First off, the history behind "Anonymous Coward" on Slashdot is a bit a more complicated than a simple putdown. Before Slashdot added accounts, you just typed in the name you wanted to use in a textbox. At that time "Anonymous Coward" was the handle of one of the more interesting Slashdot posters. Then trolls started abusing the system by using the name of established posters (similar to the problems here) and accounts were created. When accounts were put in "Anonymous Coward" was chosen as the name of the Anonymous user as something of an homage to the original "Anonymous Coward."

Regarding Anonymous users here, please keep that option. There are good reasons for people to post tings anonymously in the case of whistleblowers, etc. Yes, some people will abuse the privilege of posting anonymously, but getting rid of anonymous posts is an overreaction. I am not going to going into detail defending anonymity - others have already done it better - http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/somsel_070110.shtml .

There are other technical ways of dealing with Anonymous trolls. I doubt that you want to do as much work as Slashdot has on this, but maybe you could give the squeamish the option to filter out anonymous posts.

Personally, trolls don't bother me. I don't think that it is worth your time to delete their posts. I bet being deleted gives them a certain satisfaction. It is a form of recognition to delete them. I just ignore them.

bohdihund,

The likely reason Digg has a limited window for editting posts is because otherwise you could destroy the flow of the thread. You could say one thing in a post, generate a lot of responses, and then go back and edit your original posts to say something quite different. That sort of abuse would be much harder to deal with than a few silly trolls.

When you add more features to the lettes section, I suggest that you avoid reinventing the wheel. There are many free implementations out there

that do something similar to what you want. As has happened before to Salon (http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/02/03/leonard/print.html) and many others, creating features for web sites is not easy.

Your current system is probably couldn't easily be combined with anything else, but I hope that you at least look to borrow extensively from other,

more mature OS implementations.

Welcome back King.

Though I missed your writing I almost wish that you would have been gone another week ;) . Your column today followed the same format as two columns I read in the Sports section of the local paper this week. List off the latest controversies, and deal with each of them in a perfunctory way. Your column was the best of three partially because you are a much better writer (and more interesting thinker) than the other two and partially because you had more column inches to fill.

My biggest problem with you column (and the other two) is that you pronounced the Tour de France. Since you don't like bicycle racing and you said something similar last year after the Floyd Landis fiasco, it

is hard to take that argument too seriously.

The Tour de France was already irrelevant to most US sports fans. That's fine. It is a niche sport. Lots of people followed it slightly due to Lance and most of them don't follow it any more. That is also fine. The latest drug scandals won't help cycling status with casual or hard core fans, but it won't kill it any more than any other scandal would in any other sport.

A somewhat apt comparison can be made to boxing. Boxing was once a huge sport in the US, but now it is a niche sport. Casual boxing fans like me see more boxing in movies in a given time frame than real matches. So for us the latest boxing scandal hardly registers, because we don't care about the sport. True boxing fans pay attention, and are upset by the scandals, but they know that the sport will get through it. Maybe its popularity won't increase, but the sport will get through it.

Unfortunately, cycling is in a similar position. True fans will keep paying attention, and naysayers will write it off. I don't think cycling has fallen quite as far as boxing yet, but I realize that I am quite biased. I think that cycling has one important advantage over boxing. Bicycling is having a (probably cyclical) renaissance right now as a recreational activity. Who knows how long that booom will last, but high gas prices and millions of people who need more exercise give it a fighting chance. Some fraction of those recreational bicyclists will give pro cycling a chance as a spectator sport.

So I don't think that cycling will fall completely off the map. It will remain a niche sport. Hopefully, my local small paper will keep running AP articles about the Tour de France. I think that Versus will keep their coverage. But even if the Tour de France falls further into niche-ville, there will always be the Web. The Tour will go on in France, and if I have to watch it on my computer, I will be OK with that. If everyone else is on to something else, well good for them. I like my niche.