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Tag: comments

Comments, Trolls, and Moderation

Posted on September 26, 2013October 28, 2013 By Andrew Thaler 2 Comments on Comments, Trolls, and Moderation
Blogging

It was an early winter’s morning in 2009. The participants of Science Online 2009 were slowly, wearily emerging from the haze of the night before — the reputation that marine science bloggers had livers of steel was not yet a stone-carved edict. We sat down for a session, I don’t remember which, that was ostensibly about managing commenters. This was they heyday of Web 2.0, the nascent social media ecosystem was in its early successional stages — no longer larval, but still bursting with untapped potential. Blogs were still king. There were earnest debates about whether Twitter or FriendFeed was a better platform.

Someone stood up, I don’t remember who, but they were certainly qualified, and made the startling (thought paraphrased) statement: “If you moderate comments, your legally liable for anything said in those comments. You’re only protected if you let all comments through.” This is not true, but it was certainly the mentality of the 2000’s, where comment threads were fast and loose. Newspapers took this advice to heart to such a degree that even the spam was left exposed to the world. Even today, articles on your local news site may boast more comments about how much money Freddy Fakename makes working from home than actual responses to the article.

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Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

Posted on October 17, 2012 By Andrew Thaler
Uncategorized

Since the outing of one of reddit’s most notorious trolls last week, the internet has been buzzing with issues of anonymity, pseudonymity, and privacy. Joe Scalzi’s discussion of the larger issues of privacy is the best I’ve seen, so rather than rehash, I’ll just point you there. What I would like to do, is take a moment to review Southern Fried Science’s policy as it applies to our own community. We welcome both anonymous and pseudonymous commenters, and, of course, we post under pseudonyms (granted, our real identities are literally one click away). Our pseudonyms are a matter of convenience, consistency, and tradition, but we recognize that our commenters may have other reasons to use a pseudonym, including, but by no means limited to, protecting themselves from physical, social, and emotional harm as a result of voicing their opinions. Southern Fried Science strives to create a safe space for people to discuss science, politics, conservation, and any of a thousand issues related to our oceans, our planet, and our future.

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Brief Blog Notice: Changes to the Comment Policy

Posted on October 8, 2012October 19, 2012 By Andrew Thaler 4 Comments on Brief Blog Notice: Changes to the Comment Policy
Uncategorized

We’ve updated the ever-evolving, often changing comments policy and added a link to John Scalzi’s excellent “How to be a good commenter” article. As an experiment, I cleared the moderation queue giving previously banned commenters a second chance. Here is the current policy in its entirety: Commenters (including blog authors) are asked to adhere to the philosophy … Read More “Brief Blog Notice: Changes to the Comment Policy” »

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