Monday, January 31, 2011

Comment removed



How ironic it is that Booker should write his column on how the warmists abuse science, only to have a troll launch into the comments with a stream of abuse of Booker ... and myself.


Currently, well over 900 "comments" come from this one troll, aphasicfinder (click the link and "activity" on the toolbar), getting on for a half of the total on the board. This is classic troll abuse, a process that has acquired the label "bombing" and one which, on a well-managed website, would lead to the offender being banned.


But at last, the Disqus/Telegraph team has acted. It has deleted all my posts – every single one. All the hundreds posted on all the Booker columns have gone, most of them without trace. Only occasionally do they leave a forlorn "guest" tracer, with the notice "comment removed" (above). In true Soviet style, I have been "disappeared".

Needless to say, the troll's posts are still there and increasing in number by the hour (examples posted).  This is how the newspaper supports its own columnist and his researcher - with that sort of back-up you can really go places. Its idea of support is simply to allow the troll to take over the site. Its activities are untrammelled, its flow of abuse unchecked, spewing out its stuff with an apparent endorsement of the newspaper - and certainly with its permission.

Troll activity on The Telegraph has been a problem for some time. But with this latest inept move, the newspaper has gone so ludicrously off the rails that it is actually supporting the trolls which are disrupting its own sites, insulting its own people and its own readers.  No wonder it is a failing business.  Any organisation with that much contempt for its own customers deserves to fail.

So, when we see its pompous leaders in its newspapers, instructing us, the government and many others on how to run their affairs, we might recall that this is an organisation which cannot even manage its own webspace properly.

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