Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Big Government Pushes Comment Registration To Make It Easier To Block And Delete Offensive Material - A Result Of The May 19th Midnight Review Exposé?

Big Government posted a message from the editors yesterday encouraging visitors to register with IntenseDebate in order to leave comments, making it easier for moderators to prevent abuse from visitors.  I find it interesting because this announcement comes 6 days after The Midnight Review posted a lengthy article detailing Andrew Breitbart's websites allowing flaming to run rampant on their message boards.

Here is their letter to their visitors:
To Our Readers:

After considerable thought and discussion, we here at the Big sites have decided to require that all commenters register in order to post comments. Therefore, going forward, we kindly ask that you register with a valid email address at Intense Debate, which serves our comments. You will be promoted to sign up the next time you leave a comment, or you can sign up at any time at IntenseDebate.com. This change will bring us in line with our practice on the Breitbart.com site, which requires registration, as do nearly all other major websites.

There are several reasons for this change:

First, we wish to intensify the feeling of community that all three sites currently enjoy with our readers. It’s often said that “Commenters are Our Most Important Contributors” and by registering – under your real name or any alias you choose – you will also be creating your own unique persona, the better to express your views and engage in dialogue with other commenters, authors, and editors.

Second, we will more easily be able to block and eliminate obscene, violent, and racist imagery, posted by people from outside our community. Freewheeling discussion and debate is not only allowed but encouraged, yet experience has taught us that just a few trolls can spoil a thread for everybody.

Third, spam will be greatly reduced, comments can be moderated much more quickly, and filters can be recalibrated to allow legitimate comments through much more easily and quickly.

Fourth, registering is easy, free, and it only has to be done once.

We feel this change will be good for all of us, and especially for you, our readers and commenters. Well-regarded commenters, as measured by their ratings points, have achieved their own devoted followings and may well turn out to be the next generation of Big contributors.

Thank you for your cooperation, and we look forward to seeing you on the Big sites.

Sincerely,

The Breitbart.com Editors
As I mentioned in my article from last week, Big Government commenters were prone to posting some pretty obscene, violent, and racist material that remained on the site well after complaints were filed.

Check out this profanity-laden comment directed towards me left by Breitbart regular Kevin Stowell:


I will be interested to see if this change will reduce the amount of flaming comments Breitbart permits on his sites.  I am also interested to see if this will be used to more easily moderate and delete comments critical of the positions Breitbart & Co. decide to take.

Ironically, commenting had been disabled on the post encouraging visitors to register with IntenseDebate to leave comments...

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