil options. one user = one login would be the end of AC participation (hurrah! finally, no more scum of the... oh wait, crap!)
"Remember he's talking about the policies of the Washington Post on the Washington Post web site, not for the internet as a whole."
...
Actually, in checking TFA, the man said:
"I think part of the problem is that people aren't held accountable on the Web," Brady said. "People say things online they would never say when disagreeing with someone at the dinner table. I think heated debate is fine, but when there are (flame wars), many people won't take part for fear they will be attacked and bashed over the head with the (Internet-equivalent) of a steel pipe."
That sort of looks like the "internet as a whole" to my glazed AC eyes.
Yes, I was tricked into reading TFA.
Onwards
He talks about a recent case that brought the problem to light, and again I quote:
"Brady knows how intensely many Internet users disagree with him. He made headlines in January 2006 after shutting down the comments area of a blog where outraged readers gathered to rebuke the Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell.
Following the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Howell erred when she said that the lobbyist gave campaign donations to Democrats as well as Republicans. Abramoff gave only to Republicans. The paper's Web site saw more than 1,000 comments, many from people who accused the Post of conspiring with the Republicans.
Things got worse when Howell posted a clarification. When Brady saw that many of those comments violated the paper's policy against the use of profanity or personal attacks, he blocked users' ability to post. The decision was widely criticized. In defense of his decision, Brady wrote that many of the posts weren't comments at all, but the kind of thing "you might find carved on the door of a public toilet stall."
So cry me a fucking river. For a lack of fact-checking before PRINTING their politically-inflamatory and BULLSHIT story, or perhaps for deliberate "muddying the waters" about Abramoff's activities (shit, what do I care, I'm not even a zeppo), his paper got a hefty fucking slap in the face for screwing up, and now he's whining that they got caught out.
Tough shit. You screw up, you pay the price. Same goes for all of us, no? And what's more, this is the VERY SAME standard he wishes to hold AC's to, that they be "held accountable". And he doesn't want to be, given as the WP shut down the comments section on that particular story he's so happy to chat about.
Shove it somewhere dark, dude. You lost your own argument all on your lonesome. Hypocrisy, anyone?
Yes, we ACs are a complete fucking pain in the ass, are we not?
Let's follow this plan into the future.
What happens when every site asks you for something like this?
It means your credit card number is EVERYWHERE, your passport is EVERYWHERE. Now someone just needs to break into the least secure link of the chain. As a number grows in importance it should be saved in less places.
Why don't they just have two forums: one anonymous, and one that requires a dna sample. Let people use whichever they prefer.
Against stupidity, the gods contend in vain. - Fredrich von Schiller
Or, to put it another way - Common sense ain't. If it was, there'd be more OF it! (Darrow's First Law)
And Brady just supported that law, instead of testing it as the Fourth Estate is supposed to do...!
Lee Darrow, C.H.
What he should be trying to do is foster a more positive, creative troll like we have here at Slashdot. Point out the benefits that good creative trolling can bring, along with the chance for career advancement into such exciting fields as Microsoft shill, Comcast Manager,and yes, even working for the Washington Post. After all, where do they think some of their most flame worthy reporters and Op/Ed writers honed their skills? That's right,by being trolls!
So let us look upon silly ideas such as his for what they really are-an admittance of failure. He has failed to attract quality trolls, either through the poor quality of his management,or simply the inability to get the kind of stories that bring out the truly great trolls. While he rants and raves about his truly poor quality trolls let us look back upon our rich history such as the GNAA and the guy that made giant Penisbirds out of ASCII art and remember: Truly great trolls aren't born overnight. Like mighty dynasties they take years of hard work and determination. Which is why we here at Slashdot should be proud at attracting trolls a cut above the rest. It just proves we here at Slashdot are worth the effort.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As a forum moderator myself, of course it's going to happen. Not that it'll keep the bad pennies from coming back, mind - they'll just steal someone else's credentials, whatever we're using - but we have to try. Any of these online communities really have no choice, they have to try and stop the spammers and harassers however they can.
On one hand its bad if you are being monitored wherever you go on the net. Sadly thats taking place right now regardless of what you want by echelon and countless other snooping activities.
On the other hand freedom of speech should imply you can say almost whatever you want without fear of being prosecuted. The need for anonymity is more alarming than that people who run sites want to know you is who you say you are. If people are very worried to post on sites if people can find out who they are there are much bigger problems than anonymity to take care of. Anonymous sources are something else and should be protected just like with printed media.
I can see many benefits if people has to stand for their word on the net. Astroturfing would probably dissapear rather quickly and that alone would be worth it.
HTTP/1.1 400
There are plenty of sites like Subbmitt.com that do not require registration or login to post comments. That guy is crazy. People will just go else where.
It would be like a librarian asking for censorship.
No, it would be like the librarian asking for quiet in the reading room. It's not the dissemination of ideas or the idea of anonymous communication that bothers him. It's the disruption of discourse by people who refuse to adhere to simple rules.
Funny how we always have to play by someone else's rules.The only real way to do it without the registration (my opinion) would have to be MAC address tracing. IPs can change in an instant, but MACs are damn difficult to change.
Privacy has many good reasons too. Here by privacy I mean not having to give out any personal details. The best reason for me is mostly, that even to this day no company, no website, no authority, no agency, nobody whatsoever has been fully trustworthy to handle any personal data. Not banks, not gov. agencies, not anybody. So pleas explain, how does somebody like this guy have the guts to come out and say you should trust us with your credit card, id, dr. licence or passport data ?
Besides the untrustability, this raises different issues too. How could they know if the data given is valid, unless they validate it with the respective authorities ? Now guess who'll read your stories.
making people responsible would raise the level of discourse
No. It would act as a filter for certain, and only those kinds of people would remain for those discourses who don't mind the new ways things get handles around there. That, of course, can be seen as a raised level, I'd say it would rather be a considerable reduction of free speech.
But, I guess, this whole process of reducing freedoms and enforcing the borders [not just physical borders] shouldn't come as a surprise these days. Alarming, yes, surprising, not.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
This is not exactly the proper forum to ask someone to calculate the "statistical significance" of their personal observations. And if you had read my post correctly, you would have seen that I worded it as a personal observation, NOT any kind of statistical study.
I like to look at what mods have taken place in discussions, not just those that affect me, so I want to make the point that I am not just giving this opinion in reference to myself, okay? I will not promise to be accurate within the statistical margin of error (which you could not credibly pretend to know within a couple of orders of magnitude anyway!), but I can make some personal observations. To wit:
Too many mods happen for reasons they should not: e.g., because the modder personally disagreed with the poster, rather than there being something factually wrong with the post.
There are also far too many mods made for reasons that are just plain inaccurate (e.g., "troll" or "flamebait"), simply because the modder simply did not understand the joke.
The main thing I wanted to point out, though -- and I suppose I did it a bit harshly -- was that it is not very appropriate to ask someone to prove statistically something that they object to on a subjective basis. Nor is it appropriate to demand statistics in specific cases. E.g., the fact that my neighbors are loud and obnoxious has no practical relationship to the fact that the people who live 2 blocks away are not. I could go on about this but I will not. I would ask though that you give more thought to your questions in the future.
Ummm...it's a newspaper. They have a staff. Pay a couple staff members to moderate. That isn't that hard, is it?
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Slashdot's moderation does occasionally mod down the wrong things, as you say things for political reasons. But that happens much less often than on other sites, and happens infrequently enough here that I can usually see modded up comments from both sides of a contentious issue.
Until we find something better Slashdot has proven to work better than all the alternatives, and they do spend time tuning as well...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What is the problem of a forum where people share opinions under their own identities in a responsible way? This does not mean that every internet forum has to require real identities it just means that some forum owners might choose to have contributors only post under true identities.
This could have a number of benefits, apart from getting rid of the most notorious trolls.
One important benefit is that legal responsability shifts from the forum owner to the poster: in many cases (depending on country) forum owners can be held responsible for illegal posts or can be sued by affected persons or companies. If the poster is personally identifiable then either the responsability directly shifts to that person or that person can at least be made responsible for consequences the forum owner has to face because of his posting.
Apart from all this I am pretty sure that discussions would become a bit more civilized if posters write under their real identities. And what is wrong with that?
He should let anyone register and post.
But the people who come in and show everything you mentioned, they would be allowed to moderate...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
IMDB already require authentication - typically a mobile phone SMS - to post on their forums.
Or at least they were planning to and do have the option available.
Perhaps since they have a very large existing userbase they can afford to do it, where others can't. But I haven't noticed a big drop in participation.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
has its advantages ,but when you are assaulted by spam bots daily ,something needs to be done to curb the abuse.
There several approaches which have their owns flaws:
Identification by Hardware(some time-dependant + hardware id manipulations which result in temporary ID which works like a password hash at the moment).It could be decoded and reverse engineered to yield valid hashes.
Identification by IP.Doesn't works when used with dynamic IPS, AOL,Proxies and virtual networks.IP post limits,bans,delays, are ineffective with such approaches.
Paid Accounts.The utility of paid accounts is that they make spammers pay for their abuse, though it would not deter them completely and alienate most non-commercial users.
Identification by external authority(e.g. credit cards,social security,etc).This could work if the external authority is not compromised.The audience needs to go through more hoops to use the site.
Identification by captchas.These are effective at stopping absolute majority of spam bots, but also
slow down the contributions from users and may alienate those who find difficulty using them.
Identification by content analysis(e.g. spam filters).This is most effective of the above, though it can(rarely) trigger false positives. The countermeasures for this also exist(randomization, and junk content generators) but every programmed content has its signature or quality which can be calculated and tagged.
I'm sure there more, human-centric approaches, but websites need to work with fast and effective techniques first.
Anonymity is the bane of civilized discourse. The only people who need to be anonymous on the Internet are whistleblowers, persons risking oppression under tyranny, and people needing health care information. Oh, and assholes, of course.
I piss off bigots.
My (first) Slashdot ID is lower than yours. I haven't used it in years -- it actually relates to my real name. How long ago was that? How innocent were those days?
Actually, I can't imagine what I was thinking. I have always worked for employers who would take a dim view of speaking out of turn. (And I have always made use of other names.)
Currently, if I post about matters that I am expert in, I ought to get permission and widespread consensus first. Yeah, right. If you want my personal informed comment, you ain't gonna get it over something that can easily be traced back to me. (No, I am not editing Wikipedia anymore.)
Yes, trolls are a problem. But cutting yourself off from unattributed expertise is crazy.
Read the article, they have a number of editors who moderate the blogs.
Three times in the past two weeks I've been clicking links and reading NYT artciles, only to suddenly be presented with "please register to read this article, it's Free!".
I haven't found a pattern. Perhaps it's after you've read X pages in Y amount of time or something. The point is, the NYT is back at it to an extent.
Washington Post wants identites for their boards, but fight to keep the identities of some of their sources undisclosed
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Even 'Letters to the Editor' are tightly screened and edited so they meet the standards of the newspapers.
So his position on wanting to control the comments on his site aren't out of line, if you're looking backwards.
Let's look forwards, shall we?
He's not going to suddenly 'get' the ways of the internet. He's not going to understand that he can't screen every single post on his site. He's going to look at how people react and be dismayed that the comments are under the banner of his illustrious paper.
Unless he finds some manner of complete control over what gets posted on his site, he's not going to be happy. Expect more internal moderation prior to posting, etc.
Local papers have an easier time dealing with this because, well, they're local. They generally don't have the number of eyeballs on them so their comments can stay pretty on track. Something like this, no possible way.
The most logical possible outcome I see coming from this is two places for comment. The 'approved and moderated' ones that are attached to the stories and 'the riff-raff' ones that are delegated to some odd link off to the side. Kind of like burying a story on the inside of page 4. You can say it was there and it wasn't your fault people didn't read it.
is that it's only really two sides. The visual meme is a see-saw or scales. So that requires that you get two sides that are already fairly close in objective truth to be presented.
So what happens when there's no such side?
It happens already: you never read about people saying that pictures of little kiddies blowing old men or mounting old women is absolutely fine for (so many) reasons, do you. We already KNOW there's no side to balance this from "it's bad". There's no ethical reason to invite consequential actions on humans (or animals) that have no maturity to assess whether it suits THEIR wants and needs.
So we only have one side. And rightly so.
So there's no need to be balanced.
Now when there are people saying "castrate all paedophiles" you can get a balance with people saying "don't castrate any paedophile".
But that's a different argument.
Develop a second site that has a frame at the top for the article, and another at the bottom for comments about it. Forget logging into washingtonpost.com, just go to http://someasofyetnonexistantsite.com/washingtonpost.com instead. The third party site would very quickly become the primary conduit for accessing the content. If you used an IFRAME, washingtonpost.com would never know the difference. Sounds like the Washington Post is just creating a new business opportunity. Incidentally, if the Washington Post feels this way, they should put their money where there mouth is and adopt a policy of no anonymity for sources, and stop clamoring about freedom of the press. There's no point in the double standard. If they don't believe in free discourse, they should be the first to strap on the yoke and muzzle.
KNOW the "SUPERCLASS" -> http://teaminfinity.com/COMMUNICAE-12556.shtml & reach out to them so you can help them to understand the hope and reward of the "ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY" which they are uniquely positioned and strong enough to implement for all humankind !!
The Future is already here, just unevenly distributed... THE ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY NOW! http://RoboEco.com/slash
In the next five years those sites requiring identification: a) will have no user comments b) will disappear. There is reason for anonymity and it works. If software license, tax evasion, etc. reporting to authorities can be done anonymously, I am sure making some comments can be also done without getting identified by your credit card(?).
from the quote: "Brady believes that in the next five years people will be required to identify themselves in some way at many sites"
So if this is the case - can anyone say - ALT ROOT DNS and other such private networks - there are a group of people that will resist this stuff to the end
... if music be fruit of love, play on
Anonymity can have some pretty undesirable consequences...
But really. Have you ever read the comment boards on a local or national news site? Trolls and political shitstorms are the rule rather than the exception. Personal insults, extreme racism, and casual death-threats are fairly common as well.
In the end, each thread inevitably turns into a racist tirade, or a debate over gun control, religion, or "the democracts/republicans are killing America"
It's really no surprise that the Washington Post wants to put a damper on this. Although it may sound hard to believe, Slashdot is arguably one of the most effectively moderated large communities on the 'net.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
What Jim Brady is really looking for is not an end to anonymity, it's for an end to unaccountability. It's not that posting to WashingtonPost.com is anonymous, it's that it's anonymous and the posters have nothing at stake.
There are any number of schemes that can combine anonymity and accountability... with accountability limited to the cost of creating the anonymous pseudonym you're using to post. I'm sure readers of slashdot can think of any number of schemes that would fulfill his requirements.
Simply requiring a repliable mail address creates a small cost for anonymity... possibly not enough for Jim, but enough to deter many "reflex" posters.
But imagine an anonymizing proxy that costs $9.95 to get an account on. When you post through it, it passes some token to the webserver (possibly via HTTP headers) that contains a consistent random UUID associated with your account on the proxy, and the server can block postings by UUID. Then each time you anonymously post scatological material to WP, it'll cost you almost ten bucks, but as far as the WP is concerned you're still as anonymous as if you were posting from the public library.
I think that's MORE than enough accountability for the likes of a public bulletin board, no?
Bad mod.
Parent MIGHT be a troll, probably IS flamebait, possibly insightful, probably not informative, surely slightly funny to -someone- out there, but an "offtopic" mod is surely nothing more than Evangelical Atheism.
Weeding out the swine is a cost and resource issue for the Post and every other site that accepts comments. No absolute right exists to post anything to someone else's site; it's all by invitation. So paying staff to wallow in the crud day after day just so the most offensive comments can be flushed is an expensive pain. No one becomes a journalist to ride herd on crazed vile loons.
There's money to be made for anyone who can sell the Post and the rest of the industry something that even approximates what they want.
I can think of several sites dominated by comments that I no longer visit because I don't have the time or patience or stomach to deal with the crap. And I stopped reading comments here a long time ago; now I just skim the headlines in my RSS reader.
The guy at the Post may be acting as a 'traditional news editor", but, as a traditional reader, that's a very good thing. The web allows anyone to say anything, but that doesn't translate into a right to say anything on any site.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
- If you ban the user, they make a new account
/wave.
- If you ban an email address they will make a new one
- If you ban "free email" addresses like hotmail and yahoo that... does... NOTHING. Almost every service provider worth a damn gives you up to 10 email address you can set for yourself.
- If you require an ID, that user will steal someone elses ID if motivated enough
You are fighting a losing war. Instead of trying to ban accounts, create community moderation. Just like on slashdot, people have karma... it gets too bad
Then you have a rating system about people. The only difficulty here is to have a time requirement for people to reach certain "karma" levels. This defeats spam "karma" where multiple accounts are created to boost that (at least 99% of them).
I cannot say this enough. You can't stop stupid... but you can give it a direction.
No, seriously, there used to be a couple of general comment systems like that. They tended to get little interest, unless they started off with a big burst of publicity in which case they got denounced by pundits who didn't want people seeing markup under, over, inline with, or hovering about their words (depending on how the particular scheme was implemented). But even then, after a burst of interest, they tended to die out... too much popularity made them a bottleneck, or too little made them pointless (or both, in fairly obvious stages).
An alternative that I've seen versions of now and then are plugins that look up references to the page you're viewing in Google and the like, and let you know that someone is linking there. I haven't seen one of them for a while, I suspect they mostly attracted spam.
Then of course there's trackback schemes, but they require cooperation from the site.
Feedback and commentary on the Internet remains a complex dance of posts talking about posts, on the popular technology of the day... bulletin boards, groups, forums, blogs, whatever the next big thing is... and you still have to look for counterpoints yourself.
-Anonymous Coward
$20 says somebody posted Jim Brady was a d-bag, and this is why he wants to be able to have their info. PS: I can't even post comments anymore because ./'s catcha is un-farking-readable. How about you guys just generate ASCII art text and make me type the words
Motivated abusers tanked a site that I worked with a few years back (Started up in 1996, closed in 2002). I would love to have had a way to identify them.
First we started tracking with email. Free email ruined that.
Then we started tracking with cookies. They figured out to erase cookies.
Then we started tracking with IP addresses. Too many proxies. Proxy blockers never stay up to date, so they eventually get around that.
Then we got some moderators. They became abusive fairly quickly.
We were working on tracking using Flash when we realised it would be easier to shut the site down. It wasn't earning enough to warrant the non-stop work on something stupid like overcoming the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/).
Seriously. Why try to change the nature of the Internet? You're just going to lose, and look foolish on the way out.
How does he imagine his ideas working, anyway? Does he think people are actually going to cough up an identifier every single time they visit his site?
He should stick to news.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Why not adopt a Karma system? It's not like it's a new concept. (Hey... look: we have one here.)
People who're "new around here" or tend to troll tend to have their messages buried. The messages of established, insightful posters tend to float to the surface. A very lightweight and open system of moderation allows anonymous messages of value (like that of the parent) to be "modded" into higher visibility.
Additionally, giving certain "privileges" to quality posters allows you to retain the core discussion group. There's no need to set up additional barriers to your potential readership.
South Korea had such a system in place for years requiring users to register for sites using the equivalent of a Social Security number.
They are now removing that requirement.
Of course now there are plenty of people posting random rumors online to scare the public out of allowing US beef to be imported...
The Internet sucks.
. Really, no text.
I metamoderate Slashdot all the time - for no pay. People local to the paper would certainly be willing to donate, for free, copious amounts of time for moderation. It would cost nothing, and add a great deal of value to the comments since they would be weeded out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This doesn't look offtopic... This guy at the WashingtonPost wants us to all be uniquely identifiable. and, therefore accountable, and in his words in TFA
"Brady believes that in the next five years people will be required to identify themselves in some way at many sites. "I don't know whether we do it with a credit card number, a driver's license or passport, but I think making people responsible would raise the level of discourse."
In otherwords, "mark" us all with an identifying number.
So, mod this one down if you like, but Offtopic doesn't sit well with me.
Wherever you go... There you are. B.B.
Implement banning by MAC address, problem solved until either the user changes their MAC (only some network cards allow this,) or replaces the network card. One is simple (but most don't know how to do it) and the other costs the end-user money.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
...we are at the Land Of The Free !! I think Vermont is right wanting out of US...
Anonymity is ultimately going to look like a failed experiment.
Reason: anything that makes it easier for the occasional volunteer whistle-blower also makes it easier legions of corporate and/or government hired propagandists to fake being one of those volunteers, or anything else that seems convenient.
When the pentagon's internet propaganda unit decides to subvert wikipedia, wikipedia will be subverted. I can't even see how there's a question about that, and the only solution that I can see is a new set of internet institutions with ids tied back to actual living bodies.
Anonymity only "works" for a site just as long as the site is seen as a toy. Is the internet a toy, or does it have some serious purpose?
You wouldn't sign a contract with an "anonymous" entity, right? How is politics any less important than business?
I have news for you: your "internet license" is called a "credit card".
These are all technical solutions. Were you serving ads on the site? If so, what were you making per user?
For a good site, I'd be amenable to a recurring PayPal subscription charge that got refunded at the end of each month for good behavior. Your costs are the transaction charges minus the float, minus the ad revenue garnered by having a non-shitty site.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)