Everyone, we’ve decided to require registration in order for users to comment. You may register at http://etsynews.com/wp-register.php.
Registration only requires a valid email and a username. That’s the same information already required for a comment. It’s that simple!
Before making this decision, we opened the topic to discussion in a post. Here are some answers to questions asked:
- There will never be registration fees.
- Registration is not required to read the site or the comments.
- Registered users will be no less anonymous than current users. For registration, users will only need to provide an email and a username … this is already required for every comment.
- Registration, as opposed to deleting comments, is not censorship.
- Since this site is separately hosted on my servers, any other WordPress logins you have will not apply.
Please see the original comment thread for full responses.
The primary reason we are implementing registration is because a few individuals were using this site to impersonate others. The editors of UEN can only catch this abuse when it is brought to our attention. We do not want anyone using our site to trash the reputations of other members of the Etsy community, especially if the abuse isn’t caught promptly. So, registration is for the protection of those who comment, not to encumber or censor them.
Other added benefits of registration include reduction in time spent moderating spam, a vast limiting of other abuses, some convenience for the user, the option to have a local gravatar (log in and click here), and a prevention of other problems in the future.
We have yet to hear of any complaints from a registered user, and to date we’ve had many voluntary registrations. Hopefully those who want to comment will find the process extremely simple. In my opinion, it’s a heck of a lot easier than actually writing a comment.
If you have any concerns about whether you’re already registered, what your username is, etc., please do not hesitate to contact me personally.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
It took a ridiculous amount of time for me to get an avatar/gravatar loaded last evening … don’t know that I’d be able to figure it out a second time.
So glad you understand all of it, Serena … it’s appreciated.
Now I’m off to read about *auto billing.*
June 27th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Serena,
Thanks for that info. THAT explains it - I’ve been uploading my av here under the admin section of UEN so the cache must be expiring. I’ll go to gravatar to upload my av.
:)
June 27th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Everyone: if you upload your avatar in the admin section of UEN, your avatar is local. If you went to gravatar.com and added your av there, it is global. Global avs can show up on any site that supports gravatars.
Unfortunately gravatar.com is not always reliable. This is why I have a cache implemented at UEN. A cache stores the avatar data from gravatar.com for a while, so if gravatar.com goes down, your av will still show up as long as we have the cache. Eventually, the cache will expire, and your av will not display unless new data can be retrieved from gravatar.com. The av should reappear when gravatar.com comes back up.
A way to avoid the above is to have a local gravatar. However, there may be issues with locals too (c.f. this article). I have to work through a lot of stuff to troubleshoot this, and due to caching and the transmittance of this problem, it might take me a while.
June 27th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Serena,
My av disappeared again (I reloaded it last night) - third time this has happened. Not sure what the bug is - can you contact the wordpress folks and see what’s going on?
June 27th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Registering wasn’t too bad. Thanks for the explanation on why it was necessary - totally understand now!