You want to play, you've got to pay. And it's not that difficult to sign up for services like this. Having been active in mailing lists and online discussions since 1991, I'm always surprised how some folks think it's not their responsibility to sign up for discussion areas, remember their usernames and passwords, or... stand behind what they say. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Stay strong, Cory. The dude's a wingnut.

Edited by author 04-29-2002 12:23 PM
There are dozens of applications that will sign in for you(I use Gator with a popup killer and the adware/spyware deleted.) IE and NS both have "password remember" functions built in the browser. And most apps offer you a choice to sign in once if you're afraid of someone using your computer. Click once and the blanks are filled in - is that so hard? Furthermore, you can set a cookie so you don't have to sign into QuickTopic every time. It really burns me up when people start telling people how to run their own, personal sites. There are dozens of sites where one must now sign in (often with good reason.) People just need to get some add-on app or use the browser and cookies to make it easy.

The funny thing is, I'm a strong advocate of anonymous speech, and it was a real tough decision to switch off the anonymous posting on QuickTopic (you can still post anonymously, by creating a throwaway email account and creating a login associated with it, but it's not the same thing at all).

That said, it's hardly a ringing endorsement of anonymity that moo@cow.gov used a fake email addy to send me abusive email.

I strongly support the right to anonymity in many online arenas (pervy sex stuff, discussions of questionable legal stuff, etc....), but outside those areas, I believe very much in the YOYW principle. You Own Your Words.

If it's important enough for you to say, it's important enough for you to say publicly.

Do whatya gotta do, but I'm gonna miss hearing from Nixon, Descartes, Morris the Cat and other witty, dead pundits.

Illegitimi non carbonara, Cory -- don't let the bastards dip you in egg and cheese sauce.

Who gives a fuck what this bozo thinks?

I'm a regular reader of boingboing, but I don't always read the discussion links, so I didn't know why the sign-on was instituted. Now I know; thanks.

I observe that it is possible to sign off and re-sign under a different identity, for what that's worth.

"Jesus, moo@cow.gov, were you born in a goddamned barn?"

What, did he leave a door open or something? ;)

Don't let the jerk get you down, Cory.

I don't mind registering with organizations that I feel are providing me with a service. For example, I have no problem registering with New York Times, Apple, or QuickTopic.

There is something to be said about free "as in speech" speech, however. Cory, you may not want to read the abuse or even waste the time opening the mail, but I'd bet you'd give up a lot of things before you gave up the right to tell anyone, anywhere what you think of anything.

Besides, a little stimulation is good. Like Tabasco Sauce for the soul.

I didn't shut down the anonymous posting because I wanted to limit anonymous posting. I shut down the anonymous posting because I wanted to eliminate the theft of my identity. Easy anonymity was an unfortunate casualty; if it had been altogether impossible to post anonymously, I probably wouldn't have gone ahead. But the fact is that creating an anonymous identity to sign in with is trivial -- just create a dummy hotmail acct and away you go.

One of the aspects of Net life I personally dislike is the language lots that o' folks seem to think is essential. This has two aspects--use of words I'd rather not hear or read, and a personal, vituperative tone. I want more peace and civility in my life, not less. So if requiring persons to sign into quick topic decreases either of the two aspects, I'm for it.

Screw that guy. We never heard from him before and we'll probably never hear from him again. Don't feel the need to justify your actions Cory, you always do for the good of all.

Fuck that fucking fucker. (I own these words now! yay)

Anonymity is for cowards and the guilty anyway, so screw 'em. Yeah, I said it.

I'm punchy, opinionated, and stupid! It must be Monday.

With apologies for Liz Ditz for my signing in not decreasing the vituperousness of my, uh, freaking vocabulary.

I feel the need to contribute here. The smarminess that provikes! a person to assume another, real person's identity for the purpose of gentle ruse may have its place, but when the intention is unequivocally nefarious then we of civil mind and manner may resort to sanctioning that suits our communal ends. If Cory is thin skinned that's on him. If cow or whomever filched the blogger-id is a blat of dung hardening in summer sun; well I think we all understand what we've got here, no?

Take heart: for each of us there is an other who sees us as too big for our britches and feels the compulsion to ring us down a rung or two. If they see us wince at their pricks, they may find regular self-employment in hurling clods however they may find them.

Edited by author 04-29-2002 02:40 PM
Cory - I think filtering out the anonymous (non-registered) postings has the end result of increasing the quality of the discussions as a whole. Sure, there might be a few people who won't post anymore who MIGHT have had 'quality' posts that actually contributed to the discussions - but in the end if they end up behaving like that a-hole did , I personally don't care to hear their $.02 anyway.

What Cow - you are too lazy to spend the 3 seconds to sign up under a fake email address? Go pork yourself!!! Cory spends hours per month making this the best blog going, go troll somewhere else. BESIDES - you need proper accounts to chime in at other places like Metafilter and Fark, and those are only 2nd and 3rd priority sites after Boing-Boing anyway (for me).

re: When people send me abusive, imperious messages like this, demanding that I change the way I do Boing Boing, it makes me just want to give up.

Cory,

Don't let some anonymous dickhead get you down. Jumpin' Jeeziz on a pogo stick!! I don't know what I would do without my daily dosage of BoingBoing!! I guess I would go into BoingBoing withdrawal... which would make ME want to "give up."

And just to prove it, I will decloak from anonymity!

- Rod "Schniggles" Gillespie

signing in is just good form anyway. you can respond to multiple entries on this and other sites without having to retype your name and you can subscribe to the discussions you're participating in without typing in your email address. plus you get that cool blue star by your name.

nixon? descartes? really? heh. i must have missed that.

You can have anonymity without identity theft, by providing an anonymous account. Have all non signed-in posts posted by user "Anonymous".

Or heck, have someone register cypherpunks/cypherpunks with QuickTopic, if it isn't already done.

Both good suggestions, KH, for someone who wants to pursue anonymity on QuickTopic -- not my job, though.

Edited by author 04-30-2002 08:13 AM
You Whiny little one-stomached supplicant cory!

By royal decree of the Government of Cow, we demand:
- boingboing go to xml self-pickable templates
- an iron-on dedicated to MooCow
(sure to fetch top euro from bell-bottomed hay-seeds
who read this blug not-suited to wrap email virii in)
- MooCow as guest editor is she has the time
- a promise from blahblah readers not to eat meat
for one week
And last,
- "be nice to cows" bumper stickers for butcher trucks
~~~ Moo Cow
p.s. MOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo
p.p.s. You've milked this cory to the hilt!
enjoying the karma whoring? Anonymous posting? Fuck yes!
you change the goddamn rules without telling anyone
and got your chain yanked.

Hopefully, more 3rd rate science fiction writers will
DIE DIE DIE soon. Eat more meat cory. Eat a big steak
tonight. Turn this into a two-day "milking" of a
minor nose tweak.
MOOOOOOOooooOOOOOOOOoooo

Edited by author 04-29-2002 04:39 PM
Try YACCS (http://rateyourmusic.com/yaccs/) which puts the sender's IP address on the posting, so you know generally where it came from.

Installing YACCS is trivially easy.

It was a mystery to me why you started the sign-in.Now at least I know a bit more about it

Mine's a double-cheeseburger, Moo-Cow. Meal's on you.

You're doing the right thing, Cory. Don't sweat it.

Anonymity, it seems to me, is only of actual use when there is a need to hear from people who otherwise might be afraid of retaliation. I don't see the BB crowd as a very close-minded or retaliatory group. Nothing's lost by a sign in.

And *please* don't give up. bOING bOING's part of my complete breakfast (with milk, juice and toast). If it went away, I'd stagger around all day, hungry and devoid of interesting factoids.

I agree all around. Requiring sign-in reduces an unecessary form of harassment. You can still say your piece, it's just hard to impersonate somebody else while you say it. I guess "moo@cow.gov" would rather be Cory than him[?]self, but fortunately he isn't.

yeah fuck that guy... heh

I'm the original poster of the *one* "Fuck you" message under Cory's ID. I'm not this "moo" guy, I couldn't give a fook about anonymity. Just to clarify.

I really like this site and would hate to see it go away. I guess fcking around that day was a mistake. For what it's worth, I'm sorry Cory. I didn't know that you would get so pissed.

I rarely posted in the discussions before, but, if you'd like, I'll never post again. I just don't think that it would be fair to everyone else who enjoys the site to take it down. Just relax, and try not to let people get to you so easily. They're looking for a reaction and once they see how they can affect you, they'll never stop.

I mostly lurk and don't publish messages to the discuss feature. But BoingBoing is home page and I would be really bummed if this moo cow A-Hole ruined it for those of us who read your site regularly.

Oh, man oh man. There are so many things wrong with this discussion. I've posted here before under another name but for obvious reasons I've ditched that name now.

Mostly I don't blame Cory, because if this was his only tool to keep dipshit identity thieves off his own blog, then that's what he's gotta do. That's where my agreement ends, though. I was going to blow off the Discuss section entirely once the sign-in requirement started, but I've read so much codswallop on this topic that I had to set something up. It's not perfect, but it'll do for now.

First... Cory, what in the world are you doing referring people to Hotmail, for heaven's sake? You _want_ them to get spammed several times a day? Hotmail is honeycombed with security problems. I have a one-to-one correspondence with getting more spam every time I even respond to anyone at a Hotmail address. Jeez louise. Yes, it _is_ trivially easy to get a Hotmail account, and there's a reason.

For the people who think anonymity means cowardice: you've never been stalked. It's not a small thing. I've only been mildly stalked -- hell, I'd call it tracked more than stalked -- but one friend of mine was actively harassed. There are some things for which I use an email address I don't care that people know, but the world of Internet comment isn't one of those things.

Also "requiring sign-in reduces an unecessary form of harassment" works on one side only. It assumes goodwill on the part of the administrator. I genuinely don't expect a problem from Cory. However, on at least one bulletin board I used to frequent the new administrator responded to people requesting anonymity by fingering them and then reading back their information to them and saying "I know who you aaare." (Yes, this happened to me.)

To Michael Slavitch - Yes, it's people like you who make people like me set up several layers of insulation between myself and you. Thank heavens for forwarding. To Denise Czaja - Signing in doesn't mean "good form" any more than putting a napkin on your lap means good manners. It's not necessary to have an identifiable name to be a decent poster. To Parallax - Yeah, your posts show me just how worthwhile non-anonymous posts are. Golly, everyone who wants privacy must be guilty, guilty, guilty.

To JRC and Heath Row - I still own my own words even if I'm anonymous. Those are two entirely separate things. I stand behind what I say. It's just not your business who I am. Oh, and to SixDifferentWays, what, you don't disable cookies?

In short, I don't support anyone screwing around with Cory's good name, but to the rest of you, please don't pretend that requiring sign-ins contributes to Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

These stages may or may not apply to the BoingBoing discussion area:

The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists
Kat Nagel - KatNagel@eznet.net



Every list seems to go through the same cycle:
1. Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and gush a lot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls).

2. Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list, and brainstorm recruitment strategies).

3. Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up).

4. Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone -- newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions, suggesting answers, and sharing opinions).

5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed).

6a. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks an 'old' question or responds with humor to a serious post; newbies are rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues; all interesting discussions happen by private email and are limited to a few participants; the purists spend lots of time self-righteously congratulating each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list).

OR

6b. Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives contentedly ever after).

MC, you make me feel like I'm witnessing the birth of a virtual universe..."the sum assess of the world's woes"
I feel like I should wave, so everyone else who is watching can see me, and know that I'm friendly. Well, mostly harmless, that is.

First of all, I'm not stopping Boing Boing -- I just said that goofy anonymous flames make me want to.

Second, creating a throwaway Hotmail account for the express purpose of receiving *one* confirmation email from QuickTopic doesn't expose you to spam, since you only have to look at the account once after creating it.

Third, wrt "It assumes goodwill on the part of the administrator:" I'm not the administrator, QuickTopic is. QuickTopic's privacy policy says that I can't get your email address, which means that I can't discover who you are.

I'm not moo@cow. I'm an asshole, but I'm not that asshole. To me, the cow's a provocateur who took something of value from Cory - his name - and he threatened Cory's domain. Cory reacted with anger. It's understandable and justifiable. As a result, Cory has inaugurated some heightened security to protect himself and his property. Without any irony, I think it's cool and revealing. Fuck ideology, politics, Dub and Ash - it's human nature to protect what's valuable to you. Screen me, baby. I still want to board your blog.

Any chance of ditching Blogger and going to LiveJournal instead? It has built-in discussions and can log IP's of anon posters.

Ya, okay, I'm a LiveJournal pimp. And hey, you don't have to use LiveJournal.com, you can use Bryan's lj.samurai.com instead. :-)

Cory, I know you're not stopping BoingBoing. Long may you wave.

A couple of info points on the other stuff. Setting up a Hotmail account does, unfortunately, open you up to spam. Some spammers have found ways in to harvest email addresses from the Hotmail lists. It doesn't matter whether you look at the account or not. Also, I don't have a Hotmail account, but I get more spam right after I send something TO someone with a Hotmail account. I think this came up on the Risks Digest.

Excuse me for speaking in shorthand when I said "I genuinely don't expect any problem from Cory." I know you're not the administrator. But sign-ins still depend on the admin's goodwill. For the record, I don't expect much of a problem from QuickTopic either, for a number of reasons, some of which are technical.

i've been using quick topic for quite a while both as "denise czaja" and "centrs" but with the same email address for both names and i've never had a problem with it.

I still don't see what you mean about Hotmail -- I create a Hotmail account. I give it all bogus information, including bogus personal information. I have QuickTopic send a verification notice to that account, capture the URL and use it to generate my QT account. I promptly forget about that Hotmail account. This generates more spam to my real email address how?

It's kinda funny to talk about limiting spam, anyway. I've long abandoned that fight. I get 400+ pieces spam/day on a mail account I've had for years. I just filter/delete it. I don't even know how I'd indentify it if I got more spam as a result of signing up for some service or another.

Ok all you dumbfukking boink-boink readers:
I, queen MooCow, ONLY flamed on whiney Cory
for changing posting w/o notifying readers.

That's it. Someone else spoofed him.

This is *the most popular* topic Cory
HAS EVER HAD. Cory: bend over so i can
do you, you've milked this cow good.
Where the fuck is my GbH shot?

You've karma-whored enough, where
the hell is my MooCow iron-on by
Mark?
Queen MooCow, moo@cow.gov

p.s. - my prions sponge your pink matter

Hey, quit demeaning the good name of cattle!

BoingBoing is a labor of love that has also become a large public text. No wonder Cory gets pissed when people send him cranky email. You or I would as well.

If it were a corporation, the shareholders would have brought in beancounters at this point to "run things professionally" at which point it would cease to be boingboing.

One of the paradoxes of stuff that grows.

Man, it's been almost two years since this happened. I need to get a life.

why bother, craniac--you'd lose out on the company of all us other losers!

Yep, two years and I still miss it. It's just not natural to post on another website. But it doesn't seem to have affected Boing traffic at all. Probably better for the bloggers' blood pressure too.

the re-opened BB thread is now closed (and trolling posts deleted). RIP.