This entry was posted on
Friday, April 17th, 2009 at
11:22 am and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

Iain has made good on his subtle threat to go back to unregistered comments (see comments here, and do note the timing).

I once made the mistake of telling Iain how much it meant to me personally that he had finally taken the responsible step of introducing comment registration on his Blogger.com-hosted site. My exact words at the time were “it’s 80% of the problem between us” and he was quite struck by this revelation.

Not only does this act stink of petty revenge, but regardless of what he claims, he knows what the most likely effect will be now he has removed the main obstacle to those who use multiple identities in his comments. This is an escalation that he is dressing up as a minor bit of housekeeping:

Iain Dale – Parish Notice: The Sequel: Following yesterday’s events I have been pre-moderating all comments. I have had several emails from people suggesting that if I am doing that, I might as well re-allow anonymous comments. A few weeks ago I did a poll of readers which showed that by a 53-40 margin you wanted to see that facility restored. I decided that this was not a big enough margin to do it, as the current system seemed to be working well. However, I do think that if I am pre-moderating there is more of a case for it. I should make clear that this is not an invitation to unleash the dogs of war…

But this won’t help him any more than comment moderation will, as I have pointed out to him personally and explained publicly in this updated version of the ‘fan club’ post.

He’s wasting his time and putting his readers through needless inconvenience(s). And using them a bit, too, if we’re to be honest.

And he’s having them on if he’s making this out to be a rush attack or mass invasion. It’s far more elegant than that, and completely justified.

(Why send 100 messages when we can simply make him worry about the 1 comment in 100 to the point where he actually reads all of what he publishes?)

I wonder how Iain will deal with people pretending to be me pretending to be other people? I can tell you from experience that this is now bound to happen in the climate he’s created.

And what’s his exit strategy? He can’t keep moderation on forever, and he knows from past experience that (a) he can’t possibly hope to keep up with comment free-for-alls, and (b) it’s only a matter of time before his anonymob goes sour on him again.

And why is he going through all of this when all he has to do is engage like a sensible person and discuss our recent disagreement(s) and/or the many claims he has published about me (and others) that he cannot back with evidence?