It seems as if I was in tune with the Zeitgeist when I took a few weeks off to think about how to deal with trolls, sockpuppets and other pests. During my downtime, there was the Kathy Sierra harassment case followed by dispute about a proposed code of conduct. It even made Deirdre Macken’s column in the Fin at the weekend.

Different people will have different views about what’s needed, but I no longer have the time or energy to deal with the trouble created by trolls so I want to stop them before they start. That’s why I’ve written my own discussion policy, as follows.

1. This is a forum for discussion. I publish it at my own expense and in my own time. It is not a public place. There is no automatic right to comment here.

2. The purpose of the comments section is to allow constructive discussion of points made in the main post. Comments which include personal attacks on me as author of the post or on other commenters (flames) will be deleted, or edited to remove such points. Commenters with a repeated history of provocation (trolls) will be banned. Comments that seek to score debating points at the expense of others (snarks) are discouraged; this is inevitably subjective, but please try to focus on substantial arguments rather than cheap shots.

4. Coarse language is prohibited, as are racist and sexist comments.

5. Pseudonymous commenting is allowed, but commenters must supply an email address on which they can be contacted. Except in the event of disruptive behaviour (as described under 6 and 7) this information will be kept confidential. Pseudonymous commenters should take particular care to avoid remarks that may be offensive to other participants in the discussion.

6. Commenting under multiple names (sock puppets) is strictly prohibited and will lead to an immediate and permanent ban. Details of persons using sock puppets may be disclosed to others including the operators of other blogs.

7. In the event of a ban, do not attempt unauthorised posting of comments, or harassment through email, phone contact or other methods. Be aware that any such action exposes you to a range of civil and criminal sanctions.

8. Comments are welcome from anyone willing to abide by these rules. Those who don’t like these rules are free to comment elsewhere or to publish their own blogs.

Discussion of this policy is welcome, and the policy may be changed, but the policy is in force with immediate effect, and will apply to any comments made from now on.

I’ve enjoyed taking a break, and now I’m ready to resume blogging. Unfortunately, I still haven’t resolved the performance problems that have been plaguing the site. I’m hassling my hosting service and trying to implement some measures of my own. Hopefully, there will be some good news on this front soon. In the meantime, I’m going to ignore the problems and resume reasonably regular posting.

I’m hoping to resume blogging shortly. Unfortunately, as readers will have noticed, the site has been plagued by performance problems, and I need to resolve these first. I’m pursuing this actively, and hope to be back on air soon.

I’m implementing a registration requirement for comments. I’m hoping this will help to kill off spam, and also help me in troll control. Please tell me if you find this requirement too burdensome, and I’ll try to find another way around all this.

Hi everyone. I’m testing a bunch of things, and this is an open thread where you can discuss them if you want. Among other things, I’m looking at different themes (=skins/designs). If you’re interested there’s a lot to choose from here. I’m imposing the following constraints
(i) Two-column layout
(ii) Widget ready
(iii) Fast loading (not too much Javascript etc).
The current theme, which is fairly bland, is Aqueous-lite and meets all these criteria. I may be able to do a little bit of fiddling with fonts and similar, but please don’t just say “change the font”, give me some idea what you would like.

On point (iii), I apologise for the technical problems with the site lately, including breaking of the RSS feed for some users. I am looking into all this.

I’m trying to minimise hand-coding stuff and am now working with widgets like the Active Discussions at the top of the sidebar. Suggestions for good widgets gratefully accepted.

One of the reasons I’ve taken a break from this blog is that I’ve found the effort of dealing with various kinds of disruptive commenters to be more than I can justify. Unfortunately, the same problems emerged at the RSMG blog, so I’ve developed a new discussion policy. The policy prohibits flames, snarks, trolls and especially sock puppets. When the new improved version of this blog returns, I’ll be adopting something similar, though probably a little less restrictive (I enjoy a good snark from time to time, but you so rarely get a good one).

So, if you’re interested, pop over and take a look. If you’re so minded, make comments, bearing in mind that the policy is already in force.

With a hugely successful fundraising appeal just completed, this seems like a good time to take a break for a few weeks. When I come back I hope to have some new ideas, new features, better defences against trolls and spammers and some policies to promote discussion and discourage flamewars.

In the meantime, I’ll probably post a bit at the Risk and Sustainable Management Group blog, and maybe also at Crooked Timber occasionally.

While I’m on this topic, I should note the departures of Mark Bahnisch from Larvatus Prodeo and Helen Dale (Skepticlawyer) from Catallaxy. Both have made big contributions.

Looking back over the early history of the blogosphere, I checked the site of one of the early European “warbloggers”, Bjørn Staerk, and found this newly published and very impressive reflective piece. Not many people have the courage to look unflinchingly at their own mistakes, but Staerk does so. A short extract

When I look around me at the world we got, the world we created after 2001, that’s the question I keep coming back to: What went wrong? The question nags me all the more because I was part of it, swept along with all the currents that took us from the ruins of the World Trace center through the shameful years that followed. Iraq, the war on terror, the new European culture war.

This mirror of “What Went Wrong” wouldn’t be a story on the same scale, but it has the main theme in common. It would be about Westerners who had their reality bubble pricked by people from an alien culture, and spent the next couple of years stumbling about like idiots, unable to deal rationally with this new reality that had forced itself on them. Egging each other on, they predicted, interpreted, and labelled – and legislated and invaded. They saw clearly, through beautiful ideas. And they were wrong.

Who were these people? They were us.

As someone else would say, read the whole thing.

This post by Gary Sauer-Thompson on the decline of solo political blogging prompted me to take one of my periodic looks at the state of political blogging in Australia. I used the blogroll at Club Troppo, which is as close to a representative sample as I’ve seen, to get an idea of some trends. Comparisons are to my recollection which may be inaccurate

First up, there’s no doubt about the rise of group blogs. Although there are still plenty of individual bloggers (in fact the number is increasing, I think) group blogs are clearly much more important now than in the past. Most of the individuals who were blogging back in 2002 or 2003 have either given up or joined a group.*

The other striking feature of the Troppo list is the extent to which it’s dominated by the left and centre-left. Troppo uses the classifications Leftish, Centrist, Moderate Right and Right Wing Death Beast, but most of the Centrists could be counted on to prefer either Labor or the Greens to the Liberals or Nationals most of the time. I count 50 Leftish blogs, 24 Centrist, 10 Moderate Right and 16 RWDBs. What’s more, a large proportion of the latter two groups of bloggers have either shut down or shifted away from political topics. No doubt there have been some new entrants who haven’t been counted, but there are no obvious (to me) omissions of major political bloggers in the list (feel free to point out examples).

This is a complete reversal of the situation when I began blogging in 2002. At that time, the number of leftish Australian bloggers could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand (Rob Schaap, Rob Corr and Tim Dunlop are the only examples that come to mind, again feel free to remind me) while (IIRC) there were more active rightwing blogs than there are today, reflecting the upsurge in what used to be called “warblogging” that took place after the September 11 attacks. The obvious reason for the shift is the fact that, much more than general public discussion in Australia, blog debates have been focused on issues that have gone badly for the right, such as the Iraq war, global warming and the Bush Administration. A few bloggers have bitten the bullet and changed their views on these issues (for example, Ken Parish was a global warming sceptic until the evidence became overwhelming) but the more common response has been to close up shop.

A more recent development has been the adoption of blogs by the commercial media, who first ignored and then derided the whole thing. Even a year ago, the MSM was mostly keeping its distance, but now all the major newspaper sites I visit have blogs, and often lots of them. They’re guaranteed a big audience by their location on highly-trafficked sites, but they seem pretty mediocre taken as a group (MRD alert

Those are my thoughts. Comments, criticism and prognostications for the future are most welcome.

* I’ve had two bob each way on this, having joined the international group blog Crooked Timber a while back, but maintaining a solo identity for Australian stuff