Introducing Facebook Connect for our comments section

Starting today, you will be able to log in our Comments system with your Facebook account. No, you don't need to have a Facebook account to comment, but it will make things easier for both you and us. By using Facebook's authentication system, you get the benefit of reserving a nickname to use on our website, and we get the benefit of easier and more accurate comments moderation. That's in a nutshell, read further down for more details about the whole deal.

Commenting with Facebook Connect

We get thousands of comments - a day! Comments on everything, from opinions on phones, to comments on news articles or reviews. We care about privacy, so we allow anonymous posting, but that opens the door to trolling and bashing and that's just counter-productive.

We have automatic systems in place to catch most of the spam and our moderators do their best to weed out the remaining "bad" comments. But they can't get through all of it.

Bad comments hamper the usefulness of comments - personal impressions, corrections and interesting links help both us and our users.

We avoided introducing our own registration system for several reasons:

• We hate having to create an account on each and every site
• We'd rather not store your personal info
• Most people can evade moderation justice by simply registering new accounts

We have found a nice solution, one that solves these problems. Facebook Connect allows secure, reliable authentication. We don't need access to your personal information - authentication happens with Facebook's servers, we just want you to pick a nickname to use at our website.

How to register

To register, open the Register nickname page and hit the Login with Facebook button. You'll be redirected to Facebook, where you'll need to sign in and allow GSMArena.com to access basic information.

Don't worry, that doesn't allow us to post anything on your Facebook wall or News feed, none will your GSMArena.com comments appear anywhere on Facebook.

Once you do that, you'll be redirected back to the Register page. Enter a nickname and hit submit - that's it! The nickname is reserved and will be automatically used in future. Best of all, you can change it, if you get some second thoughts.

Registering a nickname with Facebook Connect

Later, you can change your nickname to something else (as long as it hasn't been registered). Just open the Register nickname page and enter the new nick (Note: you need to be signed into Facebook Connect to do that).

Why register

Here are several good reasons to register:

• Your nickname is reserved for you and you'll get it pre-filled when you post later. Logging back in takes only a single click (if you're currently signed in your Facebook account).
• Each post will have clear indication if it was posted anonymously or if it's from a registered user. Posts from registered users also carry more credibility.
• Comments from registered users have to pass through fewer checks and are more likely to be published straight away without prior checking.
• Your real name (along with other personal info and profile photos) is protected. We'll never publish any part of it along with your post. Only your nickname of choice will be listed.
• Registering is super fast - as fast as you can come up with a nickname. You can also change your nickname as often as you'd like.
• If you share an IP with someone and they get banned, it won't affect you. Sometimes we ban repeat offenders by IP, or a whole IP range if they have a dynamic IP, so you might be affected even if you didn't do anything wrong.
• Having an account will give you access to some cool features, which we plan to introduce in the near future - posts editing, posts rating, poll voting and more.
• Unregistering is easy - you can always sever the link between Facebook and GSMArena.

Now one thing should be clear. We're not shutting down the anonymous posting functionality. But as usual, the anonymous posts will continue to go through more checks and will get held up for moderator approval most of the time.

Now go ahead and post a comment below and claim your nickname along the way. And don't forget to tell us about your experience with the system.