Require an account for non-subscribers [LWN.net]

Require an account for non-subscribers

Posted Nov 20, 2003 14:40 UTC (Thu) by bshowalter (guest, #538)
Parent article: On comment abuse

Another option would be to require that non-subscribers create an account before they're allowed to post comments. Account properties would include an e-mail address and a comment posting flag. New accounts would require a reply to a validation e-mail before being fully activated. If the account ends up being used for trolling or spamming, then turn off the comment posting flag to block comments from being submitted. If the troll tries to set up another account using an e-mail address that matches an existing account with the comment posting flag turned off, then either turn off the posting flag on the new account as well or just block it from being created in the first place.

While this would not prevent a troll from using a different e-mail address to set up a new account to troll from, hopefully the hassle of going through all these steps would at least discourage such activity.

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Require an account for non-subscribers

Posted Nov 20, 2003 14:52 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

...but we do require an account before you can post comments; anonymous posting has never been allowed. We have tried to avoid forcing people to disclose an email address if they don't want to - lots of people don't. That might have to come to an end, though, if we were to adopt an approach like this. Limiting posts to subscribers and, instead, requiring the disclosure of a credit card number seems easier :).