On comment abuse

On comment abuse

After reading the thread, I suppose the only really effective defense against trolls is "subscriber only" + "hand-picked account suspension" in cases that seem very extreme.

I was originally intrigued by coriordan's suggestion to block new non-subscriber accounts from commenting for 7 days - but hey, then anyone can set up a new account a day, and after an initial seven days, post new spam every day from a new account. Hm.

There is also the "Turing filter" idea. This will work against automated trolls, indeed. However: I was not under the impression that the present problem was automated trolling - or is it?

In general, I am not fond restrictions such as "subscriber only", and was originally against - but if it's supposed to work, then this is the way.

One may hope that, with a "subscriber only" commenting policy, non-subscribers would still be sufficiently attracted to lwn by its high-quality content (which brought everyone here in the first place).