Due to the continued abuse of many of the diarists on here that are constantly plagued by people posting abusive comments to diary we have brought on board the first of a few changes to begin to curb this disturbing trend.

Stage 1 is now online.
Anyone leaving a reader comment must now have a valid Atomic account. You don't need to have a diary and the account is completely free. If you don't have an account yet then simply click on Create in the top right hand corner and make yourself one.

DO NOT USE THE LOGIN BUTTON unless you want to make a diary.

Setting up an account involves the following simple procedure:
You click on Create.
You fill in the form with your desired username and email address information.
The system will email you a random password.

That's it. That's all that's involved.

Does this stop the anonymity of comments? To some extent yes it does because your username will always appear on comments now - if we are asked to we could allow you to hide the username, drop us a note if this is a desired feature.
Your email address however is completely optional. It will show the public email address you have configured (remember, Atomic accounts have TWO email addresses - one is private and only for use within the system itself, this address should be the best one to get to you. The other address is the one that will be given out when you request your email be added to the comment and can be anything you like).
Since the username is that of your own, it is also now impossible to pretend that you are somebody else, <sigh> just what kind of mental age do some of you have anyway?

What's coming next?
Stage 2 will allow diarists to prevent a user from ever commenting on his/her diary again. Stage 2 will begin work asap and shouldn't take long.

Even with this upgrade there is still scope for abuse, such is the nature of the Internet sadly. However, the amount of effort required to do this will now be significantly more - anyone who wishes to write abusive comments will need to obtain a new email address for each time they get banned.

I'm certain that we'll receive comments (or probably emails now actually hehe) telling us that this is a silly thing to do. Diarists can just disable comments after all. Why can't they just ignore the ones that they don't like and delete them?

Why do they have to read them in the first place, is my response. If I know that you have nothing to say to me then I will ignore you but on the Internet you can keep sending things to me, you can keep adding comments and you can be a pest. This is our way of preventing such behaviour.

Reader Comments are probably the most popular feature on the site, it allows diarists and readers to communicate and for 99% of the time it is extremely positive. If someone has something negative to say they will either just leave the diary in disgust, or they will write something that is an informed 'this is my opinion'. Flame Wars and Brawls seem to then ensue when the diarist attempts to justify their thoughts/beliefs because the reader won't just let it be. We are all entitled to make our own choices and decisions - you are entitled to say you disagree but leave it at that, you aren't going to 'convert' everyone to your way of thinking because frankly, you could be just as wrong as the people you are flaming.

We haven't remove the original 'Add Reader Comment' script and one option we have is to allow diarists to choose which mechanism they would like to use. What do people feel about that? Are there diarists who very much dislike the new system and would prefer to stick to the old one for their own diary, knowing they are quite happily handling any flamers?

I say again as much as I have said before, we are always open for discussion, if you have a comment to make please make it - they are all taken seriously and in to consideration. We'd like to find some kind of common ground and balance between everyones needs.

I look forward to both positive and negative feedback - just make it constructive please!! :)

Matt.