"I'm Brian, and so's my wife"

In the seven years I've been writing for Punknews a debate over anonymous
comment posting has arisen at least once every six months. It may actually
make up the bulk of the staff email traffic. Whenever this bout of soul
searching hits us we've always justified our lax regulations one way or the
other, perhaps naively believing that for every coward hiding behind some
racist, homophobic or misogynistic slur there's an army of good minded
people here to counter them.

However as we see more and more individuals gaming the system and we're continually
confronted by artists we respect asking why there's so much
negativity here, it has become clear that the issues are not sorting themselves out.
Quite frankly it sucks to see one anonymous IP address post several
hateful comments under an article and singlehandedly drag the
entire community into the muck. It's not fair that our volunteers should be expected to police that.

As of this morning anonymous comment posting on Punknews has been disabled. You
will now have to be logged in to a user account to post comments on articles
and reviews.

Signing up for an account is free, easy and private. With an account you can remain
effectively anonymous and your email will address be hidden from everyone. You can sign
up here. Registered users can rate bands and reviews, building
recommendations and links between artists for the whole community to share
and discover. Registered users also get their own profile page showing
recent comments, top rated bands, their favourite records and more.

Saturday Testing: There are bound to be a few hiccups as we test the revised comment system today. Let us know if you see anything funny going on and we'll take a look. We'll post the status on this article, just click Read More

Here's what we know needs fixing so far: