I know that many regular DeSmog readers are frustrated with the comment forum, which has been increasingly polluted by anti-science trolls and clever spammers.  Today we are implementing a new comment system that will alleviate some of this.  We will no longer allow anonymous comments.

We are also implementing the Janrain Social Authentication system. Readers will now have two ways to login to DeSmogBlog and leave comments: via their social networks like Twitter and Facebook, or via a regular DeSmogBlog account with a real name and a legitimate email address.

Users with existing DeSmogBlog accounts don’t need to do anything other than continue to login as usual. If you like, you may switch to logging in via a social network as well. Click here to login or click here to register now.  We also give you the opportunity to login at the bottom of each post.

We will continue to rely on our readers to help us in policing the comment forum using the community moderation tools that allow readers to classify comments in a number of ways, and if enough people vote a comment as ‘trolling’ for instance, it gets hidden from view. Registered users may moderate comments on the site by selecting from the dropdown list. Comments that receive too many negative ratings will be buried.

Please contact us with any questions.

Here again is DeSmogBlog’s comment policy, which remains the same as before:

DeSmogBlog does not censor comments based on political or ideological points of view. However, we will delete comments that are abusive, off-topic or use offensive language.

When speaking to the state of climate change science, we encourage commenters to include links to supporting information as this helps enrich the conversation. Users who make unsubstantiated claims can expect their posts to be deleted and, if they persist, their account to be deactivated.

Petty name-calling and/or a pattern of disrespect towards other DeSmogBlog users will also result in account deactivation.