Above: Bizarro Seinfeld World. Much nicer.

It wasn’t the first time that Linda Hilton has had her name taken in vain.

An outspoken advocate for the poor, which goes with the job of being the director of Utah’s Coalition of Religious Communities, Hilton already had to have some of her more online-savvy friends hunt down whoever it was who had been creating phony websites that appeared to be run by Hilton and her organization. That mattered because the content posted on those sites demeaned everything she and her coalition stand for.

Hilton explained that whoever had set up the sites lindahilton.com and coalitionofreligiouscommunities.com had apparently done so hoping to lure browsers who might be looking for her or her causes onto billboards that spouted rhetoric vilifying the various programs and legislation that Hilton advocates for.

“It was just a lot of slander against us,” Hilton said. “They were just filled with all kinds of awful stuff, calling us ‘socialists,’ talking about how we are tearing down the economy of America.”

A cease-and-desist message from an attorney, Hilton said, wiped away the messages on those sites. I checked them out Thursday afternoon, and there was nothing but pretty pictures. I checked again Thursday evening, after I started calling some people who might have been blamed for their creation, and found they had been deleted altogether.

But, apparently, the phoniness wasn’t over.

Last week, on the comment thread appended to a Salt Lake Tribune editorial favoring some legislative limits for the payday lending industry, someone posting under the name Linda Hilton offered several criticisms of the editorial and praised the high-interest payday lenders as legitimate, even helpful, players in the free market.

“Why should we allow the government to control what we can and can’t do with our own money?” this Linda Hilton asked. “Why should we give up a democratic society and give power to the government and become a socialist/communistic society?”

This is, of course, the polar opposite of the views held by the CRC Linda Hilton. When I called to point it out to her, she was understandably exasperated. She put me on to some leads as to who might be responsible for the Bizarro Linda posts. Someone who, you won’t be surprised to hear, works for a payday lender.

Here’s where the old reporter gets to say, “Numerous phone calls and emails were not returned.” The email address this Linda Hilton registered with The Tribune’s comment section, when I tried it a second time, resulted in an “account does not exist” robot reply.

The Salt Lake Tribune policy for adding online comments to our articles allows people to post under any name they choose. Most of them are obvious nom de nets, like Scrat, WhiskeyTango or Darth Schmoo. I’ve written here before about my extreme discomfort with the whole anonymous comment dodge. But our standards have been tightened, slanderous and racist comments are deleted and I’ve noted that many comments have something to offer and some are downright insightful.

So, just when I’m making my peace with the whole thing, someone comes along and poisons the well for everyone.

The Bizarro Linda posts were not deleted because they were not dirty or libelous. I added some other posts clarifying that this Linda Hilton is not that Linda Hilton. But not before some of our regulars, who like to play by the rules, noted the fishy nature of those posts, observed the oddity of them carrying the same name as the opposing Linda Hilton, and said in effect, “Mr. Chairman, I suggest the presence of a ringer.”

This, for now, is the way the peanut gallery polices itself. Be mindful.

gpyle@sltrib.com

@debatestate