CRN.Info and Analysis

Source: Lone Prairie Art Works

Comments: Julie decided to conduct a little experiment, taking on the pseudonym George (tho not the insufferably sanctimonious George Cancilla) on the Slice comment forums.  What she found was interesting, and revealing of the silliness of banning people via their IP address at SoL.
Memorable Quotes:

Yes. I lack integrity (scroll down to the discussion on “proxy servers”) because being banned/blacklisted means you don’t even have permission to visit or attempt response. Being banned means assuming the technology is what does the banning and not an internet conscience.

I think my main reason for being such a shade on this is to prove a point: banning a person permanently based on a comment or two you didn’t like in the past means you only hurt your readers and valuable discussion. This is a good lesson for me as well.

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Moderating comments based on banning IP numbers seems to make the most sense for a highly trafficked blog, but it also means a) you’ll need the technology to deal with dynamic or changed IP numbers, b) that you are essentially marking people with a number (a very unbiblical concept, oh my!) and c) that to weed out true weeds you kill a ton of wheat.

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If you don’t want to deal with comments, say you’re turning them off and then actually turn them off. And then quit turning them on again, particularly on the posts where you know you want lots of yes-men agreeing with you. That’s a sign that you “lack integrity” and need to prove your point by assertion.

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