Lately, I’ve noticed a rise in what I call “drive-by cut and paste bandits” in comments sections, both here and on other sites. People find the top article on a blog and just dump their rants in the comments, and if they’re related to the topic at hand even tangentially it’s entirely by accident.
It’s getting on my nerves, and I want to do something about it.
Normally, I’d bounce this off my colleagues here, but my Wizbang e-mail account is still a bit wonky from my recent computer issues, and I can’t rely on that working properly. So, instead, I thought I’d toss it out and let everyone in the Wizbang community have their say.
In the end, that won’t really matter much, as enforcing comment policy is in the hands of me, Maggie, and the author of the piece in question, and setting policy is Kevin’s right alone, but I think it would be very helpful to hear what you folks think.
The options that come to mind for me are:
1) Ignoring them.
B) Mocking them.
III) Disemvowelling them.
d) Deleting them.
iiiii) Banning them.
Naturally, the latter can be used in conjunction with any of the above, but most of these people are one-hit wonders; they haven’t commented before, and aren’t likely to try again. So it’s largely symbolic, but still satisfying.
So, what say you folks? What do you think we ought to do?
I can’t say that what you say will have any effect, but I do promise you that at least I will read and consider your opinions before I make my case to my colleagues.
