OK, gang, time to consider requiring logins to post
On the one hand, it's way cool that Universal Hub is so much more popular than it was even just a few months ago (so thank you - and give yourselves a round of applause).
On the other hand, you get stuff like this discussion, where it's impossible to tell all the anonymouses apart (there are at least two, which I know only from looking up the IP addresses of a couple of comments). It leads to confusion and the potential for sock puppetry.
Requiring logins seems to work well to sort things out at big community sites such as MetaFilter. This is NOT the same as requiring or verifying people's identities. You'd still be able to use a pseudonym (you would, however, need a valid e-mail address, since the system sends you a verification note to keep your evil arch-enemy from signing you up for 470 different accounts). But requiring a login would mean there would only be one John Doe in a discussion, rather than 2 or 3 or 79 different Anonymouses (anonymice?).
What do you think? And if you are one of those folks who has a login already but can't seem to have it "stick" when you're at work, let me know. There are a couple of alternative login systems I can try so you can post on your, er, ahem, breaks.
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Or post an IP address for each anonymous login
Maybe it would be a good idea for your software to automatically post the IP address for any anonymous user.
Please no...
then my boss could figure out which one is me!
IP addresses mean nothing
IP addresses provide zero guarantees and can in fact be misleading.
a)AOL users appear to come from various proxies. Millions of subscribers, hundreds or thousands (at most) of the proxy severs. This is true at other ISPs as well, though AOL is the most prevalent.
b)I can change my IP address by leaving my cablemodem & router unplugged for about 15 minutes to an hour. Same goes for DSL, especially PPPoE-based DSL (PPPoE sucks, but that's beside the point.) If you don't have a router and shut off your computer when you go to work, your computer will have a new IP virtually every time you come home in the evening. It may not even be in the same subnet or even the same class C space.
c)Free wifi services provided by businesses, friendly neighbors, or people who haven't properly configured their wifi routers. Everyone within 2 blocks could be picking up wifi from one place. With a pringles can and $5 worth of parts and a soldering iron, you can pick up wifi signals a mile or more away.
d)The vast majority of businesses and schools have systems behind a NAT firewall (Network Address Translation.) Some Boston employers have thousands of employees. If the addresses are publicly routable (ie not behind NAT- this is true at MIT, for example), the address pool is still dynamically allocated, and unless you have access to their DHCP logs, you have no idea whether it is the same machine or not.
e)Free public proxy servers.
f)Private proxy servers.
Actually...
Actually forget all thgat stuff I just said. I changed my mind.
stop that, dont make me lol again
or I will have somehow to assume an anonymous identity among my coworkers
I really like that idea
You could just append it, like Anonymous from 199.46.198.231.
This IP address trace tool is kind of fun
http://whatismyipaddress.com/
Aye
Absolutely. Log-Ins.
I could give a rat's ass if someone posts anonymously. I tend to discount whatever they say because of it, but no big deal. That's my problem. However, it would be extremely nice to know if I'm replying to the same person within a discussion or someone different. For that alone, log-ins are worth it.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I LOVE YOU SULDOG!
:o)
Finally, someone with some intelligence!
;-)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I'm all for log-ins for the
I'm all for log-ins for the same reason. Unless we want to start numbering - Anonymous1, Anonymous2, etc.
Either way
Is it possible to selectively choose which posts can have anonymous replies? I have noticed that very hot-button or empassioned topics bring out all of the anonymous posts that we could do without. However, far more docile or germane posts from anonymous contributors are appreciated in the less contentious topics.
As an ex-anonymous regular, I can appreciate both sides in question. It's nice to be able to post without leaving a paper trail for everyone to always read back and use as means to shoot the messenger on a new topic/issue. It's also nice to know just who I'm responding to if they want to maintain any sort of regular back-and-forth discussion and not have to second-guess whether I'm talking to the same person or not.
We have a word for that
I have noticed that very hot-button or empassioned topics bring out all of the anonymous posts that we could do without.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
Censorship is removing content that the site owner doesn't want
which is something that every site owner has to do occasionally.
A login system is not censorship.
I'm not even sure that falls
I'm not even sure that falls under the strictest definition of "censorship", really. If I set my LiveJournal (for example) to disallow anonymous comments, is that censorship? I think the situation is roughly analogous; Adam (mostly) makes posts to which the rest of us respond.
No, it's not
Ron, what you describe is editing. Censorship is when the government comes in and removes content.
Depends on the definiton of censorship
For instance, every broadcast television network has a Standards & Practices department, which are commonly referred to as the "network censors". Their job is necessary, but it is private, not governmental. Someone has to bleep out cuss words during that three-second delay.
Bleep
And why do they have to do that?
I think you're back to "governmental" now.
To some extent, but ....
the network may also fear losing part of its audience (and thus ratings points) if it lets too much crude language get by, especially during daytime and early evening hours.
No governmental authority tells the Boston Globe to censor four-letter words in direct quotes, but they generally do so because they don't want to unnecessarily offend part of their circulation base.
In any case, requiring logins is not censorship by even the loosest definition.
The network may also fear
Getting huge fines from the FCC.
Yes, it is
Just because the government isn't censoring doesn't mean it ceases to be censorship. It ceases to be illegal censorship but it is still censorship.
simultaneously overreacting and irrelevant
Did you actually read the article you're citing?
"Typically censorship is done by governments, religious and secular groups, corporations, or the mass media, although other forms of censorship exist. The withholding of classified information, commercial secrets, intellectual property, and privileged lawyer-client communication is not usually described as censorship within the censoring community, though can be by outside observers. The term "censorship" often carries with it a sense of untoward, inappropriate or repressive secrecy."
Adam's not a government, a corporation, a religious or secular group, or the mass media. That I know of. Adam's just zis guy, you know?
This is a privately-run website. Adam doesn't have to allow comments at all, much less anonymous ones. He could just keep it going without allowing anyone else's input, and he has every right to do so.
Censorship is a red herring
Censorship is immaterial to the discussion. The same posts that I claim we could do without would still be allowed, as long as the poster signed a name to the comment. The topic of discussion is not the deletion of items we could do without, but the level of attribution to those comments that the community wishes to require.
It's clear that given certain topics, people feel the need to use the anonymous posting system here to leave their civility behind. Without the ability to leave such vulgarities and/or baiting comments with no responsibility to having said them, it's likely that we'd see a significant reduction in that sort of poor behavior.
Yeah, but...
Some of us like using names that are topic appropriate. It's part of the fun. I'd certainly register if that were required, but then I'd have to think up a permanent identity. Scary!
you'd become
uncybilized
If only you spelled it 'Sybil'
then you could have 15 other names, too.
and you stop it too, "ron newman"
if that's your real name!
(I knew what you meant, cybil.)
- Pom
Er
I believe Ron did, too.
Pom
It was a reference to a movie about a person with multiple personalities. Maybe you knew this and I'm being needlessly obtuse, but I figure better to keep the air clear concerning such things, considering the topic.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
nice try
nice, ron newman, changing your name in order to defend yourself!
I..am..just..trying..to..make..a..point..do..not..attack..again..sybil..
(ron newman seemed to be giving cybil a hard time about spelling while ignoring or perhaps missing cybil's having intended the sybil joke to begin with...and so I jokingly gave ron newman a hard time back. If he really is ron newman. which of course he is. he is ron newman to me, because he is logged in. he could be francine vanderjones in real life. it is hardly material to me in this context. I know "ronnewman," he has a consistent identity here, which illustrates an advantage to claiming a name/conversing with people who have claimed consistent identities.
and I would not be at all surprised to find that his name is in fact Ron Newman, unlike my username, which is preposterous. [Pleased to meet you.] So he is much more plausible than I am as a "real person" with one identity in the world, and so I attack his plausibility. Which, haha, seems funny to me. As does the idea that you are Ron in disguise! Which conceit is only made possible by the chaos of "not verified." Which is fun but has gotten more and more chaotic on sites I have frequented or worked on to the point that they had to be shut down to comments. Which is the opposite of fun.
Now fess up, Ron.)
I Yam What I Yam
and if you don't like me, here, have a potato.
is that
a pom de guerre?
(ah now I cant even choose a spelling, anyway stop making me laugh)
Don't take me for granate
nor would I
mistake you for quarry.
I agree, it's fun making up
I agree, it's fun making up funny, topic relevent names.
Trolls are trolls, ignore them, they will go away. Adam can always clean up threads later.
gulp
that cleanup can be a crazy amount of work--
I kind of like the idea
It gives it more of a community feeling.
And if it prevents some of the stuff we
saw this morning I am in favor.
Fine with me!
Fine with me!
I'm stephencaldwell
And I support this idea.
yes, please!
anything to cut down on the ambiguity would be good. it gets too confusing when there are multiple anonymous postings in the same thread.
Do whatever it takes....
...to protect the forum from trolls who have little interest in doing anything other than trashing the joint.
my 2 cents
I comment with some regularity, but I am not registered. If required to register, I would probably comment with less candor since I'm not crazy about being tracked. Have I written a few inflammatory comments in the heat of the moment? Sure. However, they are never racist or bigoted. I do share an IP address with someone who also comments on universal hub from time to time... could be confused for sock-puppetry. It's Adam's site, if he prefers commenters to be logged in, then so be it.
I operate under my own name....
...because it reminds me to mind my manners (knowing that almost nothing one does online is truly anonymous and untraceable anymore).
While I don't always use my
While I don't always use my own name on the web, I always use the same moniker (or a registered one) at a particular website because I stand by what I have to say, inflammatory or not.
I hope the concept of shared
I hope the concept of shared IPs will be generally understood by most people; my spouse and I both have accounts here (although we may or may not bother logging in at any given time), and I assume it'll show up as the same IP if we're both posting from home.
In our case, Adam and several other regulars here know we're not the same person; I'd hope that would be extended to others.
uh, what did i miss this morning?
seeing as i usually wait until lunch time to check my blogs, what did i miss?
and i always identify myself... it doesn't let me anonymous more than once, or just type amusings in, so each time i add something different to the name (see how i signed today) to state who i am.
i don't mind logging in as long as something sets it up to remember who i am for more than a day. i like staying logged in. not relogging in a million times.
what can i say. i'm lazy.
Adam, I just noticed: Every
Adam, I just noticed:
Every time I log in, all comments show up as "new"...is this a bug or a feature?
but for real
I agree with what seems to be the majority here. do whatever you have to. don't let things spiral out of control. we willingly read you and we willingly post. there is no right to anonymous comments, or any kind of comments. do what you have to and let the disgruntled anonymous vote with their feet.
Another idea
Have the software assign a name to everbody who doesn't log in, and stick that name back on them next time they log in.
You could generate it from a list of unflattering nouns and adjectives. Instead of all these anonymice, you'd see "Unattended Child" and "Nasal Bystander."
I like it
With a Mirandaesque warning: You have the right to have a Universal Hub login. If you cannot think of a Universal Hub login, one will be appointed for you.
Anonymous
Can't you just make it so the name "anonymous" can't appear so you have to put in something?
Are you kidding?
Adam, a lot of your steady readers appear to be new to online forums, etc. So the post about the Israeli in Mattapan may be the first time they've noticed what the rest of the internet has known since time immemorial - you can't have a conversation with anonymous trolls running around.
Let me say that the person or people who trolled that story were hilarious - they got a legitimate, outraged response to EVERY provocation! They insulted every neighborhood of Boston, Jews, Blacks, Portugese, and I only read a few comments! And every single rock they threw seems to have hit someone in the head, based on the responses.
There is no way to have fully-anonymous posting without having trolls like this. You can make a mechanism whereby people flag "offensive" posts for you to remove them, but what happens is (a) people flag honest comments they disagree with and (b) the trolls simply moderate the abject "offensiveness", so that they provoke you on purpose without getting flagged.
So how can we preserve the "rights" of anonymous posters, without the trolls?
The most popular solution I've seen is:
- require a login to post (and use a CAPTCHA, to weed out scripts creating multiple accounts)
- be willing to ban entire IP addresses, EVEN THOUGH it might ban others, if a single person at that IP address keeps creating accounts to troll with.
You'd be surprised how quickly these simple steps bring even much larger and crazier comment-driven sites under control.
Agreed, Trolls are trolls,
Agreed,
Trolls are trolls, ignore them, let adam clear their posts out later.
go go dynamic IPs but, yeah,
go go dynamic IPs
but, yeah, I honestly couldn't get all worked up over the comments. Anon or not. it seems to me and has pretty much always seemed to me that someone's name anonimity is used to prove what a horrible underhanded person they are by people who think that having a log in is akin to going on Dr. Phil for 10 hours while everyone they've ever or will ever meet is forced to watch all of it.
The comments in question? I thought the later Anon comments were taking the piss out of the comments about the man's personal experience. I saw irony in many places, other's saw something different.
How about requiring
How about requiring something other than Anonymous be written in the "your name" box, in the same way the red asterix is by comment?
Leave it blank, and require the person posting to use something that will differentiate them throughout the discussion. For this example, I chose J.
anonymous poster #1
just to clarify.. i was the first anonymous poster on the jewish/ mattapan story this morning... all other anonymous postings were some one else...
but.. it was absolutely infuriating to see something like that up on universal hub... what's the point... keep your racist leanings to your self...
but then again.. that's just my opinion...
as far as UH goes, keep it the way it's been....
d
I registered just to post
I think requiring people to have a login is an excellent idea. I usually lurk here, but I felt compelled to comment this time because I feel rather strongly about this subject. People feel free to say whatever they want on the Internet sometimes and it gets to the point where it just gets utterly ridiculous. Making people jump over that small hump to register, and be held (slightly) accountable, serves as a good filter to weed out the crazies.
Just do it
Adam -- Go for it. I'm going to do it at Media Nation later this spring, now that Blogger allows for a range of different log-in options.
Question about Mattapan Story
Sorry, but I am a bit confused...if people are upset about racism on UH, stemming from this racist, and the story itself is considered racist, maybe the story itself, not people's reactions, and not the reactions to the reactions, is what is causing the problem, yes?
For myself, I'll happily create an account and login - I just didn't want to bother with 'yet another account.'
A discussion about racism
A discussion about racism shouldn't degrade into racism.
As far as the whole "creating yet another account" thing, maybe Adam could convince Drupal to support OpenIDs and perhaps people who have accounts here could use their accounts as OpenIDs at other sites?
UH: Now with OpenID goodness
I like easy things I don't have to think about!
There is an OpenID module for Drupal and I just installed it, so if you want to give it a try, let me know how it works (since I prefer to have a unique ID on every single site I visit, along with that unique password you're supposed to use on every single site, ayup):
http://www.universalhub.com/user (assuming you're not currently logged in; if you are logged in, click on the log-out link at the top right first):
Click on "Log in using OpenID," which will then change the login form to a single-line OpenID box.
Or maybe not
I signed up for an OpenID account somewhere and tried logging in here. Go all through the process, then got dropped on the account-creation page here. I'm thinking that's not the way it should work.
Ugh. Drupal 6, which just came out, has native support for OpenID. I'm not ready to upgrade to it just yet (not all the modules I use here have been upgraded to 6), but when I do, I'll enable OpenID (in the meantime, feel free to try OpenID now, but with the caveat it may not work).
Nope
I have an OpenID account, but when I type in my username here (after logging out of this account as you instructed) it essentially rejects me but never gives me a place or option to enter my password.
Maybe one of our (other) tech gurus has another suggestion for something besides OpenID that would be equally or similarly effective?
Adam, I've been meaning to ask...
...why did Universal Hub all of a sudden become so popular? I remember when a post that had comments ranging in the teens was high traffic.
While I have no doubt that the bump is due in part to fantastic content, I'd have to say the content a year ago was in no way less fantastic. Did UH hit some sort of tipping point?
The upward edge of the hockey stick
Yep, that's where we are. Oh, noes, I've been spending too much time with tech marketing people :-).
Traffic has increased relatively steadily over the past year (an average day now has about 2 1/2 times the page views of the same day a year ago).
Wow.
Congratulations on such great results!
And being that my user number is 21, you can take that as a sign that I am in favor of logins.
Lets note a couple things
Lets note a couple things here:
-The mod and owener of the site 'pinned' the article, and then in this very post, included a link to it. Obviously to draw attention and drive up ad revenue. It could easily have been removed and referenced in the article without a link. By calling it out, not only was more exposure added, but all users got to see the glass houses many locals reside in.
-I'm sure that ad reveue and page hits spiked because of the kooky discussion around the kooky article...do you really think people just want to hear the same old tripe every day about BC students on the T, the price of parking and the bad service at DD? The litany of responses could be geenrated from a 5 line piece of code.
If you don't like discussion (anon) or not,
Why haven't I signed up for an account? Because I get enough spam, and I don't trust someone who'd use a hack system like drupal (which is a third rate app written in a fourth rate language) to run a site to be able to manage or protect anyone's information.
I'm not just a reader, or an anon poster, but someone who has worked in 'scoial media' since before it and web 2.0 became a buzzword. If you are worried about the 'quali]ty' of discussion, why not turn off comments on some posts? Why not implementing flagging? Why not allow squelch lists? If all one needs is an email (which I suppose anyone could create a throwaway one to divert spam) then really requiring login does nothing to alleviate the issue of the 'non-nonymous' people from being offended.
Why not think of a karma/reputation engine, so new users can't post more than one or two posts an hour? That way you don't need to take away time from anyone's day job to manage a bunch of bloggahs?
There's this tingle of hypocrisy in liberalism...like 'you must accept everyone asd everything the same way I do or you're just an SOB and I must vent to you!!!' verses some of the more stereotypical staunch right wing views. I dance in the middle, and I call em as I see em.
have a swell day, next stop bing bong Boylston!
I love tough-guy Perl hackers
As somebody who's been involved in 'social media' since before the Web even existed, I admire your swagger, if not your reading comprehension. To start, I didn't pin anything - you'll notice both the original discussion and the meta-discussion are now fairly way down the home page.
I never said I wanted to squelch "offensive" language (although, yes, the whole hit-and-run trolling thing bothers me; but that's just me - I like civil discussions). The issue is that when I go into a discussion where you've got multiple "anonymous" users all saying different things, I get confused. That's all. I'm not trying to find out who you really, really are (although with a registration system, I'd build out ways for folks who want to to create profiles and the like). Must be my tiny-braned PHP self (Perl make brane hurt, although I was using it exclusively until the day Six Apart came out with that huge price increase and I realized I had to find a different platform for a companywide blogging platform at work). If you're that concerned about me attempting to spam the hell out of you (not that I would, but obviously, I'm not to be trusted), do what everybody else does - get a throwaway Hotmail account.
Yeah, I could be a tough guy and install Slash and run all sorts of karma/reputation and modding systems (although even this third rate app written in a fourth rate language has those). But I'm not seeking to replicate Slashdot. Way too fussy for me. I'd much rather see Universal Hub become another Metafilter: Simplicity is good.
Ha.
This person is such a web expert that s/he doesn't have the throw away email account. I'm no programmer, but I've had fake email accounts to circumvent registration since oh, '98.
Also, I'm signed up to Universal Hub with a dummy Gmail account that forwards to my real account. I use that forward account here and two other places. Between the two accounts, I get 5 or less spam messages in my inbox per week, and I doubt any of that spam comes from here.
UH does not generate spam. At least, that is not my experience and I've been registered since about the start. In about a week I will have been registered 3 years. 3 years, no spam.
Tingles
So... is there a tingle of awwshit in being pwned?
Damn, I'm glad I'm not too dumb to figure out how to have multiple emails.
I vote yes
I'm all for requiring a log-in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jen Stewart
Login or Not
I am happy to login if it would improve the quality and integrity of the Universal Hub.
A decision
Thanks all for your comments; they gave me a lot to think about.
I'm going to make registration a requirement to post. I appreciate the utility/fun of changing your persona on the fly - and I realize this could mean losing some interesting discussion from people who can't be bothered/don't trust me enough to register - but the more I look at that Mattapan discussion, the more confused I get. There are just too many anonymi flying around in there. I don't think anybody wins with such a confusing discussion.
Before I make registration to post mandatory, I need to do some work: I need to figure out how to make log ins "stickier" (so you don't have to log in all the time - especially for those of you with work-related). And I need to give you back something for the extra step of registering, things like the ability to create your own profile page here, add an avatar or thumbnail image to your posts, etc. A couple of folks have suggested things such as OpenID, to let you use your existing login on another system. Cool idea, but the current OpenID implementation for the software here just doesn't work. A major upgrade just came out that includes core support for OpenID; when I upgrade (probably in a couple months), I'll turn that on.
I'll keep you posted on all this. And again, thanks!