I’ve been experimenting for a while with a system that gives certain trusted “monitor lizards” the ability to delete abusive/offensive comments, and things seem to be working very well, so here’s the official announcement: we’ve got monitor lizards! (Some of you probably figured it out already.)

I set it up so that if, for any reason, I disagree with a monitor’s deletion of a comment, I can reverse it and restore the comment.

The obvious reason for this is to try to stay on top of the trolls and mobies; with 5000+ comments a day, there’s no way one person can do it.

Our initial group of monitor lizards is small on purpose, to keep things manageable. I’m not going to reveal them at this point, but I’m not opposed to doing so if persuaded; I tried to pick reliable reptiles who won’t get drunk on power and go on deleting sprees.

I was prompted to make this public, by the way, when I saw that Ace had done something similar.