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Newspaper Tracks Down Anonymous Commenter, Gets Him Fired Just for Fun

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:21:26 -0600

Many online commenters try and compensate for their lack of insight into the subject at hand by summoning their ability to enliven even the most vapid discussion with a highly stimulating cocktail of profanities. But not everyone can fully relish this amazing ability as not everyone possesses it. The practitioners of this colorful art are often persecuted by the prim archpriests of insipid internet discussions.

An anonymous commenter paid with his job for what was an earnest attempt to breathe some life into a discussion on a newspaper’s site. Last Friday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a blog post titled “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? And did you like it?” One anonymous user replied with “a single word, a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy.” But his terse reply was deleted within one minute of being posted (probably for being way too brief). The obdurate commenter returned to repost his single-word comment, only to have it deleted once again.

But the paper’s director of social media, Kurt Greenbaum, who had posted the concerned article, managed to track down the anonymous poster using the WordPress e-mail alert that accompanies every comment. The alert included the commenter's IP address, which was found to be from a local school.

“About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot,” Greenbaum wrote in a blog post on Monday. Was it right on the paper’s part to pursue an anonymous commenter? If yes, then what is the point of allowing anonymous comments? Have your say without the fear of getting fired.

Image Credit: Bio Job Blog

Murphy's Law: Do Open-Source Social Networks Matter?

David Murphy — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:55:52 -0500

When's the last time you surfed on over to your Pligg and updated what you were doing for the entire Internet to see? What about Elgg? Have you changed your favorite movies to reflect that big blockbuster hit you saw this weekend? You probably don't have to, because all of your friends using the Tweetero client on their iPhones could just log on and see exactly what you were up to. Or not. Because you aren't on Twitter -- you're on Identi.ca, the open-source equivalent of the popular messaging program.

Unlike the open-source software world, where even the smallest gems of programs can find a meaningful existence, the open-source social networking world depends on people. Masses of people. You can't just launch a new social networking platform and expect it to flourish if it doesn't have a decently sized audience. And you're never going to pull away the users that are already comfortable on their existing Web 2.0 platforms if you just imitate the best practices of the current litany of sites. But that's what's happening in the open-source social networking world right now. There's a healthy mix of innovation and duplication, giving some segments of the online world new and interesting applications... and others with their 25th version of Twitter.

Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg says it best: "There’s been an explosion of social activity on the web, it’s probably the most important trend of the past few years, but there’s been a dearth of Open Source tools that enable the social web." I agree, but I'd be willing to take the argument one step further and say that there are plenty of open source tools to allow a person, or company, to experiment with the social networking space akin to a MySpace or a Facebook. One of the latest Wordpress side projects, Buddypress, allows one to tap into that very environment. But there are certainly other open-source social networking tools: both Elgg and Pligg, mentioned previously, are strong examples.

And while an application like Elgg has found strong support in individual use scenarios, there has yet to exist an open-source social community on the scale of a Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. But that's precisely the point. An open-source model is not going to find success in the modern social Web because it's competing against the prevailing mindsets of the users that populate existing environments. In short, they aren't going to move. They aren't going to move because they're already established on a successful, sprawling social network. And that mindset is going to carry over even if, through some awesome power of the development community, the open-source social network offers increased functionality to the established community. k

It's important to distinguish that I'm only talking about social networks at this point. Open-source applications that involve some element of community, but are not social networks in the true sense of the phrase, are spared from the users-dropping-their-anchors-and-staying scenario. Just consider all of the different CMS and photo-themed Web applications that are open, useful, and popular. Just because Flickr or Smugmug exists doesn't mean that there's no market for Coppermine. The commercial arm of MoveableType certainly hasn't cornered the world on blogging software, nor has it pushed out the open-source equivalents.

But that's because these entities don't depend on a community to thrive, per se. Ten people in the entire world can install Wordpress and that application would still have some functional use. A thousand people could switch to Identi.ca, and I can guarantee that not a peep would be heard from the millions of Twitter users worldwide. I really hate the "community is king" jargon, but when it comes to social networks, it's true. And what's easier for an aspiring developer to do: build a competing social network from the ground up, or find new ways to make use of these existing, sprawling communities to further an open agenda? Why build an Ubuntu network if you can leverage the power of the existing herd where they already are?

So what's the takeaway? When open-source is just a vision or a programming goal, it can achieve its goals regardless of the size of the community that grows around it. But when you throw social networking into the mix, open source development gets hit with a wrench. While a number of interesting open alternatives to common, proprietary social networking platforms exist today, they are never going to be able to carry the kind of clout of the big social networks. An open-source social network has to be the game-changing application like Twitter was to the normal Web back in 2006 -- you can't just copy the best and expect to find much success.

Baffling User Interface Designs - Episode 1

Will Smith — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:05:31 -0600

Since the dawn of the graphical user interface, we--the long-suffering users--have been plagued by interface design that's not fundamentally bad, it just doesn't make much sense. The problem is that once these goofy UI designs become accepted, we're stuck with them forever (just look at the stylus-required Windows Mobile UI design, if you don't believe me). If I can keep finding baffling UI designs, then this will become a regular feature of the site. If you'd like to submit your own baffling user interface design topic, send an email to will at maximumpc dot com.

Wordpress "previous/next page" links

I want to say up front that I love Wordpress. I even run it on my own neglected blog. For the most part, it's extremely well constructed, infinitely flexible, and an all around good bit of blogging software. But, I have a problem with it. Go to a Wordpress blog and scroll to the bottom of the page. Odds are that you'll see a little link there labeled "Next". Here's a picture:

That seems straightforward enough, right? Click to the next page, and go to the bottom again. Now, you're faced with this:

Now, if I want to see the next oldest page of blog posts, I'm not sure exactly which link to click. Because previous is on the left, and next is on the right, part of me wants to click "next". However, the posts I want to read are actually the previous ones in the chain, since most blogs are ordered with the newest posts at the top of the page. The people who really get screwed are the ones who start on one of the middle pages, and have to figure out the next/previous paradigm without the benefit of a browser history.

The other big problem is that this inanity is spreading. The blog the screenshots are from isn't actually a Wordpress blog, it's powered by tumblr. Now, the good folks at Wordpress have attempted to fix this problem, but the fix isn't spreading as fast as the goofy UI. The default option now looks like this:

The good news is that the fix is quite easy. All that needs to be done to fix the problem is to change the point of reference from the pages, which is confusing and open to multiple interpretations, to time. Older Posts and Newer Posts leave no room for confusion and no room for misinterpretation.