A familiar name
Hey, folks, hope everyone had some relaxation while I was gone for a few weeks. I know I did.
One thing that passed through my inbox last week was a note the son of former NBA player Detlef Schrempf would be walking on to play hoops at UCLA.
Alex Schrempf is a 6-foot-5 forward at Bellevue (Wash.) High.
On a side note, things got pretty ugly on the blog when I was away, and I thought some of it was uncalled for. I am looking into banning some IP addresses because of what took place.
Welcome back Dohn! Time to drop the Hammer!
Welcome back, Brian. You were definitely missed. But, hey, can't have you 24/7 365, right? Jill did fine considering she had her real job/responsibilities to take care of. Look forward to your great reports!
I woke up this morning with a smile on my face knowing that Dohn would be back today. Hope you had a great vacation, Brian! I was WAY too productive at work without you.
was this a package deal to have Dohn and VB come back at the same time? If so I may have to ask for Jill to come back! Just kidding, welcome back Dohn! Let Jill know that we all do appreciate the great job she did while you were vacationing.
Welcome back, Brian!
I'm not really sure why all the animosity to Jill. It's obviously a pretty slow time for your beat, so I'd figure it be a good time for a vacation. However, I wondered too if part of the time off was because of furlough...
Either way, just goes to show you that if you build a blog or other medium around a particular person its hard to substitute at a whim....
Actually, my time off was because I had about 15 days off from the start of August training camp until spring football practice ended.
Welcome back Brian and thank you in advance for clearing out some of the more rude posters. I stopped checking in after a few days because of all of the vitriol on the board.
Welcome back Brian, hope you had a restful time. Can't figure out the animosity towards Jill who did a fine job while you were away. I'm all for you getting out the broom and sweeping some of the out of control posters away for good.
Cheers, Tim
Brian,
Banning IP addresses is a pretty broad brush to use. Many companies use a single IP address for all traffic so you could end up banning all users from Ford Motor Company because of a single bad post.
Also, many ISPs use DHCP which assigns a single user a different IP address over a period of time. This means that you can ban an IP address one day and the person may be able to post again another while the IP address you banned goes to some poor unsuspecting guy who can't figure out why he's banned.
Poor solution and not technologically savvy one. If your IT guys suggested it I'd suggest outsourcing the IT group.
Welcome back, Brian.
Good news for Schrempf and the Bruins.
Man, football and basketball season can't come soon enough.
Dohn Corleone is BACK! Woo hoo!! What are UCLA fans going to do when someone figures out that Dohn should be at ESPN?!?
BruinGuy...you gave a lot of good info about IP addresses that I wasn't aware of. My follow up question would be what can Brian/Daily News do? How about cancel the LoginIn name AND the emails addresses connected to them? So if someone creates multiple LogIns that link to the same email address then they're toast if they talk about racial/politics type things that get out of hand?
Rodney,
It's a difficult nut to crack. Email addresses can't work since a new email address can be created at Gmail, hotmail or Yahoo in 10 seconds or so.
IP addresses can't work because of the above mentioned caveats.
Even if Dohn uses the IP kiss of death, one need only travel over to an onion router (Torproject.org) and post through there and they are guaranteed an anonymous and different IP address every time.
The software can put a "banned" cookie on the user's machine but anyone with any savvy can clear that in a few seconds.
The only real solutions are to limit the posts to "known" posters, i.e. verified people without anonymity, or review all posts. Which puts Dohn into the business of being a baby sitter.
I guess the best solution is for everyone to behave.
Brian, I hope you will find some way to block the people whose comments about Jill were so totally out of line. This blog is much too useful to be allowed to degenerate into a formum for immature people to vent their aggressions.
The combination of IP bans and requiring users to login should be more than sufficient. The people posting hateful comments probably aren't that resilient. I'd guess that they'd just give up after a few new logins or a few banned IPs. Probably not worth the effort. And it's very rare that a banned IP would affect a legitimate user. If your company's global IP gets banned, then just post comments from home. Maybe VB can get accidentally banned...
Welcome back Dohn. We missed you.
boelterbruin,
It's easy to say ban the IP addresses until yours is one that banned because your ISP uses IP network address translation and everyone using your ISP is banned including you.
Death Star penalty against abusers, Dohn must invoke.
used to Death Star, USC abusers should get.
coming to USC basketball, it is.
meditate on this, they must.
Only players who've crossed the absolute 'no-no' line get the bench on my team. A little yit-yat is good for the team, as far as I'm concerned. We'll leave it up to you, Brian, but just glorifying UCLA athletics and your blog without any informed dissent is non-productive, boring, and downright un-American. Now get out there and toss a few deep ones for six! We're hungry and ready to rip up the turf.
I agree. There were some that were out of line and immature. There was no reason for the rude and inconsiderate comments. You run this blog, Brian, do what you must to keep people in check. I come here for UCLA news, not the constant bickering and name calling
and the productivity of bruins in the workplace drops again! or should i say, returns to normal. welcome back!
I nominate the following offenders to be banned:
UB (ultimate bruin)
mike chat
There are others, but this would be a modest start.