Posted 11/18/09 at 06:21:26 PM by Pulkit Chandna

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.

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Posted 05/14/09 at 01:55:52 PM by David Murphy

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.

Which areas of social networking are dead zones for open-source development?  Click the jump to find out!

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Posted 02/14/08 at 08:05:31 PM by Will Smith

Will Smith takes a quick look at the first of many questionable interface designs - Wordpress' page nav links

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