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.