In the seven years I’ve been writing for Punknews a debate over anonymous comment posting has arisen at least once every six months. It may actually make up the bulk of the staff email traffic. Whenever this bout of soul searching hits us we’ve always justified our lax regulations one way or the other, perhaps naively believing that for every coward hiding behind some racist, homophobic or misogynistic slur there’s an army of good minded people here to counter them.

However as we see more and more individuals gaming the system and we’re continually confronted by artists we respect asking why there’s so much negativity here, it has become clear that the issues are not sorting themselves out. Quite frankly it sucks to see one anonymous IP address post several hateful comments under an article and singlehandedly drag the entire community into the muck. It’s not fair that our volunteers should be expected to police that.

As of this morning anonymous comment posting on Punknews has been disabled. You will now have to be logged in to a user account to post comments on articles and reviews.

Signing up for an account is free, easy and private. With an account you can remain effectively anonymous and your email will address be hidden from everyone. You can sign up here. Registered users can rate bands and reviews, building recommendations and links between artists for the whole community to share and discover. Registered users also get their own profile page showing recent comments, top rated bands, their favourite records and more.

Saturday Testing: There are bound to be a few hiccups as we test the revised comment system today. Let us know if you see anything funny going on and we’ll take a look.
Source In the seven years I’ve been writing for Punknews a debate over anonymous comment posting has arisen at least once every six months. It may actually make up the bulk of the staff email traffic. Whenever this bout of soul searching hits us we’ve always justified our lax regulations one way or the other, perhaps naively believing that for every coward hiding behind some racist, homophobic or misogynistic slur there’s an army of good minded people here to counter them.

However as we see more and more individuals gaming the system and we’re continually confronted by artists we respect asking why there’s so much negativity here, it has become clear that the issues are not sorting themselves out. Quite frankly it sucks to see one anonymous IP address post several hateful comments under an article and singlehandedly drag the entire community into the muck. It’s not fair that our volunteers should be expected to police that.

As of this morning anonymous comment posting on Punknews has been disabled. You will now have to be logged in to a user account to post comments on articles and reviews.

Signing up for an account is free, easy and private. With an account you can remain effectively anonymous and your email will address be hidden from everyone. You can sign up here. Registered users can rate bands and reviews, building recommendations and links between artists for the whole community to share and discover. Registered users also get their own profile page showing recent comments, top rated bands, their favourite records and more.

Saturday Testing: There are bound to be a few hiccups as we test the revised comment system today. Let us know if you see anything funny going on and we’ll take a look.
Source