Leaving a Comment? That'll Be 99 Cents, and Your Name

netbuzz writes "Anxious to lift a ban on comments brought about by incessant trolling and anonymous slander, a Massachusetts newspaper has begun requiring two things of online readers who want to leave their thoughts on stories: a one-time fee of 99 cents and a willingness to use their real names. Says the publisher: 'This is a necessary step, in my opinion, if The Attleboro (MA) Sun Chronicle is going to continue to provide a forum for comments on our websites.'"

Comments

if its a small town paper

[circletimessquare]

you aren't dealing with sophisticated tor and proxy users and ip spoofing, you're dealing with the local technically barely literate cranks. so just enforce ip bans. or even cookies. these guys are sitting at home on one computer, not even in a coffee shop. and you're probably only dealing with 12-24 committed griefers only, so its not an endless problem

finally, i was always a fan of the rubber room (there may be a better term for this technique):

once you've flagged the committed griefer, make it so his comments only appear to him. oftentimes these hacks will comment freely and continually for months on end, completely oblivious to the fact that no one is reading their comments except themselves

Re:Dept of Troll Prevention....

[iluvcapra]

Slashdot has for a long time had a way of filtering the trolls out,

What system would that be, homeslice? The moderation only works on posts that are of the generic-troll or meme-troll variety -- like "HOT GRITS" or "OBAMA is a N1&&3r" or somesuch. When trolls troll from a point of view, then it becomes much more subjective. Meta-moderation is very much a crapshoot and not evenly applied.

Obviously slashdot has its own cultural norms and when you come here you simply have to be aware that there's going to be some verbal abuse. A newspaper, on the other hand, doesn't really want that and doesn't want to dedicate its services and infrastructure to hosting shouting matches. The draw for a newspaper is the story, not the argument itself; this is where a newspaper and a forum are different. Any conversation on the article should facilitate understanding, perspectives, and critique of the article, and not be a sort of vanity contest.

Boston.com did a very interesting article recently on the average anonymous poster. And to be honest, I don't see why these people spout off about half the crap they do. They just want attention, and it isn't a newspapers job to host vanity projects.

Re:Good Idea

[bill_kress]

In the case of newspaper article comments I'm not sure a real name is a bad idea.

I've seen (and left) a few in a local paper that were terribly insensitive--not always wrong, exactly, but when your grandma drives into a car and everyone is killed--the local paper, read by the family, might not be the best place to debate the merits of/problems associated with DWO.

I've seen articles about parental negligence, a 20 year old drowning because he didn't wear his life jacket, etc. with some very insensitive finger pointing.

I'm not saying the debate is wrong, but when you lose your kid to some thing like this, you don't need to read about how stupid he was not wearing a life vest--it needs to be debated but not right there (Plus, trust me, all those who knew the kid will be wearing life vests in the future).

So having a real name associated won't (and shouldn't) stop people from posting their opinions, but it might help them remember that they are communicating with real human beings with feelings and not throwing a comment into some abstract internet debate.

Re:Irony

[bigredradio]

they should moderate their comments

And that won't cost the paper money?

not allow them at all

Nice solution there genius.

I was really confused for a second until I realized you were calling the newspapers assholes instead of the assholes that they are trying to prevent cluttering up their comment boards.

I hate reading comments in most papers (and slashdot) where anonymous trolls spew the worst rhetoric just to get a rise out of people. (BTW, good job here, it worked on me) If your bitching about a one-time .99 cent fee, then you need to get off the internet because of the electricity cost.

I hope their plan works and others follow suit.