Account anonymization on Kuro5hin is a blunt tool at best with which to enforce community standards. It doesn't let the user know what behaviour crossed the line, and it doesn't let the other admins know what behaviour crossed the line either. (The admin that did the anonymization can leave a note, if they choose.) It also doesn't let the admins see what accounts the other admins think are worth watching.

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Well, tmenezes stern demands in the queue cowed me.* And the general opinion, amongst both users and staff here, was that sponsorship was a stupid idea. In principle, I don't agree (though it did need some changes from the original concept), but I'm willing to go along with the tide. Hopefully I will get a chance to try out sponsorship somewhere else in the future. So new user accounts are open again, without any changes.

We've had a bit of a cooling off period, I've kicked out a pretty hefty number of idiots (who I expect to have to kick out again and again, but what the hell). There are a few more people with the powers and mandate to keep an eye on new users and nip the annoying ones in the bud. There are also a couple features coming to help the rest of you let us know who is being a jerk.

Meanwhile, those of you who've emailed me asking when you could get an account, the time is now. Enjoy.

_{* No, not really. Actually they would have been open before he posted that, but I had to get Voxel to fix a problem with our mail server.}

Comments (429 comments)

Anyone who's been around here for a while probably knows I have a very long fuse. I really don't get upset by much, and I've always allowed a lot more silly shit to go on here than most people would. It should be no surprise though that everyone has a limit, and a few former posters here finally hit mine on Sunday.

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Pay no attention to that timestamp above.

To be perfectly honest, I have little to say about K5 for November. Besides the fiction contest, which I'm sure you're all aware of already, nothing very interesting happened here behind the scenes.

So instead I'm going to use this bully pulpit to call for a vote on an issue which has come up with increasing frequency and which I do not know the right answer to. The short question is, should people be given the tools to delete everything they ever posted here if and when they decide to leave, and if so, how? Read on for more background, and please vote. I will hold to what the vote shows two weeks from today.

Update [2003-12-4 0:39:38 by rusty]: See update at the bottom of the story for an additonal point.

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Just a note about the new story ads. I used to have a "default" story ad in the rotation, padding out the paid ad impressions so they didn't all run through in a day. You know, "Advertise here...". You've all seen it a billion times. I decided that was kind of silly, and also noticed the fact that there are, right now, no user-submitted story page ads in rotation. So I set up an account with Google's adsense, and those will now be the "default" ads. You can still buy story ads, and they'll show up like they used to, but when there aren't any, Google's adsense ads will run instead. They're not very different from what we already had so it shouldn't be a huge shock. I just thought I should mention it. The index page ads are unaffected.

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This month: Code work, known bugs, rating stats, and good CMF news.

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It's been pretty clear for a while that the comment ratings system isn't entirely working the way we'd intended it to. I know some of you have the impression that I'm the type to say "It's perfect! There is nothing wrong! You are a scurrilous troll for suggesting there might be!" but that's actually not true. I just don't usually change things unless I think I've got something better to change it to, and for a long time, I didn't have much in the way of good ideas for what to do.

I think I've finally come up with some changes that might do more good than harm, though. They're at least worth a try. If you're reading this, then the new system should be currently running, so read on for a description of what's different and why.

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Well, folks, it's been (almost) exactly one month since our last regular update, and it's time to check in and let everyone know where things stand with the all of the various ongoing K5 projects and issues.

Details inside.

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Taking the advice of many of you to heart, I present the first in what will be a regular monthly update, this month featuring site performance news, and some things that are happening now and in the near future.

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The vacation day was pretty productive. Much nerdly info below.

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