I have been watching the ‘jousting’ going on in the comments on the site a bit closer this week.
Just a reminder to try to keep it civil—please don’t attack fellow posters–debate yes–attack no.
One other item I am also watching is for posts from the same individual using various User Names. We do have a little of this going on, but it is from a newer user who just pops in on occasion—as long as that individual is posting harmless stuff I am just letting it go—if he/she gets out of hand I will have to ban the individual. It is ok to change user names etc–doesn’t matter to me really but to do it to post nonsense isn’t recommended. Only 1 person has been banned from the site thus far and I haven’t seen that person for years.
Thanks to all providing valuable information to all of us.
Tim, I hope you see this. I was going to post it into the “Sandbox” mess but I maybe it has a better chance of being seen here.
I have asked this before, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE install proper message board software on this site. I don’t know the cost but you know people will help you pay for it. Simply having unmoderated streams of blog comments just isn’t cutting it. You can’t see discussions in blog comment threads. And the utter failure of the “HDO Rant” experiment should be all the evidence you need that people are taking advantage of your good will.
I’d venture to guess that a properly run message board with carefully selected volunteer moderators, could convince some of your higher-volume commenters (who seem to think that “rules” do not apply to them) to improve their behaviors, or ban the ones who simply won’t. That would be a good thing, and many of us that no longer post (this is my first post in over a year) would probably start contributing again. As is it, this site is rapidly losing credibility.
Thank you for listening. I got my education in preferreds from your posts on SA many years ago. But SA fell apart and your site seems to be heading that way.
Thank you for listening.
Thanks for your note Larry–I just removed a number of posts and have a few posters in my sights for removal – my patience is being tried greatly here.
Re “As is it, this site is rapidly losing credibility”: I disagree.
It’s true that there has been a fair amount of noise recently, but I am able to tune it out (much easier, I admit, since I am not one who personally is being attacked).
I continue to find high value in III. Thanks again for all your efforts, Tim, and to the many posters here who take the time to share data.
I follow the site by reading the posts and comments in a RSS reader. This is an all-or-nothing proposition, there is no filtering available. So when I spend far more time swiping past the trolling and complaining and whining about SA, than I do reading actual discussion, then yes I do personally think it lessens the credibility and usefulness of the site overall.
No excuse for sock puppet trolling. You should ban immediately imo
I am guessing the user with multiple aliases uses the same IP address?
Or is there another way to be aware of it?
The web server can log things like ip addresses and the url being connected to.
The detail would really be from the web app, which would log data like the name used in the post, content, and ip address, and other html content like browser info, post/get, etc. If the web app has no or little monitoring, then the web server logs can be mined with a script to perform this. Web apps have been around a long time, and this is pretty standard stuff.
Mr. Conservative–I have a log for each post.
furcal–yes you are correct. Everything is logged for each post.