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posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 26 2022, @02:45PM   Printer-friendly

The proposal to enforce AC posting for logged in members only on the main page was promulgated to all staff and members of the board 7 days ago. Thank you to all those who contributed to the earlier discussions and clearly expressed their own views, suggestions and potential enhancements. All are being studied for implementation, if feasible, when staffing and resources permit.

There has been unanimous agreement from all responses received in favour of the proposed restriction. However, it was also apparent that there was a wish that this will be only until other alternative methods of restricting spamming, abuse and other disruptions to discussions can be identified and implemented. This is unlikely to be achievable in the short to medium term; other sites are struggling unsuccessfully with the same problem. The long-term aim remains to include AC posting in all discussions if at all possible

Therefore, beginning immediately, all AC posting on the main site will be limited to registered members who have logged in to their account. We regret that this leaves a number of AC community members unable to contribute as they once did, but anonymity remains a personal choice.

This will not affect discussions in journals which will have no limits and will be open to all.

If there is a demand for it, I will look at alternative methods of publishing a small number of stories each day into a journal.

On a more positive note, there is evidence that because of the recent restrictions on AC posting a significant number of existing accounts have returned and are commenting in the discussions. The quality of discussions (i.e. signal-to-noise ratio) is significantly better than it was several weeks ago. Although we have lost overall numbers of comments, the value of many of those lost comments appears to have been quite low. There has also been a noticeable improvement in moderations being awarded with more positive moderations being given when compared to negative ones. It is too early yet to draw any firm conclusions from other site statistics.

janrinok

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Tuesday July 26 2022, @03:58PM (2 children)

    This is still less than ideal and leads to putting all of your eggs into one basket.

    I.E. Messages by X user could still be found, if X user is compromised. Or do post by X user as an AC not get attached to said user? I.E. When you click on the user profile and see recent messages.

    IIUC (perhaps an admin can chime in here), AC posts are recorded under UID=1, not the UID of the logged in user.

    As an example, I'll out myself and say that there's an AC post of mine in this very thread. If you check my posting history, that comment is *not* in that history.

    So no, that's not correct.

    I'd add that if your posts on SN could result in negative legal, social or personal consequences, whether they're AC or not, you probably shouldn't be posting here at all. Or anywhere else for that matter, since motivated folks would just compromise your device(s) and then all bets are off.

    That said, as long as you use TOR and/or a VPN, there should be no issue -- unless you live in a jurisdiction that might put you in jail for your speech (state level actor -- in which case, you're pretty well screwed anyway) or a competent and dedicated adversary (unlikely here on SN -- I'll leave the determination WRT to "competent" and "dedicated" for users here to the reader) who wants to do you harm.

    If either of the above are the case, I'd be sad to see you go, but you need to protect yourself.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Tuesday July 26 2022, @05:32PM (1 child)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 26 2022, @05:32PM (#1263037) Journal

    The database knows who is logged in, and which comments they make. How it displays that information is not the same as not knowing who is responsible for which action.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:37AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:37AM (#1263139)

      Wait, my AC shit posts are still attributable to me? 😱😱😱