First, don’t panic – we will make this easy. Starting around 7/8 November, commenting on WUWT will require you to be a registered user. Read on for how and why.
For over 15 years, WUWT has been open to the public for comment. That has both good and bad sides.
The good thing is obvious – anyone can comment instantly by simply putting their email address and name/handle in the comment box. Comments need to be approved first, then uncensored as long as the commenter doesn’t use any banned words or phrases that most platforms have flagged as inappropriate. .
The bad is not so obvious – and mostly appear behind the scenes in moderation. Over the years, we’ve battled a number of nefarious people who want to vandalize this forum with things like using fake email addresses, spoofing other identities to circumvent censorship, (in particular, a the famous climate troll from Oregon has been caught and warned dozens of times, and banned), and then we have the “bot” – which is getting worse every day.
Recently Article WUWT Note this:
We are being spammed by an extremely intelligent and aggressive spambot.
The bot uses several techniques to spoof users, but today is trying a new technique.
Then there’s Twitter, there are millions of “bots” estimated to be in the 5% range (according to Pre-Elon Twitter) and at most 20% by other estimates.
How many bots do we have on WUWT? Well, there could be dozens to hundreds. Some people, like “Griff” act like bot, where they make some cryptic or unnecessary comments, and then never reply to it. However, we don’t really know the total number of bots.
What we do you know?is that it’s getting worse, and as the climate alarm establishment grows more zealous, trying to get people to believe there’s a ‘climate crisis’, our workload to eliminate False comments from bots and other disinformation have increased dramatically.
When I started WUWT in 2006, the Internet was a different entity. Now, it’s a climate war zone, and we have to fortify the fort to withstand daily attacks. I’ll point out that pretty much any other site these days with user interaction requires registration – we’re just late.
As I said the first time, “We’re going to make this easy.” Here’s how to do it.
We have a process where we will use some automation support to get our eligible existing users registered. I don’t want to go into details, because that will put us in the face of bots and bullies. Let’s just say, you’ll be hearing more soon.
For reference, here are some statistics about WUWT as of the time of this writing:
- 475.929,091 Views
- 28,652 posts
- 3,490,060 comments
Thank you all for making WUWT the most viewed (and likely most commented on) climate-related website in the world.
-Anthony
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