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Sunday, July 26, 2009

Another reason to avoid anonymous comments

I happened to see a little story on Think Progress this weekend that seems apropos of my continuing windmill-joust at anonymous commenting. The US Attorney for the western district of New York is investigating some comments, posted under fake email addresses to the website of the Wayne County Star, about a story involving an immigration raid on a local farm. Example:
“watcha doing to mi wifey, no checky her papeles. she no legal, but she havey benifit card. oh wait, take her and I get me a applehog till I go to Mexico. Viva la Raza!!!”
Someone looked at some source code, and it appears that this and several others, covering a weird racist exchange among commenters, originated in computers at the Department of Homeland Security.

This isn't a difficult hack, and it ought to make readers wonder whether some of the comments we see on the Courier site are similarly cloaked to avoid legal or political repercussions.
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2 comments:

  1. BearWhizBeerJuly 26, 2009 at 7:29 PM

    very scary

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChrisJuly 29, 2009 at 4:05 PM

    The anonymous comments on the Courier's site exist simply because the initial required registration model wasn't favorable to readers. Thus, if someone doesn't wish to give their name or any other optional information, then the system defaults to "No Name Provided". Comments are filtered, obviously, to weed out any offensive or libelous commentary that violates the Terms of Use. CAPCHA is utilized to avoid spamming.

    ReplyDelete

I encourage you to share your own views and experience with me and other readers. How you do that matters, and I'm committed to maintaining a place where readers and commenters can feel safe from adolescent BS. So here's the deal:

There are two kinds of anonymous comments: those by people who have a genuine fear of revenge from the dark side, and those from darksiders just hiding to avoid accountability. You may post comments anonymously, but I reserve the right to treat anonymous comments as found items that belong to me and do with them as I see fit.

If, on the other hand, you're willing to stand by your convictions and post under your own name or a regular handle, your comments belong to you, and I'll edit them only on egregious violations of respect for others.

If this doesn't work for you, I'm sure you'll be happier somewhere else.