[Southsider2k12]

Tell me that this doesn't sound familiar...

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_colum...-anonymity.html

Pseudonymity can battle the scourge of comment anonymity
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Columnist Leonard Pitts writes:

Pitts leonard Far from validating some high-minded ideal of public debate, (newspaper) message boards -- particularly those inadequately policed by their newspapers and/or dealing with highly emotional matters -- have become havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.

For every person who offers some trenchant observation on the point at hand, there are a dozen who are so far off point they couldn't find their way back with a compass and road map. For every person who brings up some telling fact, there are a dozen whose ``facts'' are fantasies freshly made up to suit the exigencies of arguments they otherwise cannot win.

Why have message boards failed to live up to the noble expectations?

The answer in a word is, anonymity.

This topic comes up here with some regularity, in part because of my own mixed feelings about it, and it's my sense that Pitts is only partly right; that anonymity -- or psudonymity -- can work pretty well on message/comment boards if they're overseen by a relatively vigilant proprietor.

You might not know it, but I edit with a pretty heavy hand here to get rid of the crude, mean, nasty bigots, snipers and simple provocateurs, while still giving a great deal of latitude for dissent and debate. I delete comments that cross the line, I ban people who persistently or flagrantly cross the line and I chide others to stay on point. Quite a bit still slips through -- my inconsistency is more related to the time and patience I have at any given moment than to any fundamental hypocrisy -- and ideally my editing hand would be even heavier.

Rich Miller at Capitol Fax does a better job than I do at policing his boards, and consequently they're usually well worth the read. As opposed to the bilious back and forth on many open threads.

I understand why some people don't want to attach their real names to comments: Search engines being what they are, your stated opinions can follow you now for decades like a cloud of gnats. If your name is unusual enough, a prospective employer, blind date, new neighbor or anyone else can stick your name into a search engine and discover reams' worth of tossed-off opinions, rants and retorts, some of which you may, by then, deeply regret.

The idea behind having people affix their real names to letters to the editor is a good one -- by creating accountability it generates a certain civility.

Yet at the time when this became a custom, such expressions were evanescent. Monday's tirade became Tuesday's fish-wrap, and only a very determined researcher could or would spend the hours necessary to assemble the sort of dossier that, today, the idle Googler can generate in mere seconds.

The compromise solution seems to me to be allowing people to comment and discuss issues using a consistent identity of some sort -- an identity (Screen name, nickname, first name, set of initials, whatever) linked to a user profile and reserved exclusively for that one person. To a great extent, we see that working here on Change of Subject message threads, where various regulars protect their "brands" and comment responsibly even though they remain, for the most part, anonymous.

I'd like to see these identities carry images -- photos, if possible -- as they are on Facebook comment threads, where identity inspires civility. And I'd like to see them connected to background information so that even if we don't know the real name of "BigBob" we can learn that, say, he's a Northwest suburban accountant and father of three who hates the White Sox and considers himself a libertarian.