"Anonymity has made comment streams "havens for a level of crudity,
bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our
propriety."
News sites work on reining in vile of posts online
By Richard Perez-pena
The New York Times
Salt Lake Tribune
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," quickly became
an emblem of that freedom, and for years, it was the magazine's most reproduced
cartoon.
When news organizations, after years of hanging back, embraced the idea
of allowing readers to post comments online, 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.
The Washington Post plans to revise its comments policy over the next
several months, and one of the ideas under consideration is to give greater
prominence to commenters who use their real names.
The New York Times , The Post and many other papers have moved in stages
toward requiring that people register before posting comments, providing some
information about themselves that is not shown onscreen.
The Huffington Post soon will announce changes, including ranking
commenters based in part on how well other readers know and trust their
writing.
"Anonymity is just the way things are done. It's an accepted part of the
Internet, but there's no question that people hide behind anonymity to make
vile or controversial comments that they might not choose to make in their real
names," said Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post . "I feel
that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are
changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity."
The Plain Dealer of Cleveland recently discovered that anonymous comments
on its site, disparaging a local lawyer, were made using the e-mail address of
a judge who was presiding over some of that lawyer's cases.
That kind of proxy, or "sock puppet," has been documented before; what
was more unusual was that The Plain Dealer exposed the connection in an
article. The judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold, denied sending the messages --
her daughter took responsibility for some of them. And two week ago, the judge
sued The Plain Dealer , claiming it had violated her privacy.
The paper acknowledged that it had broken with the tradition of allowing
commenters to hide behind screen names, but it served notice that anonymity was
a habit, not a guarantee. Susan Goldberg, The Plain Dealer's editor, declined
to comment for this article. But in an interview she gave to her newspaper, she
said that perhaps the paper should not have investigated the identity of the
person who posted the comments, "but once we did, I don't know how you can
pretend you don't know that information."
Some prominent journalists weighed in on the episode, calling it evidence
that news sites should do away with anonymous comments. Leonard Pitts Jr., a
Miami Herald columnist, wrote recently that anonymity has made comment streams
"havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that
shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety."
No one doubts that there is a legitimate value in letting people express
opinions that may get them in trouble at work, or may even offend their
neighbors, without having to give their names, said William Grueskin, dean of
academic affairs at Columbia's journalism school.
"But a lot of comment boards turn into the equivalent of a barroom brawl,
with most of the participants having blood-alcohol levels of 0.10 or higher,"
he said. "People who might have something useful to say are less willing to
participate in boards where the tomatoes are being thrown."
He said news organizations were willing to reconsider anonymity in part
because comment pages brought in little revenue; advertisers generally do not
like to buy space next to opinions, especially incendiary ones.
The debate over anonymous comments is entwined with the question of
giving more weight to comments from some readers than others, based in part on
how highly other readers regard them. Some sites already use a version of this
approach; Wikipedia users can earn increasing editing rights by gaining the
trust of other editors, and when reviews are posted on Amazon.com, those
displayed most prominently are those that readers have voted "most helpful" --
and they are often written under real names.
Hal Straus, interactivity editor of The Washington Post , said, "We want
to be able to establish user tiers, and display variations based on those
tiers." The system is still being worked, but he says it is likely that readers
will be asked to rate comments, and that people's comments will be ranked in
part based on the trust those users have earned from other readers -- an
approach much like the one The Huffington Post is set to adopt. Another
criterion could be whether they use their real names.
But experience has shown that when users help rank things online, sites
may have to guard against a concerted campaign by a small group of people
voting a particular way and skewing the results.
A popular feature on The Wall Street Journal's site lets readers decide
whether they want to see only those comments posted by subscribers, on the
theory that the most dedicated readers might make for a more serious
conversation.
Few news organizations have someone review every comment before it goes
online, to weed out personal attacks and bigoted comments. Some sites and
prominent bloggers, such as Andrew Sullivan, simply do not allow comments.
Other news sites review comments after they are posted, but most say they
do not have the resources to do routine policing. Many sites allow readers to
flag objectionable comments for removal, and make some effort to block comments
from people who have repeatedly violated the site's standards.
If commenters were asked to provide their real names for display online,
some would no doubt give false identities, and verifying them would be too
labor-intensive to be realistic. But news executives say that merely making the
demand for a name and an e-mail address would weed out much of the most
offensive commentary.
Several industry executives cited a more fundamental force working in
favor of identifying commenters. Through blogging and social networking sites
such as Facebook and Twitter, millions of people have grown accustomed to
posting their opinions -- to say nothing of personal details -- with their
names attached, for all to see. Adapting the Facebook model, some news sites
allow readers to post a picture along with a comment, another step away from
anonymity.
"There is a younger generation that doesn't feel the same need for
privacy," Huffington said. "Many people, when you give them other choices, they
choose not to be anonymous."
http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_14944911
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