After banning many climate scientists in 2012, Anthony Watts added a new feature to his climate blog:
AUTOMATED CENSORSHIP
Some big changes coming to WUWT in the near future
You may have already noticed that commenting is faster.
That’s because whitelisting is now enabled.
Of course the usual banned words and blacklisted commenter memes will go straight to the nether regions as before.
Some comments that are questionable, and require the attention of a moderator will get held for review, but for 99% of people making comments, you’ll see an immediate speed improvement.
After a million comments the hard way, it is time to work smarter. This is a win-win for the readers as well as the moderation staff, and particularly for me.
And, there are other improvements coming.
Drop us a note if you see inappropriate comments.
A decade later, he's still trying to soundproof his echo chamber:
2022 OCTOBER 29
Anthony Watts
COMING SOON: Commenting here will require registration
First, don’t panic – we are going to make this easy. Starting About November 7th/8th, commenting on WUWT will require you to be a registered user. Read on for the hows and whys.
For over 15 years, WUWT has been open to commenting by anyone. That had both good and bad aspects to it.
The good was obvious – anyone could immediately comment by simply placing their email address and name/handle into the comment box. The first comment required approval, after that comments went unfettered provided the commenter didn’t use any of the prohibited words or phrases that most platforms already flag as inappropriate.
The bad was not so obvious – and appeared mostly behind the scenes ...
We are being spammed by an extremely clever and aggressive spambot.
The bot uses several techniques to spoof users but is trying a new one today.
Then there’s Twitter, which has millions of “bots”...
How many bots do we have on WUWT? Well, there could be dozens to hundreds… we don’t really know a total bot count.
What we do know, is that it is getting worse, and as the climate alarmist establishment gets even more zealous, trying to make people believe there is a “climate crisis”, our workload to weed out false commentary from bots and other fakes has increased significantly.
When I started WUWT in 2006 the Internet was a different entity. Now, it’s a climate war zone, and we have to harden the fort against daily attacks...
We have a process by which we are going to use some automation assistance to help our valid pre-existing users get registered. I don’t want to give the details, because that will tip our hand to the bots and the bullies. Let’s just say, you’ll be hearing more soon...
-Anthony
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