Changes to the Commenting System

The good news is that you can sign up for an official Seattlest commenter profile now. It'll have a little bit of information about you and the comments you've made in the past and even some comments that have been posted in reply to your comments. Neat stuff, particularly the part that displays comments on your comments. That stuff is difficult to keep track of on your own. The bad news is that you can still post as an anonymous-type, but you'll appear only as "guest" and you won't be able to make up cute little names for yourself that relate to the topic at hand. Lame, we know. At least you won't be forced to type in a nospam@whatever.com email address every time you comment. You will be asked for a valid email address if you sign up for a profile account, and a fake nospam@ address isn't going to work because you need to confirm your account via email. You won't be able to change that email address once your account is verified, either. WE WON'T SPAM YOU. Promise. In the near future this will be a link to our privacy policy.

Here's the official line from the mother ship.

We've made these changes because the old comment system was constantly getting snarled with spam, and we wanted to give our readers a personal page here on the site. A number of other features based on the new profile system are coming soon-- expect them in the next couple of months. We appreciate your constructive feedback on the new system-- please note that it's a work in process, and the experience may be sub-optimal for a few days while we work out the kinks.