Bi-Level Comments

Troll

So here's an idea for those people who are always cooking up new widgets for the internet: bi-level comments. One level for children and trolls (is there a difference?) and another level for people who actually have something to say.

Dustbury noticed that some blogs have "gone invitation only". I have noticed that some blogs require registration. We coincidentally agree that barriers like that are too much to bother with.

Some blogs get a great number of comments on a regular basis. Sometimes they are intelligent, or at least pertinent. Sometimes they are written by trolls, and some appear to be written by 12 year old kids who think fart jokes are the epitome of humor. Okay, so maybe fart jokes are the epitome of humor. The problem is that they are not pertinent to the idea under discussion. They are a waste of time and space and someone should do something about it. There ought to be a law!

Some blogs seems to suffer excessively from trolls. Out of 70 odd comments on one recent posting, I found only a handful that could even be considered to be related to the video. The rest were just so much garbage.

Moderating comments is one solution, but for a busy person who is getting a large number of comments it can be a time suck they cannot afford. Requiring registration is one way to cut down on trolls. If a troll registers, you can cut them off at the knees.

Blogger has a feature that allows you to identify yourself using one of several on-line id systems, or to post a comment anonymously, and it doesn't require anything. There is a default setting, so if you don't care about attribution, you can just post the comment.

I do not know whether it will enable you to establish a selective barrier. I don't get enough comments to bother.

Update April 2020 replaced missing picture.