An incident in one of the week’s Open Forum posts has prompted us to decide on a change in our commenting policy. Starting Monday, only registered site users will have commenting privileges.
Most of our regulars already created accounts some time back in (alas, vein) hopes that it would solve a longstanding problem with the inability to edit one’s own comments. Regardless, registration is free and easy.
To be clear: we’re not going to require commenters to post under their own names or even reveal their identity to us. They simply have to create a free account linked to a working email address.
What do we hope to gain by this? The ability to more easily enforce bans on trolls and others who poison the discussion. It’s still not perfect, in that banned users could still theoretically come back under a new persona. But it’ll be easier to monitor and easier to simply delete their entire accounts, hopefully making their efforts less enjoyable.
[Update 1 from Matt – Saturday Night]
First, thank you to everyone who is already registering.
Second, as some people have already noted, you may experience emails from OTB being automatically sent to your SPAM folder. This is a known issue with Gmail. The best way for Gmail users to check if this is happening is to use the following search string in your Gmail search bar:
in:spam drjjoyner+otb@gmail.com
Sometimes flagging the emails as “not spam” will be enough. However, you may need to create a rule.
Third, during this transition period, it may take a moment for you to see your comments. This should only happen for a short amount of time. The TL;DR is that from our SPAM filter’s perspective posting under your official account is different from posting from the name/email combo you are using. Once I’ve approved your new account’s ability to post, you should be set. If you’re not sure about that please use this post to test things.
Also, let us know if you hit any other challenges. Your traditional name/email combinations will work during this transition period, so post here using them.
[Update 2 from Matt – Sunday Morning]
Things continue to progress smoothly. I’m seeing fewer comments going to moderation–that’s a good sign.
There are a few commenters whose posts are repeatedly getting sent into auto-moderation. I’m going to start a list and reach out to you all via email. My hope is that as our SPAM filter updates, this will resolve itself.
