Monday, April 22, 2013

Editor's Note: A Change to Comments

Hi guys,
There was an unfortunate incident recently in which an anonymous person left a clearly libelous comment. I prefer open comments, but my conversation with the victim has persuaded me that it is time to again explore requiring commenters to register. This doesn't mean that you have to register with Frozen Tropics specifically. If you use OpenID (i.e., Yahoo, Live Journal, Flickr, Hyves, myspace, AOL, and a few other services) or have a Google account of any sort, you can use that to log in. I like free conversation as much as anyone, but the victim here brought up the cost and difficulty he will have to endure to find the person who left the defamatory comment, and prove that person's identity. This is something that would be far easier and less costly for him if I require users to log in. It would also make it easier to pull comments from a certain troll.

I know it takes a few seconds to log in, but I'm hoping that people can understand that the small cost to all of us outweighs the benefit gained by reducing the burden to victims of defamation. It costs someone nothing to make false accusations anonymously online, but the harm and the burden to innocent victims is just too great for me to ignore this issue. I hope you all understand.

9 comments:

H Street Great Street said...

Sorry you and the libel victim had to go through that, but totally respect the decision.

Aliza Krichevsky said...

I completely support this decision.

Anonymous said...

Oooo! Can you tell us more about what happened? The gossip here is always juicy. So much drama!

Alan Page said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
diane said...

I understand totally and shame on the person that did this to the victim.

Alan Page said...

I support this.

Hope having names attached to comments adds to the civility of this great community forum.

Thanks for your work, Inked!

ps: New Giant slated to open next Friday!

SustainableDC said...

Thanks for all your hard work inked! This is a great community resource and no one person should be able to ruin that!

pat said...

well, some stuff, you may need to take as
submissions through your inbox, say if someone
wants to report drug activity, well, lets say that can be unhealthy to discuss here.

But, it still may need to be reported.

inked said...

Pat,
Totally fine with that. Just want to avoid defamation.