Following a lead set by Adrian Holovaty, and inspired by some recent nefarious posts, I have reserved my name for all future comments. From now on all comments posted by ‘Rich’ will be from me.
I’ve also bagged ‘Richard’, ‘Richard Rutter’ and a few others just in case. So if you’re also called Richard (or some variant thereof) you can still post a comment in your name, but you’ll have to include your surname or initial.
The system is far from foolproof, but for now I’m satisfied that one would have to put at least some effort in to get around it.
Another alternative might be for all my posts to be indicated with a small icon or some other visual clue, as you might see in a forum to indicate a moderator’s post. Although I don’t want really want to should louder than anyone else in the comments (to the contrary).
Simon Willison has taken things a little further by outlining a system for trusted comments which uses a combination of bookmarklets (for signing), MD5 hashes and an authenticating web service.
SANDRA RUTTER wrote:
Hey Rich, you can’t “bag” Richard Rutter or Rich. He was my uncle: Richard Kobler Rutter, born in Pennsylvania, died in California. Uncle Richard didn’t have children, unless…
Trude Loreen wrote:
I like your site. And I wish you luck, success and a lot of visitors here. Have a nice day.