Poor mis-understood datln. He posts an extremely offensive and racist comment and expects everyone to have a good chuckle.

Personally, I don’t mind reading any and all comments, no matter how moronic or offensive (I don’t like personal attacks though) but this site is Robert’s, therefore, he can set the rules any way he likes.

I can’t tell why attempts to require approval from comments isn’t working as well as I’d like. For reason I described in #31. But thanks for the ideas about making that happen, pls keep them coming.

Another thing I’d like to have available is a function that lets you require approval for comments on some posts and not on others. So if, based on experience, we expect a certain post is going to turn into an ethnic/personal/just-plain-stupid fight in the comment section, require everyone to get approval, then let open threads and less controversial subjects be comment-at-will. That would be nice.

On a personal note, as far as my own personal preferences are concerned, let me tell you about the bicycle related email lists (two in English, one in Japanese) I’m on. I’m on several bike-tech and bike-culture-for-retrogrouch lists that actually prohibit discussion of some subjects - namely whether one should wear a helmet and whether bike lanes are good or not. You can say “hey here’s a new helmet I’ve tried and liked and you might like, too,” but you can’t argue the merritts of whether riders should be required to wear them, whether gov’ts should get involved, and so on. The reason is simple: the arguments have been heard a billion times over and there’s nothing new and - most importantly - the subject always manages to turn into a fight and lead to complete meltdown and scare away anyone who wnats to have civilized conversation about whether Toei of Japan (my personal favourite) is going to have enough of the French parts from the 1940’s to keep up production on their “retro” bikes into the next century. Ponder that for a moment - bicycle discussion groups that ban talk of helmets and bike lanes. I’ve wondered what can be learned from this in our case here. I for one might be in favor of banning all talk that makes any reference whatsoever of the ethnicity of the commenters. (You would be able to say, for example, “What would that mean for foreigners in Korea?” or “Do gyopos in the US tend to agree with that?” but not “Your motive for saying that is that you’re such-and-such.”) It’s not that it can’t be done or shouldn’t, or that talk about that is racist in and of itself. Heck, sometimes it’s even quite relevant as far as the initial comment is concerned (and NOT the follow-ups). It’s just that it’s never, ever, EVER, helpful when it happens here and it is a double whammy to people who are just waiting to go ballistic because it’s _personal_ in a _racial_ kind of way, like two live wires suddley linked together. Worst of all, it’s the same thing all over again, every gosh darn time. Anyway, things like this are just my own personal desire based on what I’d _like to think_ is a lot of experience. Obviously I would never decide this on my own and would probably be an idea for the long-term so fret not if you don’t like the sound of it.n

If you would like to pass the hat for his involuntary sterizization, however, include me in.

PS: Dogbertt #33, you’re so right.

That might even be happening. You’d never know, because it shoudn’t be a public scolding.

(And frankly I’m not sure how many times people should be told to not respond to inappropriate comments before banning the responders. It is they who make the most work.)

As for banning, whenever it comes time to do that, there are different ways to do that, some more effective than others, and various methods are being studied. This is not a topic for open discussion. Not because it’s off topic in this thread but because I’d be giving hints about how to spam the blog despite the checks.

Personally I’d like to be able to make it so that some comments from repeated offenders require approval. So far I haven’t seen a plugin that lets some commenters comment freely while requiring others have each comment approved.

Like Sonagi said in #23, just put a note where the deleted comment was.