anonymous troll

[gusl]

Some anonymous troll with pretensions of being a professional philosopher decided to pester me.

I kept digging, to see if they had anything substantial to say. A total waste of time. I wish I were more "J" at times like this.

Anyway, Mr./Ms. Anonymous is in Pittsburgh, and was not affected by the recent blackout in Oakland.

Their first 4 comments were written from:

71.240.102.96 resolves to
"pool-71-240-102-96.pitt.east.verizon.net

Their last comment was written from:

71.206.196.145 resolves to
"c-71-206-196-145.hsd1.pa.comcast.net"

The latest comment, 11:44pm Saturday 9 June:

128.2.247.107 resolves to
"MACE.WEH.andrew.cmu.edu"

He/she also posted to this thread.

There's something to be said for anonymity, along the lines of a witness protection program... but I have yet to something worthwhile from an anonymous commenter on LJ.

But I don't want to disable anonymous commenters, because that would block the casual ID-less commenters too, who sign their name (like some friends and family members).
Hopefully, OpenID will be common enough soon.

Comments

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Yes, good point. I guess I put them on the defensive unnecessarily. They *might* have had legitimate intentions to begin with.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

whoops, sorry for deleting my bad formatting right out from under you :)

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

They might have, but given the petulant attitude of the later comments, it looks like classic trolling to me. If someone with legitimate intentions writes that way, they are only doing themselves a tremendous disservice.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

yeah.

[waste.vimicorp.com (from livejournal.com)]

i was checking technorati for 'openid' the reason im here now.
sorry for the intrusion but i can't help not to comment a bit.
im just wondering, do lj have some sort of a blocklist? if yes, then asking your friends to have an OpenID will be the best thing to do and at the same time you can disable 'anonymous' posting.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Apparently the only way to disable anonymous comments on LJ is by only allowing friends to comment.
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=62

[mr-wright.livejournal.com]

It seems possible to allow comments from only "registered users," which I assume includes OpenID (click the "comment settings" link from the page you linked).

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

I screen comments from anyone not on my friends' list. That way I get to choose whether everyone else gets to see it. I think this discourages comment spam and flame wars with Anonymooses.