Comment moderation has been temporarily turned on

I didn't want to do it.

I really didn't, but an anonymous commenter left me little choice.

Unfortunately, in response to my post revealing that I'd been punked (as Ginger put it) by J. B. Handley, an anonymous commenter, apparently unhappy that I had revealed J. B.'s little deception, started flooding this blog with comments that no blogger could permit, because they bordered on the kind of cyberstalking that I haven't seen since Usenet. So, sad to say, comment moderation has been temporarily turned on, meaning that, for now, comments will have to be approved by me before they appear. I'm sorry about this, everyone. Hopefully I won't need to leave moderation turned on for very long.

Please don't let moderation stop you, though. As you can see, I didn't delete Mr. Best's very hostile comment. I'll probably even approve comments by J. B. himself if he happens to show up to justify his actions, assuming he doesn't pull the same fast one the anonymous commenter did. (Anonymous comments will still be OK.) I haven't decided yet whether I will announce it in a separate post when I decide to turn moderation off again, because such an announcement might be noted and draw these nasties back.

Comments

  1. Gee, Orac. I don't look at the blog for a few days and miss all the excitement. Sorry you got punked and even more sorry that you now have to moderate all comments due to some nasty slimy persons. Personally, I'd like Mr Handley to meet my cousin, who, although she was never vaccinated in her life (due to family history of severe allergies to eggs and other things) was diagnosed as severely autistic a long time ago. Her parents went through a lot of the altie testing but since they couldn't put a label on her problem, they dropped her like a rotten egg (can't chelate if the tests don't show any mercury and can't blame vaccines if she's never had any). My cousin has been in therapy and treatment for many years, with some waxing and waning of symptoms, and slow overall improvement. But, her parents' lives aren't easy.

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  2. While I think everyone has a right to their own opinion (regardless of how ill informed), there was no call for Handley to squat on a domain that obviously has nothing to do with his message. I'm sorry you have to deal with such immaturity!

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  3. Kev may be able to help with id'ing the offender via his IP (or collection by using dial-up). I'll bet it's the same guy.

    Depending on what the guy is saying, you may consider dropping a complaint given the guy's status in an organization in which he and other members have made serious anti-government statements.

    If it's just idiotic swearing and calling himself socrates, well then sorry that you have to deal with him.

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  4. Alternative medicine supporters and creationists sometimes say that people are not qualified to judge their claims if they are not scientists and/or doctors (And obviously doctors and scientists are biased and can't be trusted to judge their claims objectively). So some people get to thinking that they have no way of knowing who is right and they may end up trusting alties in hope of some miracle cure or creationist because of religious authority. Prime example of this kind of thinking was shown by Scott Adams some time ago in his blog.

    My answer to such claims is to judge between tactics used and deeds done. Mr. Handley's actions in this matter show very clearly his morals and whether he can be trusted or not. You do not need a degree in medicine to notice the stink.

    Punster the librarian

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  5. While I was busy finding the cached links to JP's blog, I came across some other "angels" (sometimes I had to choose specific search terms, the combination of Orac and supportvaccination.org created almost 900 hits!). I thought these were interesting "angels" from another side of the story (including the style of web design):

    http://www.meningitis-angels.org/earthboundangels.htm
    and
    http://www.meningitis-angels.org/heavenboundangels.htm ...
    and their other page:
    http://www.thevaccinators.org/Vaccine_preventable_disease_personal%20stories.html

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  6. I, too, made the mistake of typing the wrong URL for your blog, and wound up at the Handley site. Being a new, fairly green (as well as silver-haired - actually zero-haired) surfer of the net, I didn't understand what was going on. Thanks for cluing me in.

    It occurs to me that Handley is living dangerously, as it is possible that some of your 'followers' might be childish enough, or angry enough, to launch a counter attack on his cyber-presence.

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  7. Sorry about my typo. It should be "clueing"

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