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from the I-love-the-smell-of-burning-trolls-in-the-morning dept.
Things finally came to a head on slashdot last night, and now anonymous posts are banned. No more anonymous nazi ASCII art, no anonymous racism, and no APK. More in this journal entry [Ed's Comment: And lots of interesting comments too ...].
It's one way to combat anonymous hate speech and forum spam.
[Editor (JR) We've looked at the site but we cannot find an announcement that anonymous posts are actually banned; it might simply be a case that the software is not working correctly, although it would seem to be an unlikely cause. Does anyone in our community have any additional information to categorically prove or disprove that anonymous comments are disabled?
Furthermore, as there are many more comments in the journal entry than there are here, I would recommend making any new comments on BarbaraHudson's journal entry rather than splitting the discussion into two.]
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:04AM (2 children)
I say this with respect and admiration for the folks who run this site - it's a thankless, unpaying job that they've done pretty well since we've been here.
But I don't actually know what out policy actually IS for policing trolls. As far as I'm aware, we haven't really had too many - a few annoying troll posts which the moderation system is more than capable of taking care of. We have political disagreements, certainly, and some topics seem to be brought up EVERY post. But mostly it's differences of opinion, and the system mods have (wisely in my opinion) mostly stayed out of it.
We haven't had the Barbara Hudson problem (or many others on Slashdot over the years) of what appears to be an organized campaign to troll this site via anonymous posts.
So, I'm honestly curious. Have the mods considered what we WOULD do if a ton of hate-filled, illegal-in-several-jurisdiction posters suddenly showed up on SN. Do we have the ability (and will) to IP ban? Disable comments on certain posts? Automatically block posts that contain certain terms? Anything else? And, if we do have such weapons at our disposal, what circumstances are the ones we'd be willing to use them in? Does everyone on the admin team know what those policies are? I know you have IRC up and some things could be discussed case-by-case, but I'm more wondering what our "standing" policy and guiding principles are (if any).
Mostly looking for a response here from someone who's an admin on what the policy IS, before any conversation of what various people think the policy SHOULD BE (though obviously the latter is very important).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @02:47AM (1 child)
I imagine it would depend on which jurisdictions. If we remove comments that are illegal in "several jurisdictions," we'd have to remove a lot of posts. Even if you exclude places like Saudi Arabia, you have many European countries that have hate speech laws. So, I would think US law is what would matter, since that's where this site is hosted.
As for "hate-filled," I just don't think that is, or ever should be, relevant when it comes to whether or not a post should be removed. People should be able to hate all they want.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 12 2019, @03:12PM
Unless it's federally illegal in the US or specifically illegal in Delaware, we don't give a fuck.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.