Letters to the Editor
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my money, my free speech
hey Salon,
you make us pay to post; only premium subscribers are allowed, am I correct?
It seems that we have a right to say what we want, like it or not. As we are paying for the privilege to post here, I don't agree with your post.
I agree that we should strive toward civility in everything we do. But to expect that from a blog/letters section on an online zine is a little much.
Check my posts; i've been civil. I just don't think it's your call. Mean People (Still) Suck.
yaqui
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Yaqui
See that yellow star by your name? That's means you subscribed to Salon. Anyone in the world can post; they just don't get that star.
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User moderation is a terrible idea
All it does is encourage groupthink.
Write an honest critique of Candidate A? You can be sure supporters of Candidate A will vote it down no matter what.
These threads are much more civil in general than most places on the Internet.
I'm guaranteed to be in the minority here, but I'd say the current level of moderation is appropriate. And keep Anonymous. Posting under a name you made up is the same as posting under "Anonymous" - I still don't understand those who would use their full name.
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Yaqui
If you pay to join, say, a soccer league, you still have to play by the rules, or you get kicked out. And no, you generally don't get your money back.
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Killfile
An ignore feature would be great or Salon could just switch to a commenting system that would be compatible with user scripts like killfile. Then, users could just block all anonymous/shooter posts.
now, if you had suggested restricting posting by MAC address, you'd have been on to something.
--Anonymous
What if the MAC address is spoofed?
Also, if anybody is annoyed by the pagination of the comments page and is using Firefox, (if using IE, just switch--Firefox is more secure), download greasemonkey
then install Salon Letters collector and the letters will display on one page
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Gentlemen, you can't fight here! This is the war room! (n/t)
(n/t)
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Regarding Restriction
Only one sign on per mac address is also a non-starter - I use at least 3 machines to read and post on Salon.
My vote is for
1. Allowing each person to block posters - based on the area. I find Mr. Brightstar65 annoying when he is in political areas, but a scream when he is going on about blueberries on Mars...
2. Only allowing posting from persons who are logged on with an account - free or not - that is tied to a real email address.
3. Allow anonymous, but also allow people to block anonymous.
There are a few postings, that were very relevant to the topic at hand, that I would not have made if I could not do it anonymously. I think in certain instances with highly personal subjects that the anonymous posting can serve a purpose. Some people say that the screen name provides anonymity, but, over time, I suspect that a lot of us could be identified by our friends, families, or co-workers if our complete posting history were read. I know that my postings give a fair amount of personal data about me - albeit scattered over a couple of hundred posts.
Good enough.
Pax
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Pastafarians Unite!
I think your suggestions are very good and agree that anonymous posting does serve a legitimate purpose.
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Ignore feature much requested
Let's face it - there's trolls in every discussion forum. But Brian in Seattle is right - the best thing is the ignore feature. I like ignoring all Anonymous comments - there's really no reason for them when you can make up whatever name you like (seriously - I'm pretty sure that Al Gore is not masquerading here as SnuggleMcHotPants).
There are also people who are pretty well known as trolls - and being able to ignore them lets me bypass a lot of nonsense.
So bring this to your web master - give us Ignore. Thanks.
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Stop me before I kill again!
"I noticed some of our regular, reasonable readers making calls for Salon to more aggressively moderate the letters, then turning around and engaging in some of the same behavior they were decrying."
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Save anonymous posting for subscribers only
I have posted a few anonymous things here, and I appreciate the capability. But I suppose professional provocateurs could subscribe and misuse it, so the problem of shit-stirring would not end. Perhaps enable/disable anonymous posting in different parts of Salon?
Anonymity is not allowed on the Well, and the place has thrived in its way for more than 20 years. As we say there, "tools, not rules." Hiding and killing posts is a pretty rare thing there.
The key thing is to avoid having Salon staff spend too much time manually sorting and editing posts.
And I'm glad to see others calling for user-based filtering. There are some people who just get our goat, and it helps keep things tolerable if we can just not see them. The worst problem with bozofiltering is that you still see other people's responses to the person you bozo. I can live with that.
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Anonymous has to go.
It's long past time.
Frankly, I'm put off by pseudonyms as well. If you lack the courage to put your name to something, what is your thought truly worth?
I also like the "ignore" idea. And there is also a nice little "moderator intervention" response over at BoingBoing. It's called "disemvowelling" and simply uses a few passes through a text editor to remove all vowels from a trollish post.
Doing that, a trollish sentence would read thus: Dng tht, trllsh sntnc wld rd ths.
All useful, but please, please, please, lose "anonymous", and the sooner, the better.
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Real names
There's no way in hell I'd post my real name on a publicly accessible website, particularly one in which I posted repeatedly regarding parts of my life.
Those of you who at least claim to be using your real name (for it is just a claim), great, but you're nuts.
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One reason to ditch Anonymous
Being able to read other letters by the same poster is a great way to tell if they're trolling.
I read two pages of 'other letters' posted by a recently-notorious poster mentioned earlier in this comments section, and found that he/she had written totally contradictory things in response to different articles -- obviously just here to stir up trouble.
It also lets you tell if a poster is single-mindedly trying to drag every topic back around to his/her personal obsessions.
There's no reason to go on allowing anonymous drive-bys.