Sorry about that

Aye, if that's how you want it. Really I don't care, and I think the decent regular contributors wouldn't be put off by a small matter of registration.

I use it and Googleblogger verification on other sites. S'okay by me.

I have to be honest and say that I use a fake address. And it is a name I think most of you would like. But I can understand why PZ would have registration. I have been on some site where people had great fun with the trolls. But it seems in the end, nothing much is really said. Everyone is taking too much time to insult each other.

I've wondered more than once why you hadn't done this long since. Go for it.

Would this enable the feature where we could click on a commenter's name and view all of their comments? I would love that because, while reading PZs posts are great, I'm now a fan of some of the regulars (but don't always have the time to peruse all of the comments).

I think it's a great idea. No need to make it easy for a BOT to spam the forum.

Thanks,
CVA

This wouldn't mean you couldn't be anonymous and use a pseudonym. It would only mean that there would have to be a real email address attached to your pseudonym -- something like a throwaway from hotmail or even gmail. It wouldn't stop the trolls, either, but would just slow them down a little bit, since they'd have to set up such an account and register it with typekey before they could post.

We went through this a while back -- there were some objections to having to jump through some hoops, and valid concerns that using a central registry rather privileged the corporate entity behind typekey.

last time I dealt with TypeKey it was wonky. If they've fixed it, sure.

I think it's better that way.. Slightly inconvenient, but the pros outweigh the cons.

I've used Typekey before and I agree that it's a little irritating, but much better than being sock-puppeted to death.

So I'm okay with whatever serves the community best. If that be Typekey, I'm all for it.

Other than the fact that it distracts me from my work, I kinda like arguing with the creationist trolls. This is how creationism was banished from science in the first place, via open debate. Fence-sitters reading your comments board can see clearly that they are getting their butts handed to them.

Actually, I started out on that thread arguing with some fellow atheists and by the end we were too busy fighting off the attack of the loons to be bothered by our relatively minor differences of opinions.

I agree. The occasional loon is a refreshing diversion.

I wouldn't look a bit different if I used my TypeKey signon. It's only aggravating when I forget to sign on before firing off a comment, and then it gets held for moderation. Ergh.

I don't think it would stop or slow down the trolls. They could go out and get a mass selection of throwaway accounts, then script out the sign up processes. (stupid script kiddies).

While feeding the trolls only make them trollier, the fact that they troll you, shows that you scare someone.

I have to agree with Chris.

IMHO open dialog is an important tool for responding to criticism of the theory of evolution. Open Conversation sets up many opportunities for people to freely comment and refute the erroneous assumptions made in criticizing the theory or value of evolutionary theory. (...or, rather, to critique, debunk and put to bed the assumptive mythology of judeo-christian-creationism.)

As for the registration...those who truly wish to post will register.

Chris: Open debate requires intellectual honesty and a sincere intent to play the dispute to win, and fairly. Trolls have neither.

PZ: I would be ok with Typekey if that stupid problem where I get logged out repeatedly for no apparent reason has been fixed. Also, if we reinstate typekey, can we disable or at least tone down the word filter?

TypeKey was causing problems over at Good Math, Bad Math; comments from logged-in users showed up with the byline "Anonymous", although their URL field still worked.

Nay, I don't think the verification is a good idea, and it just slows down every legitimate person who wants to comment. When you previously had it enabled I saw several posts that I wanted to comment on, but then I got down to the comments form, saw the annoying rigamarole I'd have to go through, and then just didn't bother.

Anyway, I wouldn't call them trolls so much as firm creationist believers. They're not a threat to anyone here, and if a few of them get way over their heads into an intellectual argument, so what. Those of us who want to ignore them will do so.

I am dead against the typekey. I have tried it a few times always forgotton my password and now just don't bother to comment on sites that have that restriction. What does Greg do? - his site remembers who I am and all I need to do is add my comment.
What is wrong with the occasional troll? No one has to repond if they don't want to. If they get too bad disemvowel them!

They don't bother me. In fact, I kind of enjoy it when they spew thier ignorant bullcrap. Reminds me just how far we need to come.

Well, personally, I hate typekey. It won't stay logged in, or didn't last time I used it, sometimes went wonky on me when it was needed, and frankly, I get enough rare cases of 403s, etc. from your blog without enabling something *known* to cause them. I really don't like typekey.

I second what Chris said, it's better to leave the commenting system open like it is now. There are much more honest contributors than there are trolls, and even if one crops up, it just gets dispatched of anyway. Though, writing about it like this might not be a good idea, because it fuels their ego. Trolling is about the power to make others dance to your tune, and if your "feats" receive attention, it means you've won. At least that is my understanding of the troll psychology.

Not huge deal either way, but I would say nay. But then I don't feed trolls and don't mind ignoring the few trolly threads.

IMHO open dialog is an important tool for responding to criticism of the theory of evolution.
The trolls in question (collectively, Legion, but there are more than one in that despicable little clique) do not criticize anything. Their aim is merely to be annoying and cause strife. PZ is fully justified in considering remedies without having worries of curtailing "open dialog." That's the last thing Legion wants so why should anybody pay lip service to it on their behalf?

That said, there may be compelling reasons not to adopt one solution or other, but concerns about excluding these particular irritants from joining in the dialog are not among them.

Suppose that instead of being deleted or disemvowelled, creationist rants got all the words replaced with "blah," except for key words like "Darwinism" and "God", like in the "blah blah Ginger" Far Side Cartoon.

For example (just making this one up):

Blah blah Darwinism blah blah blah militant atheists blah blah blah. Blah blah no transitional fossils blah blah blah blah blah.

It'd have the same content as before the blah treatment, and be rather more fun to read.

Just wanted to note, one feature on LiveJournal that I actually find quite useful allows "friends" to comment freely, but subjects anonymous comments to screening--a great tool for preventing spam & quips from the sorry results of cousins marrying.

If you want to use typekey verification, I'm for it. Summer's here, and a lot of basement dwellers are going to be getting bored.

At least, it is not spam. There is a wikia web site that I contribute to that continues to have spam added to the articles. The moderators decided to no longer allow anonymous postings. I worked for a while, but this individual has continues using different usernames.

I'm opposed because however convenient having no trolls might be, signing up for some registration will prevent all but the most hard core from commenting, as many will not want to have to sign up for something merely to post on some blogger's comments. It closes the doors for newbies to the discussion.

I think we should think about the newbies.

I vote Nay.

Enabling typekey verification doesn't prevent open debate. IMHO, it would not be a big deal if you turned it on and it might add the advantage of remembering our name/email/URL for those that post them. Unfortunately, it ptobably will not stop the dedicated trolls. If votes count, I would cast mine in favor of turning on the verification.

I would love it for you to enable typekey verification. If only it weren?t so buggy.

Don't "embolden" the creationists, PZ. You know if you enable typekey verification, some creationist site out there is going to rail against you and accuse you of having something to hide. You'll see things like the following:

PZ Moyers' doesn't except opinions of disentorz! Gawd Winz!

As dumb as they are about science, the English language and their own Bibles, I'm pretty sure they're equally dumb about typekey.

Nonetheless, it is inevitably up to you. So, do as you wish, sir. I'll still keep coming here.

i was wondering who the other yoshi was... e-mail verification i have no issues with...

half the fun is seeing how stupid trolls are. after all, they are legion, and their stupidity is colossal. otherwise you got an echo chamber. but i won't quit reading if you do it.

I will not claim to understand 'troll' psychology but prolonged verbal evisceration should over time quash any ephemeral gratification a troll gets from steering the debate-- one must occasionally read (and respond) to be a troll, and that means reading the cyber communities' flensing of one's beliefs.

I rather like Ray C.'s idea.

Oops, I mean:

Blah blah blah Ray C. blah.

There is a lot of entertainment value in the occasional troll. Ban them when they make a genuine nuisance of themselves. Otherwise, let them babble for our amusement.

I wonder if that Kansas community college has summer classes (my California community college certainly does) where the wankers can find something other than wanking to keep their hands busy.

As long as it isn't broken, I don't see a problem with it. Didn't you have some sort of verification like that a while back?

I may be wierd, but I *like* having the opportunity to stomp on creos and trolls....

If my vote counts (as an alien, probably not!) I'd say no typekey - it would rob my day of so much...

oh, and I like Ray C's idea too. Would be a great improvement over disemvowelment. Shouldn't be a terribly difficult sed/awk script...

Long time reader, first time poster -- could you please stop denigrating the noble art of masturbation by attributing its practice to your perceived enemies? I don't know what masturbation did to upset you but whatever it was, I am sure it is very sorry and would like to make it up to you.

Love the blog otherwise! Keep up the great work.

I'd just like to put in a good word for surfing the internet and masturbation. Neither activity, even in combination, necessarily leads to Creationism.

The last time TypeKey was running here and at other ScienceBlogs (I think Respectful Insolence had it), it was pretty buggy and annoying. Several times I lost long comments to the void when I either forgot to log-in, or forgot to log-out on other sites. Annoying. And I doubt such a system would really slow down the trolls. I thought TypeKey and its ilk were for slowing down bots and spiders, not real (stupid) people.

As for Ray C.'s Blah-inator idea, that's one of the best things I've seen all week. Is there an easy way to implement such a system?

...nothing to do but troll the internet and masturbate.

Ah, to be young again...

Typekey if you wish. I think it'll cut down SOME of the creation-monkeys, while leaving enough around to be amusing. Sort of a culling process, y'know?

mmmm.... culling the creation-monkeys... "Git th' pitchfork and the elastinators, Helen, it's time for a culling..."

Having been impersonated by a creationist (which is better than being impregnated by one, I guess) I'm up for verification.

BTW, the Larson "Ginger" cartoon is my very favorite, as if anybody cares, and blah blah blah Darwinism blah sums up things perfectly.

Blah blah Ray C blah blah genius blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.

A once heard of a real person named Bob Loblaw. Blah blah blah.

I'm opposed to type key verification.

I'm not a fully out of the closet atheist and I really don't like the idea of having to register and have my comments tracked? Paranoid? Probably. But I live in a country that actually Googled a Canadian psychotherapist at the border and refused him entry because he admitted using drugs 40 years ago--and he's never allowed in again. A little paranoia may be justified.

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/50948/

As long as the comment entry is plagued by the same problems as blogspot or blogs like the Huffington Post, I would be fine with it.

This seems relevant: Jimmy Whales, Don't Design Communities Around Worst Possible Behavior.

"But I live in a country that actually Googled a Canadian psychotherapist at the border and refused him entry because he admitted using drugs 40 years ago"

hey, I too used LSD years ago, can *I* be barred from the US? (I may have just found my way out!)

I like Ray C's idea as well... But having it use the alien words from Lovecraft (C`thulhu Ftagn) would be better. Best yet would be Squid instead of blah. Or Cephalopod, or mixtures of those two.

I kind of dread adding on something that might be buggy but I don't have any other problems with it.
On the other hand, I think the trolls add something. It's easy to forget just how nuts these folks are. Trolls are a real life example of what we are dealing with. Besides, maybe someday one will come up with something interesting to say or some new, actual point. Not very realistic of me to hope for that.

You have my aye vote for turning on verification.

Blah blah iai iai blah blah ginger blah cephalopodmas blah blah squamous blah blah TypeKey.

I think some sort of captcha would be less annoying than trolls, as long as it's not suffering from problems that prevent honest folk from posting. LiveJournal also has the OpenID system (I think that's what it's called). I don't think I've ever been able to get any of those cross-system logins to work for me, but then I haven't been trying very hard.

@ # 45.

When I read your comment, i laughingly and sarcastically said "what, the U.S.A.?!" inside my head. Then I checked the link, and now i'm just slighltly more disillusioned. Figures the researcher would be a Canadian, eh (yay Liberal society!).
Reminds me of my supervisor/prof's border-story: He tells the U.S. border-guard he's a biochemist, the guard says to him "But it says here you have a doctorate of philosophy..". True story.

As for registration, it would probably have inhibited my commenting in the first place, but since I've already set up a pseudonym and gmail account, I'm not against it in principle. I don't really think it's a troll-stopper though...and i do enjoy dsmvwlmnt, nd fgrng t wht th mssg ws bfr t ws dsmvwld. But it's probably labour intensive for PZ.

So I guess I'm voting yes.

PBC.

If Typekey could actually remember me like it says it's supposed to, then I wouldn't mind. And if you ever dissed Scott Adams again, it would at least stem the tide of Dildoids somewhat. It's not so much the trolls I mind, it's the hit-and-runners and the people who don't read the thread before commenting.

Another yes vote here for verification.

I support the opposite of comment 49. That's what Skatje does! Comments by persistent trolls are prefixed by

[Editor's note: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.]

and have words like "God" replaced by words like "Cthulhu". That makes for a wonderful read!

wouldn't mind registering. and as for the free-and-open debate point, it's a good one, but apply that to any thread that has davison and his monkey in it...

he's like the agent smith of commenters...just keeps coming, with nothing but void to offer you. makes one a bit ill

Don't care one way or the other, myself.

@David Marjanović

I had heard someone did it, I just didn't know who it was.

hey, whatever cuts down on the work of maintaining the blog, do that.

For what it's worth, I just scroll past comments by an obvious troll. I am not so crazy about typekey.

The so called christian trolls are so predictable. The behavior pattern could be called robotic except that would insult robots.

OTOH,I'm reminded why I soured on organized religion. The believers are no better than the rest of us. If anything they are a lot worse. Led to a lot of questions of what good religion is, if it makes no difference in what a person does or says. The Kansas cultie xtian trolls are great examples of how mind control and a stupifying existence can warp people's minds and lives.

Well you could always use the Blasphemy Challenge as a CAPTCHA.

You'd have to affirm that you deny the existence of the Holly Ghost to post.

Of course that is sort of the equivalent of having gang initiates kill some one to get in and it really wouldn't be fair to the more fair-minded Christians, so I wouldn't actually support such a notion even though I think the idea is an amusing one.

The problem isn't the dumb trolls, it's the people who respond to them.
I know, you like the endorphins.. some of you even say "Sorry for feeding the troll, but..." and then do it anyway. Well, duh...

I have a suggestion though: if you're going to ban people, I suggest the infamous "shadow-ban": to them it looks like they're not banned, but no one sees their comments. Don't announce it, it just happens.. that way the troublemakers might go for hours without noticing.

He never did learn the difference between "its" and "it's", even though I pointed out that it made him look retarded.

One vote no.

The trolls that derail threads are obviously motivated and have time on their hands. They will spend the brief time required to use a throwaway web-email address. That is a small comittment compared to the time spent typing their comment blather.

New readers who just might become new commenters are not so obviously motivated. Please do not put even a small hurdle in front of those folk who have yet to form a Pharyngula habit.

Ignore the trolls. Nurture the newbies.

Alternative to Skatje's preface method:

Я люблю очень большого кальмара!

{ @ v @ }
///||\\\

"He never did learn the difference between "its" and "it's", even though I pointed out that it made him look retarded."

Perhaps he's afraid of homophones and is "homophonbic?"

Well, I try not to worry too much about words with two ways to write them. Besides, my fingers type "their" when I'm thinking "there" all the time, so I must be cautious when excoriating others for homophonic orthographic ignorance even when I know they're wrong.

Would this enable the feature where we could click on a commenter's name and view all of their comments? I would love that because, while reading PZs posts are great, I'm now a fan of some of the regulars (but don't always have the time to peruse all of the comments).

I agree with Sonja; that would be very cool.

I would like to pre-emptively nominate Gilmore at #40 for an OM. One post on this blog and he made me laugh so hard my roommate had to stick his head in here to see what was so funny. That's an enviable record.

I'm agnostic (ha ha) on the Typekey thing. Unlike tons of people here, I've never had a smidge of trouble with it, but on the other hand, the idiot trolls also rather amuse me.

Besides, my fingers type "their" when I'm thinking "there" all the time, so I must be cautious when excoriating others for homophonic orthographic ignorance even when I know they're wrong.

No, I do it too, and I usually let it slide, but this guy... every single post was misusing one of them, and it was bugging me.

I know I can't educate creationists about science, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to try to impress grammar upon them.

I am adamantly opposed to TypeKey. It's centralised and a perfect target for crackers. OpenID is a better choice, although I'm still reluctant.

I assume you're in a position to know the troll attends a community college...you aren't just ragging on community colleges, right? OR masturbation...

I'm not a fully out of the closet atheist and I really don't like the idea of having to register and have my comments tracked?

Your comments are being "tracked" every time you use the same nym. Relax, Typekey doesn't collect personal info, nor does it store your comments anywhere. That happens every midnight when the NSA archives Pharyngula.

It's centralised and a perfect target for crackers.

It's not like TypeKey knows your name, your credit card number or where you live. It's a lot easier for me than having to enter my info every time I post... that is, if TypeKey has decided to start working. Last time it said I was logged in, when I posted it said I wasn't logged in, then refused to log me in because I was logged in. :rolleyes:

My vote is no. Let the trolls post unless they are getting particularly abusive.

Like Diogenes begging from a statue, interacting with trolls is good practice.

And Practice Makes Perfect.
.

P.S., I had to explain one of my responses to a (non-abusive) troll post in a following post so it would make sense.

All it took to expose the troll was clicking on his name & seeing his "website".

Machts nichts zu mir.

However, I'll now have to remember what my TypeKey id is. Also, it IS buggy, as other posters have mentioned.

fusilier
James 2:24

The only problem with enabling typekey is that you raise the bar of commenting inconvenience for first-time or infrequent visitors. If I didn't already have a typekey account, I would be unlikely to fill one out just so I could post a small comment on a blog where I wasn't a regular.

Your comments are being "tracked" every time you use the same nym. Relax, Typekey doesn't collect personal info, nor does it store your comments anywhere. That happens every midnight when the NSA archives Pharyngula

Indeed I know that all websites have referrer logs, IPs for page requests and posts and such. However, I generally don't use the same handle on different blogs. This makes profiling me by my posts more difficult. Using a type key identity would make using different handles on different blogs more troublesome, especially if more blogs decide use type key.

Hey, I know a lot of what we do can be tracked unless we take extreme measures. I'm not planning on going to extremes, but I don't want potential clients to Google me and decide not to hire me based on my forum posts. So, I see no reason to make tracking my posts easier.

Speaking of IPs I would think that PZ knows which college the troll attends by the IP the troll posted from. It is easy to look up the IP in whois or what not. A reminder to us all, PZ knows where you live (well, roughly...)

PZ knows where you live

Does he know if we've been bad or good?

this omniPZence is a force to be reckoned with.

While I am basically a lurker, I am hooked on Pharyngula. I post only occasionally, and the initiation of Typekey would not stop me from making an observation. I find trolls of limited entertainment value, not devoid of it, but they become tiresome very quickly.

Is it technically possible for you to add an item to the Posted by: line? Specifically the poster's IP address, hashcoded to protect the guilty.

If so, then any reader could notice it if multiple names are posting from the same address. With shared computers and (rarely) hashcode collisions, it would not be 100%, but could still serve as a useful alert.

Obviously this would require some work on your part, but it wouldn't require any change in the way commenters did things.

On a somewhat related note, would it be possible for trollpostdeletion to leave an empty post behind, so numbering doesn't get messed up? If it were possible, would it be a good idea?

It seems probable that the Kansas community college that the little wanker attends is out for summer, so he and his little friends are going to be hanging out in his parents' basement a lot, with nothing to do but troll the internet and masturbate.

And faced with such a choice, they decide to troll the internet. Is any more evidence of brain damage required?

I think it would be trivial to add an IP number to the comment...but would people want that? Some probably want to retain a little privacy, and that might be revealing too much...especially since it would be a retroactive change, and all past comments would also have their IPs exposed.

Unfortunately, the trollpostdeletion process as currently implemented is a wholesale removal of the offending post -- just zapping the content would require manually going through each one. As it is, I just get a screen with a bunch of check boxes, I click once on each offender, and then press the "junk" button. I don't want to make it any more complicated.

heyo, there's a new batch of trolls to experiment on in the last religion thread.

I've done an example of the blah-blah technique; could someone go over there and use the Cthulu technique on one of Jeff's recent trolling efforts?

I'd like to compare.

We already need to provide an email address for the comments to function. Why not have registration as well, so we don't have to worry about someone impersonating us?

I wish some programmer would write a 'honeypot' (Turing Test type) blogging tool to attract trolls. A site that seemed like it was occupied, posted reasonable discussions to start off, but when the trolls showed up, provided feedback to keep them there, hook them, make them rant --- encourage them, get them to invite all their friends, act enraged, keep egging them on, criticize their spelling and grammar and holy book quotations. Do it all with automated postings. Track their IPs. Convince them someone was actually paying attention to them.

Then let it run and ignore it and hope it distracts them, so it gets a little quieter where there are real conversations going on.

The only problem with enabling typekey is that you raise the bar of commenting inconvenience for first-time or infrequent visitors. If I didn't already have a typekey account, I would be unlikely to fill one out just so I could post a small comment on a blog where I wasn't a regular.

uh, wait...

isn't that kinda the point?

PZ, I don't know how much control you have over the software, but I would think that a relatively simple solution would be to be able to tag certain IP addresses as having been used by trolls. When a poster posts from one of these IP addresses, a message appears alongside the post noting that the IP address has been used by known troll #X.

This keeps the actual IP address hidden, and in the case of shared IP addresses, we are very quickly going to figure out whether someone is a troll or not. That way we don't end up giving the benefit of the doubt to to "new" sockpuppets, such as Peanut Gallery.

Displaying IP addresses? No, thank you. Typekey? Maybe... It sounds inconvenient and buggy, though.

I suggest adopting a wait-and-see policy. Note that there was a troll flare-up on June 12th, and you'll soon know whether it was the start of a trend, or nothing more than an isolated spike.

to: Ichthyic at #90

No, the point is to keep away trolls, who go out of their way to post annoying spam repeatedly in hopes to dispirit us. Many of them won't let some silly sign in keep them out for long.

How about having a separate troll thread as they sometimes do at the Richard Dawkins commission for truth and reconciliation? Posts can be marked as troll and then sent to a separate thread, so they are still there to delight but don't disturb the main thread.

its good to know you keep monitoring on comments, well you have reallly setup a nice blog with lots of useful information..

"Chris: Open debate requires intellectual honesty and a sincere intent to play the dispute to win, and fairly. Trolls have neither."

Actually no.... If one side in the debate reveals itself to be systematically dishonest and unfair, eventually everyone notices this and they lose the debate.

picket churches, you say?

sounds a lot easier than burning them to the ground. sounds a bit boring, though.

Still, I'll bring up your suggestion at the next Church Burnin' Ebola Boyz meeting.

Hey, hey, didn't you read the sign?

No Feeding!

I thought P. Gall. was an old troll. I'm sure I remember seeing it around these parts a year or so ago. I was a bit surprised to see it posting again under that name.

But noone else seems to remember it. Maybe I'm going mad.

Icthyic,

WHAT? Church Burnin' Ebola Boyz? WITH A Z????

Listen, pal, I don't know what you signed up for but when I burn churches and spread ebola it doesn't involve some sort of prissy froo froo respelling of Boys with a z. Honestly, we'll be singing about girls (girlz??) in some sort of baggy jeaned close harmony and worrying about our hair next. What is the world coming to.

Yours disgruntledly

Louis (Church Burning Ebola Boy)

Church, pocket pool, and drooling on the internet... good times...

I voted yes earlier for verification, but I'm chiming in with a big fat NO for displaying IP addresses. What's worse is that the IP address display will be retroactive, so even those of us who will refrain from commenting so that our IPs don't get displayed really have no choice--it will show up on all of our earlier comments. Ugh!

I'd rather put up with the trolls any day, if it's a choice between displaying IPs or leaving things as they are.

Please, no IP address display... mine changes anyway ("dynamic"). But you can tell a lot from an IP... location, primarily. Just what a stalker would want to locate someone. Thanks, but since I have an abusive ex-husband who threatened my life, I will have to opt out.

e-mail verification yes - ip address displaying - absolutely not.

Some people post from work - my static ip address from home actually has my real name in the reverse dns lookup.

I don't know much about typekey but straight e-mail verification for first-timers I have no issue with.

I've noticed you've implemented a comment delay feature. Which is circumventable by make a one character change in any of your information. How is that suppose to curb trolls?

Maybe I'm naive, having gotten virtually no "troll traffic" at my site, but what's the big deal? If idiots want to come to Pharyngula to display their ingnorance, how does that hurt the site? Also, deleting comments can be a slippery slope. Without a concrete & rigidly followed definition for "troll," it's likely that anyone who disagrees with a particular post or opinion could be tarred with the "troll" brush, even if their disagreement and/or reasoning is valid. Many supposedly liberal sites seem to have broad & constantly fluctuating definitions of "troll." I vote no.

Using a type key identity would make using different handles on different blogs more troublesome, especially if more blogs decide use type key.

That's why I have multiple email accounts. :-) It's a slight pain to switch accounts, but I also like to keep everything compartmentalized, and have been doing so since the 'net was young and mammoths roamed the earth, so I'm somewhat used to it.

So, I see no reason to make tracking my posts easier.

Well, I have found the perfect solution to that problem. There is absolutely no information by which you could identify me linked to any of my nyms. I'm not paranoid, I just can't be bothered, and I prefer the "brain in a jar" appoach to online interaction.

Many supposedly liberal sites seem to have broad & constantly fluctuating definitions of "troll."

Oh, just caught this.

The reason that there are more posts identified as trolls on liberal blogs than on conservative blogs is the same reason that there are more troll posts on evolution blogs than on creationist blogs.

1) Many conservative/creationist blogs do not even allow comments.

2) In my experience, you are much more likely to get the boot from a conservative/creationist blog for merely disagreeing than from a liberal/evolution blog.

3) Many conservative/creationist trolls claim to have been banned from blogs when they actually haven't been. I've seen this a few times, usually it's some technical issue that the trolls are too stupid to recognize.

If it is not too much work I second the suggestion for a parallel troll thread as used on RDF with troll button. Nobody gets sent there automatically but clicking a post's troll button brings the post to the attention of admin who decides whether that particular post goes in the troll thread or not and whether further of their troll posts get sent there automatically or not. That way, those who want to play with the trolls can do so without the trolls messing up the main thread.

Graculus - Yep. You nailed it.

If it is not too much work I second the suggestion for a parallel troll thread as used on RDF with troll button.

like the Bathroom Wall on PT?

Jennie #99 - No, it's not just you. I remember a "Peanut Gallery" from some months ago.

If registration requirements had effect against trolling idiots, most web forums wouldn't need moderators. It doesn't work that way. Disposable email addresses are so easy to come by that simple registration doesn't even slow down trolls.

The only semi-effective technical anti-trolling measure is to require users to register with non-webmail email addresses. Real email addresses are still hard enough to find to be effective at keeping trolls out. Note that this would be a very disruptive step to take.

At present, I suggest banning the entire IP netblock of the college this bunch of morons are abusing. Divert page loads from the college netblock to a large image of goatse or something similar. What legitimate readers are caught up in the process ought to have chosen a better college in the first place.

I agree with Chris.

I've learned a lot by lurking and reading the responses to trolls. When you feed the trolls, you're also feeding interested laypeople.

I support the opposite of comment 49. That's what Skatje does! Comments by persistent trolls are prefixed by

[Editor's note: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.]

and have words like "God" replaced by words like "Cthulhu". That makes for a wonderful read!