Time for Some Troll Whacking

Julie Felton/istock; <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-265489p1.html#id=80818183&src=665fb6c5d6adceeed749f65bf69d4d39-2-22">Memo Angeles</a>/Shutterstock

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This weekend we’re trying something new in our commenting system. This only affects you if you have been posting as a “guest;” if you normally sign in with Disqus (which powers our commenting system) or your Mother Jones ID, nothing changes. If you were using the “guest” feature, you can now sign in via Disqus, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID. You can also create a commenter identity in the Mother Jones system here. As before, your information will not be disclosed; see Disqus’ privacy policy here and Mother Jones’ here.

We hope that this will discourage drive-by spammers and trolls, while still providing privacy for all our users.

Our moderators will continue to keep an eye out for abusive comments, but given the volume of discussion here, we’d love your help. Flag abusive comments (see our community rules here), which helps us identify and ban trolls.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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