CNS introduces optional log in for users

(CNS): Cayman News Service now has an optional registration process in order to increase the options available to our users and make the site even more interactive. While we have no intention of making log-ins a requirement for people making anonymous comments, one advantage of registering will be to protect a commenter’s real name or pseudonym from being used by an imposter and we are also working on ideas to give registered users more privileges. Over the past two years there have been over 100,000 comments posted on CNS under more than 10,000 different names (including “Anonymous”), and since we introduced the thumbs up and thumbs down on comments in November 2009 there have been well over a million thumb or LOL votes.

“Based on these statistics, we believe that the comment section on CNS has provided an important way for people in the Cayman community to present their points of view, especially with the fear, constantly expressed to us, that people still have of being victimised for voicing dissenting opinion,” said CNS owner Nicky Watson.

Unfortunately, there will always be those who abuse the system and following several incidents of people “borrowing” the real name of a local person for apparently mischievous purposes, it is now a requirement that commenters who use a real name of an individual or organisation in the “submitted by” tagline must register with a valid email address and a phone number that can be used for verification.

“Several people have been particular targets of malicious imposters, including local lawyer Alan de Saram, and we would like to make it clear that comments made under his name were in fact written by a malicious unknown person,” Watson said. “While we have put several measures in place to prevent this sort of thing happening again, we would like to offer sincere apologies to Mr de Saram. However, we also want to encourage people to use their real names if possible, and the log-in process seems to be the most practical way to try and determine the genuine from the fraudsters.”

Over the past few years, several regular commenters have created a distinctive ‘voice’ on the CNS site but on several occasions someone has assumed their online identity. Now they can register their username, so that only they can use it on CNS, while retaining their anonymity.

“Because we are a small company with limited resources, alongside the great news coverage we try to develop the various interactive functions of the site according to what our readers respond to,” Watson said. “If the interest is there we will also allow registered users to publish their profiles on the site and give them more editing options. In addition, some commenters are just more interesting or entertaining than others, so we are also considering a function that will enable registered users to find more comments by a particular commenter, but this will depend largely on the response and feedback we get to the log-in process.”

Following the introduction of strong anti-spam software to the system, we were able to reduce the amount of times CNS users have to reproduce the CAPTCHA code and some users will not see it at all. If it does appear, it means the software has identified a comment as potential spam – use of upper case letters for odd words is one possible flag. This means that CNS readers who are concerned about remaining anonymous can still add a comment without leaving any contact details and in most cases this can be as easy as writing in the comment box and clicking “save”.

Much of the work done on the site in the past few months has been to improve its functionality and readers should have found, for example, that the pages load faster. Another recent change to the site is a redesigned menu bar to make it easier to navigate around CNS and quickly find the various sections.

“With all these changes we do our best to eliminate all anomalies and glitches before they come on line. However, Cayman News Service is always a work in progress and we really appreciate all feedback from our readers about any issues that you come across while using the site,” said Watson.

If you have problem, please email our support team at support@support.caymannewsservice.com with as much detail as possible, including the operating system and browser you use, as this helps us enormously. A screen shot can also be very useful. If you have any suggestions as to how we can improve the site, just comment below or email nickywatson@caymannewsservice.com.