The New York Times reports today that some media are reconsidering the practice of publishing anonymous online comments on their websites.
News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments
"From the start, Internet users have taken for granted that the territory was both a free-for-all and a digital disguise, allowing them to revel in their power to address the world while keeping their identities concealed.
"A New Yorker cartoon from 1993, during the Web’s infancy, with one mutt saying to another, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” became an emblem of that freedom.
For years, it was the magazine’s most reproduced cartoon.
"When news sites, after years of hanging back, embraced the idea of allowing readers to post comments, the near-universal assumption was that anyone could weigh in and remain anonymous. But now, that idea is under attack from several directions, and journalists, more than ever, are questioning whether anonymity should be a given on news sites."
link: News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments - NYTimes.com
My experience, in reading online comments is that the vast majority come from cowardly blowhards who would never say the things they do among colleagues and friends and/or from people who would never invest 30 seconds in research to determine if what they are writing has any basis in fact or truth. That is, commentators who wouldn't risk their jobs, friends and social status by saying face-to-face the ignorant things they say online.
Previously, I published most comments exaro received if they included a credible name and location and if they were bore a semblance to known facts. I recently stopped doing even that for the simple reason almost no one bothered to note the 'no anonymity" policy and it was a waste of my time to moderate the 99% of comments that did not conply.
I am as much concerned with the spread of false and misleading information as I am with crudity, vulgarity and rudeness. Whether the media re-examining their anonymity policies are doing so out of fear of liability for publishing false information, or to raise the quality and tone of debate, it would seem to be for the better.
It never made any sense to me that newspapers require addresses and telephone numbers in letters to the editor so that they can verify the source before publishing, but allow every sort of vitriol to pour forth on their websites. Why the sensical policy requiring identification was abandoned for online comments, which are probably more widely read than the letters page, remains a mystery. I'm hoping it will be a mystery that soon seems an anachronism from the early days of the internet; one that a responsible press could not and would not sustain.
