François Nonnenmacher (EN) | FR

While thinking about the relevance of anonymous comments on my weblogs, I had an idea on a way to authenticate comments, much simpler than the previous discussions on the subject.

People who would like to claim their comments would simply receive an email sent by my weblog to the email address they provided. All they would have to do is click on the confirmation link in that email. Once my server has received the confirmation, it would mark the comment as authenticated. Various scenarios are possible, from simply marking the comment when the confirmation is received to not displaying it at all until it is validated, from letting people choose wether they want to confirm their address to mandating them to do so.

To be honest, as I'm thinking about digging into some more thought-provoking subjects than the web, I am concerned about the arrival of a certain type of people, who are attracted where they smell potential polemic like flies on shit. So, for certain posts, I am tempted to reserve the comments only to people who give me a valid email address. After all, I am not an anonymous blogger, why should I accept the "wisdom" of people who do not dare to sign their comments? Note that I would not publish commenters' email address, only the URL if they provide one.

And something tells me that would also slow the comments spamming down, as spammers are usually very tacky about their own email address (I wonder why).