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

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

Not that your reactions weren't reasonable, but I wonder (simply out of curiosity for how the rhetorical game of trolling or apparent-trolling is played) what would have happened if you had said the very first time just "what relevant literature do you recommend?" instead of "who is this?".

In that case, your opponent in the game would have very little else to talk about (e.g. his/her reasons for not disclosing his/her identity, or for absurdly demanding that you "prove" that you're willing to listen to criticism, as if asking for further information wasn't evidence of your interest in it)

[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]

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.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[douglasperkins.livejournal.com]

mace (Linux) $ last -n 10
dperkin1 tty2 Sun Jun 10 12:07 still logged in
dperkin1 tty1 Sun Jun 10 12:04 - 12:04 (00:00)
dperkin1 tty1 Sun Jun 10 12:03 - 12:04 (00:00)

wtmp begins Sun Jun 10 12:03:58 2007

:(

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the system erased the login data by default, or if we're dealing with a hacker here.

[dachte.livejournal.com]

I doubt it's a hacker. Midnight-ish seems like a sensible time to clear logs if one is to clear them, and unless you have a good reason to expect them to know how to hack the system, it's probably better to assume otherwise.