The firestorm brewing over TypeKey is raging to new heights.
There was something about the whole bru-ha-ha (aside: who remembers Wolf3D) that reminded me of an event being blown out of proportion.
BurningBird brings up the point that has been nagging me, why do we need registration at all?
I doubt that everyone really needs a SSO for all the blogs they comment on. Maybe we should all have the “remember me” boxes turned on in our various software (aside: I’ll turn it on later today and/or tommorow).
Registration may keep out spammers, but:
1. Spammers will find ways around, under, over, and through comment registration.
2. MT ships, out of the box, with a feature that turns all links in a comment into redirects, thus negating the Google advantage.
So this is, at best, a temporary setback to spammers.
No, the ultimate reason, and desire, by folks for a comment registration system — whether its centralized, decentralized, left-of-centralized, or whatnot — is that folks want a way to kick commenters off their site.
Whatever their reasons, some of which may be valid, some bloggers want to restrict commenting access, and that’s not right in my book.
So why the mammary reference in the title? The technology behind TypeKey is just like the nipple ring — its the high profile, oft-discussed topic that is getting all the attention while bigger issues remain.
If we want to register to voice our feedback, have our views filtered, or censored, then why have blogs at all… the traditional media and their Web sites have been/are doing this.
One of the things that sets blogs apart from the regular media is that there are two seperate spaces on each page.
1. The article space — This belongs to the blogger(s), it’s their place to parade their thoughts, opinions, links, etc. I can write whatever I want in the “article space” and there’s nothing you can do about it, or is there?
2. The comment space — This belongs to the audience, and there shouldn’t be anything that the author can do about it. It’s the audience’s free-for-one, free-for-all spot to cogitate, comment and contradict.
