13 July, 2006

Comment policy

Due to some recent possibly obscene troll comments, commenting on UAE Community blog is currently Members Only. Fortunately I have been able to delete these pretty rapidly, but I live in fear of something really offensive remaining up while I'm away, and causing a lot of problems.

We hope to change this policy as soon as we can figure out how to stop it. The problem is that people sign up fake Blogger accounts, and Blogger has no way to filter out the good from bad, unlike other systems such as LiveJournal.

Again - if anyone has any technical expertise and can find a way round this, please get in touch. As always, membership is open to all UAE bloggers, as well as regular readers outside the UAE, and also UAE-based regular readers who don't have blogs yet themselves but like to participate here.
Posted by secretdubai at 6:50 pm

8 comments:

B.D. said...

SD, I haven't noticed any of the offending comments you seem to be referring to--perhaps they were deleted before I looked, but could you provide an example of such a comment, just for clarity sake?

13 July, 2006 19:12
Magnus Nystedt said...

Is there any way of keeping comments in a moderation queue before posting? Might be some work for whoever will have to go through them, but at least that still leaves the chance open for anyone to post, even anonymously.

13 July, 2006 21:17
secretdubai said...

The problem with moderation is that (as well as being loads more work) is that it penalises actual members and loses the sense of immediacy. Plus if the person moderating was away for a few hours, it would really slow things down.

I'll probably restore Anon commenting in a few days, give the troll(s) some time to find new pastures ;)

If anyone doesn't want to join but is desperate to say something, do please email me - [my username here] at gmail - and I will post it on their behalf.

13 July, 2006 21:22
B.D. said...

One suggestion: If you (SD) could give those with admin privaleges some guidelines on what is considered inappropriate, then anyone of us could be on the lookout and delete such comments when we find them. That way there would be several people to clean things up while still letting anyone post.

I suppose such guidelines would be of benefit for all to read so they can avoid posting offensive or otherwise inappropriate comments.

13 July, 2006 21:41
B.D. said...

One after thought... It's certainly nice to say real names next to comments now as opposed to all the Anon's. If you do post comment guidelines, SD, it might be good to put in a word about people avoiding the use of Anon--which by itself would make the comment less likely to be deleted.

13 July, 2006 21:50
secretdubai said...

some guidelines on what is considered inappropriate

The usual things that we probably all delete from our own blogs: hate speak (spirited debate and dissent is fine, words like rag- etc are not), anything against Islam, anything rude against named royals, or really rude against royals in general (whether it's a fair comment or not, it's not "safe" to make), links to inappropriate content, including (sadly!) proxy bypass sites, and so forth.

it might be good to put in a word about people avoiding the use of Anon--which by itself would make the comment less likely to be deleted.

The problem is that trolls deliberately choose to be anon, or create a blogger profile that goes nowhere :(

13 July, 2006 22:50
13 said...

SD, perhaps you can try Haloscan.com You can delete and block IPs of people who misue.

16 July, 2006 15:28
secretdubai said...

GoodLookin! that is a good idea - I will take a look into it.

I'm reenabling comments for now, fingers crossed that the trolls are bored!

I think with the tragic events in Lebanon, people should be distracted from being imbeciles onlines.

16 July, 2006 15:44

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