Letters to the Editor
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Real names are pointless
I could make up a fake name that sounds real. What's important is a consistent identity. Besides, who wants to be "Bob Smith 23"?
I'll be curious to see how this affects the "This Modern World" letter pages.
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New rule, please
Anyone who posts more than three times in one letters stream is required to start their own blog.
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It's looking better already...
Glad to see my screen name wasn't taken - and yes, I do like the new font. Thanks, Salon.
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Looking good!
When Salon's Table Talk (http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@@) started, posting registration was similar to the now former letters system. We had a lot of multiple personae and drive-by flamers. Registration never magically eradicated all the trolls, but it did foster something very important in our community -- a deeper sense of accountability among participants. I think this is going to be great for letters and all our writers.
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kudos and complaints
Kudos on getting the children to play nicely. Sort of like, "Raise your hand." Maybe we can show 'em all a thing or two about civility.
A kvetch about the font. I once interviewed a library scholar in residence whom some called "the father of modern American type". The poor man nearly had a stroke when we discussed sans-serif fonts. He was in anguish. "They are meant for highway signage, not reading!" he said. "Helvetica, for example, was designed for use by plumbers!" (Meaning, I believe, to label assembly directions.)
The serifs are the tiny curls on a letter. Their function is to subtly lead the eye to the next letter and/or word. They make reading smoother, more effortless for eye and brain. In anything longer than a line or two, they do that.
I don't care about anonymity, since usernames make anonymity an option anyway. There's no reason someone couldn't have more than one email account and username, if they want to go to that much trouble. But I think the suggestion of a Premium subscribers filter means that you'd be blocking yourself from reading the thinking of people who cannot afford to subscribe, which might limit the benefits of Letters.
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How to waste time trying to build working web forums
All web forums suffer from the same problems. It's apparently an iron rule that each forum will try the same methods to overcome these problems, and it's only logical that each of these methods fail in the same way, every time they are tried.
Of course registration isn't going to help - within a week you'll find out that registering is trivially easy. Even trivially easy to automate.
I noticed you haven't introduced captchas yet. Presumably that's the next step you take, once you notice that, yes on salon.com too it's easy to automate registration.
Next you'll find out that user names are easy to fake - e.g. a hypothetical user "firefly" will soon find that others are using "firefly." or "firef1y" etc.
Of course, the central problem of trolling will not be impacted by these changes anyway - do you want to ban every controversial discussion? How much time do you want to spend to examine which user needs to be banned, so that he can register a new account with slightly different spelling?
There are other tired and useless methods to deal with that, too: you can now restrict posting to paying users. Pretty soon you'll notice that you're missing out on the influx of new posters, your forums will go stale. Will it help with flame wars, though? Nope - but it will become much harder to give the boot to a paying user, and people will still fight.
So what works? Leave the moderation to the users, don't censor anything, give the more interesting articles higher visibility. The only type of web forums which really focus on interesting discussions use slashcode. There may be other methods out there, but slashcode is free and it works. Check out slashdot.org, set your threshold to 2, and have a look.
Sorry, you are free to try whatever you want, it just frustrates me to these the same well-intentioned but unworkable ideas tried over and over again.
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It's a great idea.
I was posting under so many different names: LeCastor, Man, Brightstar - I didn't know who I was anymore! Now I'll be good!
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Happy to see the changes
I think that the changes are excellent for the most part, but I am adding my voice to the call for not allowing anonymous publishing. It can certainly lead to mischief, and since a person can choose a screen name that is untraceable, I see little need to allow for the option.
If someone has a such a deep, dark secret that they don't want it known to the general public there are better ways of handling it than publishing a letter to the editor that will be read by thousands of persons.
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I remember on CSPAN boards
I was banned for using a user name that consisted of all blanks. People just like to gnash and scream about whatever it is they think is something that appeals to other people's perceptions of their titanic ego.
No one cares about the font. Change it on your end if you like.
No one cares about any of the other stupid rules suggested either.
No one cares about your name. It's merely a way to ding you when they feel like it. But as someone who used their own real email address for years (until about 2 weeks ago) and nary a peep from anyone at Salon Galactic (even though, roughly speaking more than 10% of my letters were deleted, I wonder what they hope to acomplish? Will I get a nastygram from moderator #47-B? Will I get banned? Will they block my IP address? I'll remember to post from the public library if I think they'll do that.
I guess I'll keep track of the spam and phishing to see if my Better Liberal Angels sold me email address.
In the meantime pull up a chair and watch the trashheap burn as we try to apply a technical solution to the problem of narrowmindedness.
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Bah! Too Many Good Vibes Going Here
All you liberal moonbats. What's the matter? The truth hurt too much so you change the letters section, Waah waaah waah, the mean old Republicans keep showing up here and pointing out the truth to us, Waaah waaah, because really you're all scared because you know you are wrong and Bush is right and the Global War on Terror isn't just going to win itself, you bunch of no-brain crybabies. You'ld like nothing better than having terrorists goosestepping in the streets of America, which is what will happen within ten minutes of an Iraq pullout, and then where will you hide? In the Salon letter pages? Please, Mr. Terrorist, if you don't behead me I'm sure we can talk about our feelings and reach an agreement. Not!
So you thing you're hiding out all safe now, in your letters columns, but Saddam was a dictator, in case you've all forgotten. Or maybe you'd rather live in Saddam Land since you think it's so fun. Oh, but that's right, I forgot, you're all hippocrits, aren't you? Not so many cheeseburgers in Saddam Land and if Biil KKKlintion was good at anything it was eating burgers, but there's no cheeseburgers in Iraq, That's why Klinton didn't go. A war for oil, you say, but French Fries are fried in oil, in case you've all forgotten, but then you moonbats always forget the little details like that, so you probably think that's just fine and dandy just as long as you get to keep stuffing your hippie mouths with vegetarian food -- oh, look at me, how "evolved" I am, not eating meat I"m so much better than you; well just keep on thinking that way, buddy, and then wonder why Red state America keeps not understanding what the hell you are talking about or voting for your pretty boy candidates like John "How's my Hair?" Edwards, I'm laughing all the way to the next election already you worthless pack of banana eating surrender monkies.
Sorry, about that, all. I like the new format, but I was having withdrawal pangs from the cold turkey absence of some of the troll letters