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49 Comments

news

Profiling, Part Two

By David Topping

guest_1.jpg
By now, you’ve probably noticed our new profile system, rolled out in July. In the system, people who comment on Torontoist are segregated into two groups: those who have registered for a free account to post (who have their name attached to each comment) and those who haven’t (who are universally called “guest”). As of this morning, Gothamist has rolled out another change, whereby guest comments are automatically not displayed for all users––to display them, you have to click “Show Guest Comments” below any post, and a cookie will be set on your computer to always display them.
That small change is the next step in a slow phasing-out of anonymous comments here on Torontoist. Soon, guest comments will be disabled altogether and the only people who will be able to comment will be those who have signed up for an account. This is a natural and necessary step forward, and, really, it takes like thirty seconds to register, it’s free, and anyone can do it. Please do sign up if you haven’t yet.
If you’re a registered commenter, you’ll also see something new when you click “Edit Profile” in the top left corner: you can now upload a 100 x 100 avatar. For now, that icon will only be displayed on your profile, but soon it’ll be used to identify you in the comments for an article. Neato!
Original photo by dviousto from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

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Comments

  • Ben

    I prefered the old style of commenting. I don’t like having an account for every website. It leads me to reuse passwords, which is a bad idea.

  • guest

    why?

  • guest

    peek-a-boo!

  • David Topping

    It just makes sense to have everyone register: lately, to name one good reason for the system, we’ve seen a marked increase in guest comments––from a number of different people––that violate our comment policy, but there’s no way for us to reach the person privately (say, via e-mail) about it. We get accused of “censorship” (which is a dumb as hell accusation) if we moderate rude comments. Rarely––rarely––do rude comments come from registered users. Anonymity on the internet has, at least for us, been a curse, not a blessing. Obviously, some guest comments are spectacular, interesting, nice, productive, constructive, what have you, but the bulk that we’ve seen lately are bumping our quality down, not up. I’d be less in favour of a registration-only commenting system if not for the utter douchebaggery we’ve seen on behalf of some anonymous people.
    Besides, it’s a system that pretty much the entire internet has moved towards; I don’t see why we shouldn’t. Digg, any kind of forum, Flickr, Facebook, most LiveJournals and Blogspot blogs, BoingBoing, Gawker Media, and most other popular blogs require it. The sites that don’t––Perez Hilton immediately comes to mind, but so do sites like Stereogum––see comment threads go to shit pretty quickly.

  • guest

    Hello and Goodbye, Big Brother.

  • David Topping

    Case in point.

  • rek

    A week ago you (Torontoist) made a point of saying you rarely ever have to delete comments, something like less than 1 in 100, but now you say that’s too many.
    30 seconds isn’t much, but it is a barrier. If you rarely come to Torontoist it won’t be worth registering just to toss in a comment every couple of weeks. If your guest comment is going to be hidden by default you might as well not post at all.
    And I’m not sure how guest 5′s post is an example of how hiding guest posts and phasing out anonymous posting is necessary.

  • David Topping

    We rarely delete comments, that’s true. I’m saying that, in general, comments coming from anonymous users are detracting from the quality of the site rather than adding to it––but that we’re not deleting (like this from yesterday). That’s why my “Case in point” comment was made after someone compared Torontoist––Torontoist––to Big Brother, because…why exactly? How does a comment like that add anything to the discussion? And if you’re going to be a dick, why not at least have the courage to attach your name and e-mail address to what you say?

  • guest

    How is comment #5 a case in point? Snarkiness isnt allowed? I’m confused.

  • guest

    They had to register in Lodz, too. To maintain everyone’s safety, of course.

  • guest

    Insisting on registration from commentors is fundamentally undemocratic. I do post what I consider to be constructive comments on Torontoist from time to time, but really don’t want to be handing over personal information (even so much as an e-mail address) to every site I visit.
    In addition, someone who is not using a consistent connection (for example, someone using public computers) would then have to remember yet another password to enter every time they want to comment. These days, people are expected to have unique passwords for everything – it’s one thing to require this on sites where there’s actual personal content stored (any web based e-mail, for example), and another on sites where it’s really not necessary for functionality (Torontoist, for example).
    The argument that registration is free and quick still doesn’t cover this. Besides, a “quick, free” registration from every site I visit quickly ceases to be worthwhile.

  • guest

    Would you like our SIN too?

  • David Topping

    For those of you concerned about privacy––which is an understandable concern, even if it’s being expressed really exaggeratedly by most here so far––Gothamist will be updating their privacy policy (hopefully by the end of the day today). Suffice to say, we’re not going to sell or giveaway your e-mail addresses to anyone.

  • The Explosively Talented Christopher Bird

    You know, the guests would have a better point about the irritation of sign-in commenting if they weren’t all being colossal retards by comparing it to the Holocaust and such.

  • Marc Lostracco

    Because registering anonymously with a dummy throwaway email address (which you are allowed to do) is as invasive as demanding your SIN.

  • guest

    way to insult your readership, TETCB.
    Also, no one really comments here anyway. Those who do anonymously are usually deleted (and to say it’s a non-issue is moot considering this is the umpteenth time you’ve had to defend your comment policy)and the people who register seem to have one post per week as it is.
    Further, I don’t want david topping contacting me via email to “sort out my commenting.” Wtf? It’s a private email for a reason. The fact that he wants to get into a private debate with his users about what it is that they are posting shows that he not only micromanages this site, he’s willing to overstep the boundaries of public discussion and turn it into private harrassment.
    I would not give this guy my email address for all the tea in china. And when i do register here, you can bet it will be a fake account.

  • guest

    also i think marc locastrocco and david topping are the #1 and #2 commentors here. You post a news story and then have conversations with yourselves about it. Either that or you direct the discussion as though you are conducting a freshman level book club disucussion group. Weird.

  • David Topping

    It just makes sense to have everyone register: lately, to name one good reason for the system, we’ve seen a marked increase in guest comments––from a number of different people––that violate our comment policy, but there’s no way for us to reach the person privately (say, via e-mail) about it.

    That is what I said ten comments above, guest #16, nothing more, and nothing like that I’ll e-mail people to “sort out [their] commenting.” It’s simply a matter of courtesy if I e-mail users privately myself––if I ever have to remove a comment, I try to e-mail the person who left it and let them know.
    Saying that “those who [comment] anonymously are usually deleted” is completely untrue. I am looking, right now, at a list of the past 100 comments. 40 are guest comments, 0 are unpublished.
    And the reason why I’m the #1 commenter on Torontoist is that I have to defend myself, our content, and our policies constantly to people who know nothing about any one of those things. I look forward, with the new system, to having to do that a lot less.

  • guest

    “And the reason why I’m the #1 commenter on Torontoist is that I have to defend myself, our content, and our policies constantly to people who know nothing about any one of those things. I look forward, with the new system, to having to do that a lot less.”
    In doing so you are snuffing out any chance for true discussion to blossom on the site and is the very reason you have so few posters here. Gothamist and CHicagoist have 10x as many posts – mainly I believe because of the laissez-faire attitude they take on the site.
    I mean, why do you have to defend yourself so much anyway? Who cares what other people think. Let the commentors argue amongst themselves and see where it goes. Trust me, nobody likes being treated like they are 12 when expressing a point of view. In fact you should feel lucky they feel like posting anything here at all.

  • David Topping

    I understand that, and I’m trying to engage with the comments less––in a thread like this, I don’t have much of a choice. I should say, though, that Gothamist and Chicagoist basically have 10 times the amount of readers that we do.

  • guest

    Well, whatever, you guys have excellent content and a great site. Not trying to be mean but, jesus, just chillout. If someone makes a stupid comment who cares. If anything it’s funny.
    I thought you canadians were all about smoking doobs and drinking labatts.

  • guest

    also check out the comments on chicagoist about the same issue. It’s not just you guys.
    Also gothamist hasn’t realeased this news yet on their site. I bet cause it’s going to turn into a 300 comment flame fest.

  • Marc Lostracco

    It’s not that big of a deal, and it primarily prevents spam and flamewars.
    Guest #16/17/19/21/22 (who is the same person): you are allegedly so upset, yet you are the one who gets most of his comments deleted in certain other posts because of the volatile, useless flaming that you do in order to get a particular staff member’s back up.

  • purecanucks

    I agree with Torontist on this one. I see a lot of blogs and the like that are hijacked by commenters who wish to exercise their right to be stupid. It impedes us who wish to have a civil discourse. This is why, in my opinion, having some basic rules and protocols are a good thing. We have the same sort of rules in place for verbal communication (social standards). This is merely accomplishing the same thing on the interweb.

  • guest

    hey don’t shoot the messenger. you guys can continue to have your circle jerk of a site but i am offering you pearls or wisdom here. I am a messageboard expert.

  • guest

    and come on, that comic sucks. everyone knows it.

  • guest

    Thanks guys for revealing yourselves to be humourless and totally creepy for wanting to follow up posts on a public message board with a personal note. I can’t imagine what the mothership will do with our names and comments.

  • Marc Lostracco

    As David said, following-up in email, which rarely happens, occurs for the purpose of letting someone know their post has been unpublished, allowing them to plead their case privately if they disagree.

  • guest

    I gotta say, I kind of agree with my fellow (and apparently famous) guest above. I feel like before Marc and Dave took over (and I’ve been a reader for a little while now) there were fewer moments of defensiveness on the post. That may not be true, but it was my impression.
    To claim that your website is an open forum and then require passwords and sign-ins seems counterintuitive. If this was a personal blog, I could see it. But my understanding of this site was that it wanted to be more open to its readership than that. I guess I was wrong and the newest step of hiding guest comments until a reader indicates otherwise bothers me. Why not set it up the other way, so that visible comments are the default and people who want to only read registered comments can decide to do so? That seems like a more democratic decision to me.

  • guest

    When are you going to get a clue, David? Stop being so immature and treating your readers like children. Stop censoring their comments. Stop IP hunting. Relax. Take a week off or something. You run this little microcorner of the webverse like its a tank defending the holy grail.

  • Marc Lostracco

    Guest #29: Not particularly defensive; more like letting readers know how Gothamist and Torontoist work and why we have the policies that we do. Gothamist has rolled out many large changes, predominantly over the last year, which have all changed how the site works and what it looks like. We’ve also had more daily posts, more staff, more coments and double the readership over that time, so there is a lot going on…things are gonna stick out from time to time, but the decisions are ultimately for the purpose of making the experience better for readers: less comment spam, fewer flamewars, quality discussion.
    As we’ve also noted ad nauseam, we almost never delete comments, and 99% of the time, people get to say whatever they want.
    If you unhide the guest comments, by the way, it should stay unhid unless you delete your browser cookies—you don’t have to unhide them every time.

  • guest

    I have a theory.
    Deleting comments (which creates distaste) and trying to start offline conversations with commenters so that they can “plead their case”

  • guest

    Oops. That should have read:
    I have a theory.
    Deleting comments (which creates distaste) and trying to start offline conversations with commenters so that they can “plead their case” (probably not the best choice of words?) leads to further distaste, and subsequently more nasty comments.
    Left field, or possible?
    (feel free to delete my previous accidentally incomplete comment) :P

  • rek

    Since switching to the register/guest system the number of really involved discussions has dropped perceptibly. Pre-registration, there was almost always at least one post with 50 to 100 or more comments every week or so; many continuing to receiving regular postings weeks after appear on the site. Since registration the frequency of those discussions seems to have dropped to one a month, though the number, frequency, or content of the articles don’t appear to have changed. Excluding unregistered posters will probably leave a handful of us talking to ourselves.
    There’s really no need to constantly defend the policies of your employer here. If an anonymous poster crosses the line and then rants and whines about censorship of their b.s. they probably wouldn’t care to receive a private email about it anyway, and no amount of pointing to the policy page will change their mind. The only reason comments get sidetracked by anonymous posters is because you insist on engaging them on the finer points of Gothamism.
    Did Torontoist have runaway discussion problems pre-registration? I don’t recall any off the top of my head, but there have been quite a few discussions derailed since then when the topic was changed to “why I deleted your post”, and quite a few shorter discussions that only consist of back-and-forth about deleting some guest’s post.
    Not everyone will agree with your (Torontoist’s) articles, not everyone will find a cartoon engaging, and not everyone will say the most enlightened things in the comments. These are not problems, however; they are part of organic discussion and voluntary participation.

  • guest

    Hey, I sign is as guest because I don’t feel I should have to give personal information for simple tasks. Why you can’t simply delete offensive comments is beyond me. You certainly should not be deleting comments only because they ‘add nothing’ in your opinion. The reality is: bar guests and your site becomes hermetic.

  • guest

    There’s an element of screening that doesn’t sit right with the concept of free exchange of ideas.
    Only those who are registered may voice an opinion seems like a controlled environment like a Conservative Party rally or meeting where only those who attend are those who are vetted and screened. George Bush and the GOP do the same thing. This stifles free speech and the interchange of ideas.
    Next thing, you’ll be nearly on auto-pilot.

  • David Topping

    I think it’d probably be good if we all just chilled (myself included). I’ve thought about it all day, and here’s my piece.
    First things first: here’s Gothamist’s updated comment policy. Scroll down for their privacy policy, if anyone’s interested. I really hope that privacy is not a major detractor for anyone signing up, but if it is I want to hear those concerns.
    Second: I’ve been co-Editor for a year and a bit now, and I don’t pretend that I’ve got how to do it perfectly down. I do, however, get my back up when someone is outright insulting to me (or to anyone, really)––but much much moreso when they’re anonymous and won’t attach their name to what they’re saying. It’s worth noting that it’s the same five or six or seven people who are making almost all of the negative comments on Torontoist.
    Third: Marc and me are two different people. There is going to be some incongruity in what we’re saying, and we don’t necessarily speak for one another. It’s a little unjust to quote him in relation to something I’ve said, as we don’t consult each other before posting comments. The bit I mentioned about e-mailing people if I unpublish a comment doesn’t have to do with me unpublishing it and trying to resolve it––it’s me notifying them that (and the reasons for) their comment has been deleted.
    Fourth: You don’t have to use your real name as your name for the site. Note tyrannosaurus_rek.
    Fifth: Is having one more site to remember a username and password for really that difficult? You can pick a crazily-obvious password should you wish; this isn’t highly-sensitive stuff we’re dealing with. I’ve never even though of it as being a big deal or a big detractor to having registration.
    Sixth: I would like to unpublish comments even less than we are doing now––lately I’ve actually consciously stepped back from unpublishing some I would have been tempted to three months or so ago. I think the movement to a registration-based system will allow for that even better, because the comments that are causing problems will drop off the map altogether…or at least we’ll have a troll who we can identify. I’d rather have someone be a dick if their name’s attached to the bottom of a comment.
    Seventh: On what we will become––keep in mind that when this whole “guest” thing started, comments dropped off substantially, and then started to build back up again. I don’t think it’ll be a ghost town, or that we’ll all be talking to ourselves.
    That’s all I’ve got for now, but I’m all ears if there’s more. In my mind, though, this is a necessary step forward, not backward.

  • Kevin Bracken

    I love the picture chosen, haha.
    It reminds me of 4chan rule 37: there are no girls on the internet.

  • guest

    I’m not asking this to cause trouble, but out of genuine curiosity. Where are Torontoist’s servers and offices based?
    It’s one thing to register and fork over my information if it’s a Canadian server, with a Canadian back office. It’s another if this information is being sent to the States, where it is subject to mysterious people claiming the Patriot Act as justification for their information access whims and desires.
    See: http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5i3aWUDIy0ZIRdZBaS2ZelnWHTadA

  • David Topping

    The servers are based in the United States. I’m going to e-mail the Gothamist editors and see if I can get a response for you about the other half of that question.
    (And it’s no trouble.)

  • jeeff

    as someone who registered, i don’t like this because it is unnecessary and obstructive. i had no idea what was going on in this thread until i made the extra click.
    i say it’s unnecessary having spent time on the editorial staff of an anonymous blogging service which often draws co-ordinated and scripted spam attacks of 100+ comments per day. you have a big enough staff that it should be easy to contain. since this is a gothamist policy you’re likely just stuck in the middle, which is a bad place to be.

  • guest

    It’s highly uncommon for content editors to argue with posters or instigate flame wars on the site they manage. As r40 states, this thread reads differently when it isn’t censored. Not only do readers have to deal with Gothamist’s registration policy, they have to deal with Topping’s delicate sensibilities. For a site that posts snark, Torontoist certainly don’t know how to read it. Just sayin.

  • guest

    Maybe Torontoist should post a weekly editorial, and leave the comments in all the other threads alone. That would be far more democratic than continuing to censor, segregating commenters into groups, hiding guest comments, and forcing registration.

  • guest

    jebus… why all the complications? let people post how they want… add openid if somebody wants to login and be done with it.
    if a post is clearly inflammatory, just delete it. open discussion means more participants which is higher page views and hence the revenue, which is the main goal of this business i presume.
    alex

  • guest

    If it’s the same handful of posters every time, why aren’t you just blocking their IPs? You don’t have any other way of identifying them as the same posters.
    (I hope anyone here afraid of Gothamist handing their information over to the Department of Fatherland Uber Alles isn’t using Google…)

  • rek

    Ugh, the sign-in thing is buggered. I wrote the above post.

  • David Topping

    Hey Rek. Gothamist is still working out the bugs, sorry about that.
    Unfortunately, IP addresses aren’t consistent enough to ban people––but I don’t want to confuse the issue; that’s not the only reason I support the change, but the problems we’ve had are indicative of where we’re heading if we don’t.

  • Skippy the Magical Racegoat

    Sigh. The ability to post anonymous comments kept things interesting. I liked that Torontoist had the cojones to allow that sort of thing. Never understood why people are so scared of a little bit of flame-warring. That (in my opinion) was, is, and forever shall be the sole purpose of having an international computer network, or “Internets.”
    Oh well. I’m Skippy the Magical Racegoat and I’ll try not to get banned within my first week.

  • guest

    hey everybody,
    having a login doesn’t guarantee the “quality” of the comment.
    someone said earlier that you should have the guts to stand behind your comment by using a login name, but what does that mean? does it still add weight if i’m using a fake name and fake identity? i could log in right now and post something completely ridiculous and you’d still have the same problem except now you’d have my “throwaway email address” and made-up name too- so really, what’s the point?
    i appreciate the effort to maintain the site’s standard of quality but i wonder if this is really going to help.