Chicken Yoghurt: A certain ratio

A certain ratio

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Some regular vistors will have noticed that a troll has taken up residence in the comments here this week. If he'd been witty or gained responses from other commenters I would have been prepared to let it go. Unfortunately, he forgot to bring the funny in any sense, has been studiously ignored by the rest, and seems determined to derail any debate or conversation.

I've been deleting his comments but can't police the place 24/7. So, very reluctantly, I've turned on the blog's comment moderation facility. Nobody's comment will appear until it has been approved by me.

I hope this won't put off other commenters. Until this week I've been flattered and fortunate to have a class of commenter who have been generous with their time and thoughts and made this blog immensely satisfying for me.

I also hope this won't be a permanent measure. Rest assured it is just to weed out the comments from the one spoiler and I shall not be deleting any other comments.

Apologies to all (-1).

PS. If any other bloggers would like to share tales of similar inadequates and how they dealt with them, I'd be grateful.

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12 Comments:

On March 08, 2006 1:20 PM, Robert said...

Isn't there anyway to block comments from a particular IP address?

Which would you prefer - trolls, or spambots putting up adverts for viagra?

On March 08, 2006 1:34 PM, Justin said...

Blogger doesn't have IP blocking. WordPress, which I'm moving to soon, does.

The Word Verification facility foils the spambots so I don't get the viagra spam. It doesn't, however, budget for the intractably idiotic.

On March 08, 2006 2:54 PM, pip said...

I don't think that you need to apologise for any action like this. As a reader of your fine blog I would much rather see a healthy debate amongst your commenters unsullied by the crass stupidity of some troll who is just jerking his own chain. If that means using the word verification and also moderation then so be it.

I know that Blairwatch and DK have both had similar problems recently.

"non illegitimus carborundum"

On March 08, 2006 3:16 PM, Longrider said...

Justin, I implemented a moderation policy over the weekend. Dunno if it's the same person, but mine was indulging in personal attacks. I've used the Wordpress IP blocking facility. It's a bit of a blunt instrument. If the troll is using AOL, for example, you potentially block a lot of people, but you can always switch it off after things settle down again.

On March 08, 2006 4:49 PM, Alez said...

Hmm I don't like this could you not just trust us to continue to ignore idiots? Even if you can't trust us isn't that the nature of the blog sphere. Also with this post you have probobly made his/her sad little day.

What sad times are these when comentators can say ni to old ladies

On March 08, 2006 7:37 PM, Dr John Crippen said...

Hi,

I have never censored or blocked anything that has a appeared in my comments, and I have had several thousand now, but I did have a worrying reminder of the repsonsiblities one has as a publisher in terms of defamation. If commentator A starts slagging off and defaming commentator B, then I fear that as the blogsite owner and publisher, one may have some liability.

It was a scary experience, and is recounted here by one of the parties. You can make your own mind up about the merits and dangers of allowing free unmoderated comments:

http://www.freedomforall.net/2006/01/general-medical-council-its-official.html

John

On March 08, 2006 7:52 PM, Justin said...

alez, as a wise man said to me: "Your gaff, your rules..."

I write Chicken Yoghurt in the hope that people will engage with me and I with them. I disagree that this is the nature blogosphere - the person in question is of course welcome to smear his metaphorical faeces on the walls of his own blog, just not mine.

Think of it as a civilised pub conversation - I don't drink with tossers on the rare occasions I get to the pub and I'm not keen on giving them houseroom here. I've been fortunate that he's been the first and only one in over a year.

Dr C, you're entirely right. Sooner or later somebody just might just get their arse sued off. I've studied the libel laws and of course it's very much a case of "one man's meat" but there are some simple rules that can keep people out of trouble. I need to dig out a link.

For the record, the berk I've banned wasn't libellous just all noise and no signal.

On March 08, 2006 9:37 PM, Friendly Fire said...

I have no doubt whatsoever that this wanker troll is NuLabour. They must have checked your traffic.

On March 08, 2006 10:42 PM, gavin ayling said...

It is sad, but moderation is something everyone has to do from time to time...

OT: the sidebar is overlapping the posts on the permalink pages for each post... Thought you'd like to know even though you're upgrading to the superior blogging platform (I cannot believe I am advocating a non-Google product!).

On March 09, 2006 7:42 AM, Justin said...

FF, well the stats say the person in question is posting from Tel Aviv so it could be a Mossad plot...?

Gavin, cheers for the heads up. That'll be a thing of the past very soon...

On March 09, 2006 12:39 PM, Anonymous said...

Your gaff your rules is fair do by me, but its what MP's do with their selective online question answering and it annoys us all, I have been reading your blog long enough to see that you engage with people who can make a reasoned comment and don't delete those in disagreement with your veiws, but censorship is a charge you are now open too even if that charge will be as I suspect untrue. My main point of sadness is not that you took this action but that you were forced to by an idiot. long may you continue and may your troll spend a lifetime with only Barry Scott as a dineing companion

On March 13, 2006 3:38 AM, Sunny said...

Unlucky mate, shit happens.

Is there no way you could pass a cookie to this user (will probably have to use wordpress I guess) and then ban them? I haven't tried this with WP yet, as I'm also using it... but there must be a way. IP addresses are too catch-all sometimes.

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