This afternoon Jeff Gauger announced a beef-up of comment security, and in so many words, de-tentacle and isolate our Octopuppet. We are astounded that a newspaper has to go to these lengths to protect the integrity of readers, advertisers, and the paper itself. You'd think people of a certain age would know how to act in public.Several new procedures, including real-person net nannying, are stop-gap measures until the promised new registration system is in place, which may be a few months from now.
Here are some of the new procedures. Go over to Gauger's blog to read them all.
Starting today, any new registered user will automatically be set to require editor review before publication. Until now, all new users’ comments have published immediately.
We’ll move new users to “trusted” status when we’re persuaded they can be, well, trusted, and only then will their comments publish immediately. Users who register under obviously fake names (Bugs Bunny, Canton Commenter, I M Smart, etc.) and provide a free e-mail address (@yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @live.com) will have a higher bar to cross to persuade us they can be trusted.
We can't decide if Octopuppet and its entities are laughing or fuming. A day without posting must be like a day without arsenic for it. Has Editor Gauger reduced Octopup's days to watching reruns of Deal or No Deal or dusting its CDs? We can't imagine that its taking this assault lying down, though a good long rest, preferably in a padded cell, is warranted. More likely, it's reading Trolling 4 Dummies to figure how to subvert decency.
The I Hate Canton SWAT team will be on the lookout for escapees.
Thanks, Jeff!
