MATRIXSYNTH: Should I ban Anonymous Comments


Sunday, September 23, 2007

Should I ban Anonymous Comments

It's that time again....



NOTE: If you do not have an account on blogger/gmail, this means you will need to sign up for one to comment. I'm curious how people feel after the slew of comments over the last week.

62 comments:

  1. I think the only anonymous comments you should ban are trolls and otherwise offensive. I have no plans to create another account just to post a comment on a blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The poll is pointless since the anonymous poster far outnumber the registered ones so the end poll results will inevitable say not to ban them, even though I think most of us feel they should be banned.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hmm, as a regular anonymous poster I can't say I've noticed any particular shenanigans - was it on a particular thread?

    Personally, if you turn them off it will be a shame - certainly I will stop posting, because I have no intention of signing up for stuff and having to log in all the time.

    When you did it before, it dropped the amount of comments significantly, and the site felt deader and less community focused than before, which is a shame, because you get great feedback and additional info from the people who take the time to leave comments.

    As ever, it's your site, so you can do as you wish - I for one think it would be a shame. :(

    ReplyDelete
  4. One, there is no way to ban an anonymous troll other than banning anononymous comments in general. Two, if you want the anonymous trolling to stop and you are anonymous, you will need to sign up for an account to comment. You need to make the call if you'd rather not sign up and live with the trolling, or sign up to end it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes. I hit a number of blogs daily on various topics and this one is by far the worst read. Your blog is losing it's credibility because it's hard to follow. Recently there is more heckling that anything else and those of us who come here to learn are having a harder time doing that. If people can't behave themselves you take their luxuries away. That's how it worked in my family when I was acting like a brat, that's how it should happen here. Take it away before your readers go away.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks anonymous number three. This is exactly why I haven't disabled them. BTW, I'm not committing either way. I'm just curious to see what will come in on the poll.

    Anonymous number four, that is a valid concern. A friend of mine commented how he once asked a question on a forum (non synth related) and he said it was a pain in the ass to get through all the trolling to just weed out the answer he was looking for. Again, why I put the poll up. I think the votes will be a reflection on what people in general think about it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I think it doesn't matter since google/blogger forces you to have cookies enabled anyway. If it were me I would have already abandoned blogger. The word verification is lame and times out before I can finish even a short post like this one. The complaint about managing another username/pass doesn't hold much water as most browsers offer account managers. Those that don't login from their own computer should be using portable Mozilla on a USB key or a product such as Ironkey. (https://www.ironkey.com/)

    ReplyDelete
  8. It's a drag that you can't filter spam without taking away anon. posting, but if that's the way it is, that's the one that makes more sense. It's by far the wisest choice.

    Is there no way to have the IP ID show so instead of 'anonymous'? THAT would clean it up quick.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I think once the anonymous comments go away the quality of the comments will improve and more people will want to read them.
    I pretty much stopped reading them and i don't feel like posting a comment between to trolling anons

    ReplyDelete
  10. another thought is that anonymous comments are left by people with accounts...

    ReplyDelete
  11. Well, screw you then, matrix! I'll take my comments elsewhere...somewhere...

    :P

    ReplyDelete
  12. "Is there no way to have the IP ID show so instead of 'anonymous'?"

    Unfortunately that is not possible.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'd like it if it listed IP addresses as well. It would be amusing to see that the same trolling is being done by the same assholes over and over.

    Most people use nick names, stage names or screen names on the web. At what point does the anonymous poster not feel like a complete paranoid douche for not even using their "real" fake name?

    ReplyDelete
  14. How many times have you seen a club ruined when it got too popular? There is no doorman here, no bouncers. Further, the owner has been very tolerant, perhaps to a fault. Maybe it's time for a cover charge and/or a dress code. There's a club right down the street that will let you in free wearing a t-shirt.

    ReplyDelete
  15. anonymous posting rules because it allows small people to be brave. It makes guys like me not feel powerless in my sad little world.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Definitely ban anonymous posting; you can't possibly trust anything an anonymous poster says.

    ReplyDelete
  17. All blogger needs is a digg/slashdot style ability to vote comments up/down and establish a threshold.

    Only people logged in can raise/lower, and that tends to be a nice self-policing system.

    Don't blame it on the Anons, blame it on the fact that Blogger's comment system has not moved with the times.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I agree wit the comment by j.d. that the anonymous people will just all vote no on the poll and the results will be inaccurate as to how the amjority actually feels. Plus I'm sure some of them have thos IP masker/switcher programs and will just vote over and over agin under dofferent IPs. I am already seeing this as like 5 votes for no have come in just the last minute. Oh, well. I'm all for the ban. I usually don't even read the comments any more because of all the trolling that takes place.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I've said here before that if you don't value your opinion enough to stand behind it, how much can it really be worth? It's not like you need to use your true name, even.

    ReplyDelete
  20. when i posted anonymously people would jump down my throat. now that they know i'm a cat they're much nicer. i still say stupid things. so i have a feeling there was some troller trolling happening.

    what happened to the synthbabes? this is boring.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I dont understand why its so hard for people who comment anon to just not be anon... You still have to do word verification no?

    ReplyDelete
  22. what we need is voice recognition!...ahh i forgot most of you own vocoders and synths :-)

    ReplyDelete
  23. Perhaps it's finally time to ban them. With the recent mini-modular threads they got more out of hand than ever. I don't have a blogger account but if there's something important enough to say I can easily sign up for one.

    ReplyDelete
  24. http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html


    That was an awesome read.
    Thanks P.

    So Matrix, why not stop anon posting for a while and bring it back, maybe at a later date when the trolls have moved on?

    Have you ever tried this?

    ReplyDelete
  25. "So Matrix, why not stop anon posting for a while and bring it back, maybe at a later date when the trolls have moved on?"

    Excellent idea. Give it a trial run and see how it goes. I am sure that once you see how much nicer it is without anons you probably won't even want to go back.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I call BS on the "I dont wanna have to log in". Throwaway anonymous email addresses are available instantly and once you set up cookies in Mozilla your done. If you are too leet or paranoid to enable cookies too bad.

    Having anonymous content "works" only if they are moderated. So read the Shirky piece. There are advantage to having anon comments, but after last weeks MMM debacle I'm less inclined to bother reading this crap - as much. Is it worth the occasional "enlightening-insider-mystery-guest" to see 15 "meh" comments?

    One thing is FOR SURE, if you leave stuff like it is, you will be having these little "polls" every 3 months. And we'll all say the same old crap.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I don't mind the trolls so much as I mind the people that respond to them. It is easy to ignore a troll - why do people feed them?

    I disagree with Chris M, anonymous comments often have a lot of value or are humorous. I use the "other" option all the time, because it is quick and easy.

    Look at the comments on the first MMM blank sheet metal, lots of funny, on topic, non-troll comments.

    Go to the later ones and the annoyance to me is all the people responding to Mr Meh. Just ignore it. Don't respond.

    ReplyDelete
  28. what's so funny when people on the list are being mocked and made fun of and why is leaving your name going to stop things from getting humorous? it's unrelated.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Signing up for Blogspot is NOT hard at all.

    I feel that if you can't afford the time to sign up for an account, I can't afford the time to listen to you.

    This isn't 4Chan, we don't need a zillion anonymous people running around here.

    BAN ANONYMOUS POSTERS!

    ReplyDelete
  30. Yeah i prefer registered users to.
    The registered ones i see post here never troll and most of us already know each other in some kind of way in the past.

    ReplyDelete
  31. I settle for a ban on unscaled avatar images.

    ReplyDelete
  32. google is not the most perfect of companies. They hold and store personal data. Anyone with a Gmail account will be surprised to know that their whole backlog of email sent and received are sitting on there server forever! Let's hope with the whole Patriot Act that the our wonderful government does not subeona them into releasing all that PERSONAL data... so therefore I will not be signing up for a Blogger ID and I do enjoy commenting on various posts.

    Google-Watch is an excellent site that explains everything:

    http://www.google-watch.org/

    ReplyDelete
  33. I, for one, would love to see anonymous posting disabled. The comments on the recent Peter Grenader notice demonstrate why.

    ReplyDelete
  34. zackattack said...
    > Signing up for Blogspot is NOT hard at all.

    > I feel that if you can't afford the time to
    > sign up for an account, I can't afford the
    > time to listen to you.

    It's nothing to do with being "hard" - the amount of websites I have to sign into, the amount of word verification pictures to decode on a day-by-day basis simply consumes time that could be otherwise spent on making productive postings.

    The more effort it takes to post, the less likely I am to do it. Of course, that is the aim of it - to try and help silence the people who have nothing of value to say.

    However, there are plenty of posters that *do* have things of value to say - but if we're forced to jump througuh hoops rather than quickly respond, you'll lose that input.

    For us, it's not about being anonymous, it's simply about being able to respond quickly.

    But anyway Matrix - rather than revisiting this topic every few months - hopefully you can please make a decision this time one way or another, and stick to it - the debate is closed then, and we'll all have to live with the decision.

    ReplyDelete
  35. 1. Having a Blogger ID doesn't compel you to use Gmail... or even Google itself. I can understand privacy concerns, but there's surely no harm in having a Google account if the only thing Google will ever be able to tie to it is your comments at Matrixsynth? (Also, you can have more than one Google account; there's no upper limit. Get one per blog. Confuse the buggers :) )

    2. Yes, please ban anons.

    ReplyDelete
  36. 3. Oh, god, yes, does the Blogger comment system ever suck! But that's a different issue...

    ReplyDelete
  37. Oh, and personally speaking - and if this was my site, I'd probably handle it like I do my YouTube pages - everyone can comment, but I will go through and delete stuff I don't want up there (spam, swearing etc).

    People can express their opinions, but if they do it in a manner which is offensive etc then I will simply delete them.

    Anyone crying about censorship etc need to realise it is not a public place, it is Matrix's site, and posting comments is a priviledge, not a right.

    Just my etc

    ReplyDelete
  38. I am still not bothered by the anons.

    This is the internet.

    It's always been like this.

    Drawing attention to them only makes the trolls happier.

    I just laugh and giggle at trollish posts usually. They're quite silly.

    ReplyDelete
  39. I wouldn't bother. Last time you did it, there weren't many comments there after. Busy sites thrive on on lots of activity, once they go quiet, they often stay that way.

    Besides, I'm sure many anonymous posters would prefer no having many traces on the web showing just how much they waste their employer's time. Office slack is the foundation the web is built on, seems injurious to take that away.

    ReplyDelete
  40. i really appreciate being able to comment without logging in. i have no problem banning "anonymous" posts, but please don't make it login only (i.e. keep the "other" option). the biggest problem with off topic posts come from people responding to "meh" type posts. i dont have a problem with someone posting "meh", but 10 people responding with long winded criticism of that anonymous one word post (or especially the personal attacks of the poster) is when it gets excessive. unfortunately many of these responses come from registered users. also, i personally feel that many of the anon critical responses that the MMM posts received should be very helpful to george in assessing some of the possible improvements he could make to his line. this type of market research is invaluable to some companies. the people who are getting out of hand are the people who cant handle a few little "meh" comments. i thought it was funny like the banjo comments, and no need to censor. the less censoring the better. i'll take the good with the bad, but please let me decide what is worth my time reading (good vs. bad), and i can skip the rest myself.

    ReplyDelete
  41. yes ban them

    ReplyDelete
  42. "i really appreciate being able to comment without logging in. i have no problem banning "anonymous" posts, but please don't make it login only (i.e. keep the "other" option)."

    Unfortunately Blogger does not let you do this.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Sometimes I post anonymously when I'm too lazy to log in.

    ReplyDelete
  44. "Sometimes I post anonymously when I'm too lazy to log in."

    That makes absolutely no sense. You still have to go throught the whole word verification thing when you post anonymously so it takes the same amount of time really.

    ReplyDelete
  45. I'm on the fence about it too Matrix, but for some reason today I'm just saying "allow 'em and ignore 'em."

    Speaking as someone who's accumulated his share of haters, I've found it easy enough to ignore the "nonymous" ones, let alone the anonymous ones. :o)

    ReplyDelete
  46. Ahahaha. Matrix will not ban us, we make this community, and you all secretly love us!! LOL

    PS-Do you know what mature adults do? They ignore the trolls instead of feeding them. Think about it...

    ReplyDelete
  47. "Do you know what mature adults do? They ignore the trolls instead of feeding them."

    Ah yes, the sociopath's defence - "I can't help being an arse, but there's no excuse for anyone reacting to me!" A more succinct case for the abolition of anonymity has never been presented...

    ReplyDelete
  48. Just to be clear, no one is trolling me this time. I don't mind the personal trolling as much as the trolling against others, and I hate seeing people get worked up because of them.

    It's more about what you all want. As someone said, there has been a lot of noise in the MMM posts and yes it is unfortunate that people can't control themselves when people do troll. It also makes it very difficult for me to remove comments if someone has responded to any, and I honestly don't have the time to babysit.

    So the poll is currently 111 votes to ban and 115 votes not to ban.

    However, in the comments here we have:

    6 - don't ban
    22 - ban
    the rest neutral.

    So... I think it's time. I'm going to ban them for now and see how it goes.

    Note that to comment you do not have to log in each time! You only have to create an account once. You can then set login to automatic and you should be good to go. Just be sure to use a good secondary email address for password recovery in case you clear your private settings in your browser. You can then click on the password recovery link and have the password emailed to that other account.

    Thanks everyone, the site has grown and there clearly appears to be a community here that wants to keep the site and the comments clean. I have to respect that so anonymous comments will be disabled for now.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Yeah, no more shouting matches against yourself Doktor... ;)

    ReplyDelete
  50. "Should I ban anonymous comments"

    Yes

    ReplyDelete
  51. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  52. Well, that got me out of the dark...

    ReplyDelete
  53. Every blog worth reading seems to go through this stage of development and, sooner or later, bans anonymous posting. The signal-to-noise ratio is just too high with anonymous posting. Rarely have I seen an anonymous post that was interesting. Too much work to log on? What the hell kind of job do you have in real life if logging on is "too much work?"

    ReplyDelete
  54. i say NO anonymous posting! almost all the fuss and flame bait seems to derive from "anonymous" users.

    also, while i love this blog, i can't believe you're still using Blogger. i know it's free but it offers very little flexibility, and with this much traffic and interest in this site i'd consider getting you're own domain, on your host of choice, etc.

    i use Wordpress for my site, after i grew out of Blogger and grew frustrated with issues such as "anonymous" poster's etc.

    something to consider. but be gone "anonymous" poster! sign-up and own-up or lurk on, i say.

    ReplyDelete
  55. "So the poll is currently 111 votes to ban and 115 votes not to ban.

    However, in the comments here we have:

    6 - don't ban
    22 - ban
    the rest neutral.
    "

    I should also mention that the comments contain at least one person who, er, didn't realise there was a poll attached... *blush*

    ReplyDelete
  56. I chose Blogger because it was backed by Google and I wanted to give it the best chance to live on should something happen to me. I hate it when site's disappear off the net. I originally had it hosted on matrixsynth.com but the traffic tipped my shared host and they took it down - twice. They wanted $159 a month for a non shared server. I decided to go with Blogger for free.

    ReplyDelete
  57. I would think that there is actually no point whatsoever in even allowing anonymous comments. Matrixsynth will get just as many hits, be just the same, only without the free-for-all anonymous nonsense that goes on when people are child enough to be a jerk but not man enough to put an identity /reputation behind it.
    Anyone that feels the need to leave a comment and be part of the community might as well take the 0 seconds it takes to sign up in the first place. Small price to pay for this community.
    Anyone that does not want to be an identity, well, one needs to ask why they have something to say in the first place other than a cheap thrilled low-brow shot generated out of jealousy, mal-intent or lack of character.
    If anonymous, who are you? What do you have to say? Do you really believe in what you are typing and that it benefits the greater good?
    If you do, then click www.google.com and sign up and keep on contributing. If you don't then go play on someone else's opus.
    Law of averages says the above logic will be correct 95% of the time...so the 5% of positive, regular, well-meaning anonymous posters will be forced to sign up, and/or create an anonymous email account if they truly need to stay anonymous for privacy/professional reasons. that's easy.

    ReplyDelete
  58. bleh - a pox on non-anonymous comments, they are a bane, not a boon! now i'm not anonymous any more, happy?

    the problem isn't anonymous comments, it is people that don't use them responsibly!

    besides we all know all you non-anons really hate us for our freedom!

    ironic that the owner of the blog is anonymous!

    i realize none of this is even remotely funny.

    matrix is my kind of guy though, he calls a democratic process, and then subverts the results with a non-democratic poll of the non-anon elites. Serve The Base!

    ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!

    ReplyDelete
  59. Hmmmm...how come I ain't anonymouse no mores?

    ReplyDelete
  60. After reading some really bad quality comments on a few threads lately, I just signed in to make my comments now with a registered account.

    keep on turning these knobs

    Till "Qwave" Kopper

    ReplyDelete
  61. No Anons has sucked the life out of this Matrix. Its like walking through a graveyard.

    People are too afraid to go against the grain if they think others might find out who they are. So having comments at all is pointless if its just going to be filled with yes men. You can all claim that its not true but it is.


    Oh and its super easy to build a blank account

    ReplyDelete

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