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Ghosts in the Web
Posted by Rodney Gagnon 11/13/2009 3:32:39 PM

Great article John. Sharing your sentiment, I also wrote a (shorter) piece here that I'd like to share and add to the debate.

http://spreadingideas.info/2008/12/ghosts-in-the-web/

Thanks for the post.

-Rodney

still the same as any other blogger out there..
Posted by raw teeth 11/13/2009 1:30:53 PM

This comment was originally posted 11/12/2009 at 9:42PM and removed in error.

Lol. By the end of this article, I just assumed you were a middle-class, middle-age white male.

You're still anonymous to me. So, I don't know, if that really makes a difference.

Also: Newspapers aren't doing it for peer pressure, they're doing it for competition, for money, profits. It's not about "everyone else is doing it so I should, too!" It's about "If we don't do it, we won't make bank."
eh? ehh??

But John, that leads to one conclusion ...
Posted by Alex Dering 11/13/2009 1:07:42 PM

John,

Thanks for the response.

Having read your reply, I have to ask: How does anything you've said get done?

There is no realistic way to validate who the authors are for Internet postings without a large amount of effort.

The whole conversation points inescapably to the conclusion that the only way to deal with hateful and/or anonymous Internet postings is by returning to the Old School notion of requiring someone at the newspaper take an active role, and that the Old School gatekeeper do so at the most sensible points in the process.

Here's an idea. Post an article. In the comment section (and this would take any programmer with a brain about 5 minutes to put together) is a little widget that says "We are accepting comments for the next [display countdown clock] on this article. We will publish the best comments shortly thereafter."

The responses (and the responses to those responses, if any) are reviewed and approved or rejected. THIS IS NO DIFFERENT than what happens with letters to the editor.

1. The racist pinheads simply don't bother writing in, or if they do, their comments are simply deleted.

2. The readership is motivated to submit HIGHER quality material, rather than typing up a storm in the mad dash to get the comment in before 500 other people send in their equally hastily whipped up, poorly thought-out stuff.

3. People will finally stop sending in -- or at least I will no longer have to scroll through multiple iterations of -- those pointless "My prayers are with this family" comments. Yeah, I get it. You feel bad somebody's entire family burned to death while the sole survivor was unable to do anything about it.

4. Granted, you will still have the risk of someone sending in the equivalent of a fake death notice, but the reason so much is wrong with the comment section, as it stands now, is because no one is acting as referee.

Just a couple of additional thoughts
Posted by John Hatcher 11/13/2009 11:46:47 AM

Hi all,
The Poynter online editors asked if I would post something further on this in light of the excellent comments and discussion happening on this topic.
I think I only have a couple additional things to add to the conversation.
One: I think what is most important to me is to share a little about why I wrote this:
- An article about Iraqi students attending a local college brought cowardly, hateful comments attacking these students. Eventually, the comments were taken down, but not before they had inflicted their harm and embarrassed us all.
- A couple weeks later, an article about sexual harassment allegations made about a UMD instructor who is also a prominent local businessman unleashed an onslaught of anonymous postings � nearly 100 at my last count � many of which were insulting to the women who filed these complaints (the anonymous victims of this). It made me wonder how willing the next victim of sexual harassment would be if their actions are questioned by anonymous posters on local web sites.
Two: A friend told me that reporters he has talked with are finding it harder than ever to get comments from average citizens when they are doing reporting work because they do not want to be subjected to the attack that happens through the comments that follow the story.
Three: I started, after I wrote this, to think about how one of the most successful social networking sites, Facebook, thrives specifically because of its requirement of identity. Everyone is a �Friend.� You can say that you �like this� comment, but there is no function for �hate this.� I can�t help but think that there have to be some lessons here. If I ran a news organization, I might think of designing my own comments section around the Facebook model or even just using a Facebook group to handle the comments.
I think what's clear is that without careful and constant monitoring, comments can become a reason not to visit a news site as easily as an enticement.

Well Done - How about enforcement
Posted by Brad Mandell 11/13/2009 8:41:12 AM

Having survived a few very bad experiences in public forums where use of my name caused undue pain on my family and neighbors, I sympathize with those who wish to contribute anonymously. Further, important information from tips, confessions, whistle-blowing, etc. is critical to our shared knowledge.

The burden must fall to the provider of the service, much like the editors at newspapers have done. Too many websites hide behind the law and take little or no responsibility for the electronic magic markers they hand out so freely.

Online media outlets automatically create sets of stakeholders with each post or entry. The entry may impact individuals, groups, businesses, organizations, communities, government units, religious faiths, programs, etc. These stakeholders may be active in media monitoring and social media monitoring or completely ignorant of the impact on them.

A concerned and ethical media outlet needs a clearly stated and policed policy that can prevent outrageous material, identify dubious, false or mulit-sided issues and clearly mark or categorize them for the viewer. The better they are at this task, the more highly we should respect their outlet.

Great journalism on these sites would come when the editors used the material to verify, deny, expand or explain the nature of the material.

Brad Mandell
Webster, NY
Media Monitoring Consultant
Wiki Editor

There's a precedent for this
Posted by Alex Dering 11/12/2009 7:31:27 PM

I propose that if you want to speak in public, you should be courageous enough to stand by your words. It would not be that difficult for Web sites to include this rule in their user agreements and for any comments made to automatically include the identity of the person who wrote them.

This is so fundamentally flawed that I am going to assume that I am missing something essential.

According to stories told me by my college professors, one particularly hysterical thing that people would sometimes do -- back when the continents were still rising from the wine-dark sea -- would be to phone in a fake obituary, or submit a phony marriage announcement.

It would be particularly hilarious because papers used to check up on these things, so you not only stuck it to the victim of the joke, you also rubbed the paper's nose in its own screw up.

I mention all this because I have not yet seen a single website forum that actually requires -- or could police such a requirement -- any proof of who you actually honest-to-god are. All they do is ask you to promise that you're who you say you are.

With five minutes effort I could have submitted this comment as Pippi Longstocking, Homer Simpson, Hal Jordan, Hitler, Lee Quan, Napoleon, James T. Kirk, Pat Sajak, Andrew Carnegie, Nero Wolfe, Maureen Dowd, Paul Revere, the poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist, the magician or any of the other so-called Gods of our legends, etc.

Or I could just pick a nice simple generic name -- Ted Johnson, Mark Williams, Paul Smith -- and wham, there I am, safely tucked behind my anonymity.

Golly, I hope the real Alex Dering never catches on.

How?
Posted by Kurt Greenbaum 11/12/2009 7:07:55 PM

Earlier comments made my point well. The answer isn't to outlaw anonymity (or, more accurately, pseudonymity). It's to invest the time and technology in reviewing comments -- and giving readers the tools to view what they want. Other sites manage to offer those tools. Newspapers, for the most part, have offered substandard tools. No, technology won't solve the problem. We still need to watch them. But better technology would give us the tools to watch them better.

This column is long on the reasons not to allow anonymous comments, but short on the solutions. What practical means exists to require real names?

And to suggest that allowing comments is unethical...well, that's just silly. Allowing them is part of the cost of doing business today. News is a conversation. Don't allow comments? You're not participating in the conversation. Maybe we should wag our fingers at our lack of commitment to managing the comments better.

Jason Fry
Posted by Jason Fry 11/12/2009 5:48:38 PM

With you in spirit, sir, but the devil's in the details.

Sure, we should put our names to our words when we're commenting on the lousy second baseman who dropped a pop-up or the new building design we think looks like our kid did it. But that doesn't cover every situation where there are conversations to be had. What about scared gay teens, incest survivors, Iranian dissidents, corporate whistleblowers? Doesn't anonymity allow them to engage in ways that we find valuable? Is it worth losing their voices because we don't like some of the other things anonymity brings?

There are technological ways to handle comments that can solve a lot of this problem without breaking already-overworked newsroom staffers, by letting readers do more of the work:

* Let readers hide anonymous comments from view.

* Display anonymous comments differently so they have less impact/power.

* Let readers vote comments up/down, with ones below a certain threshold hidden.

* Let readers "ignore" users so their comments never display.

* Require that a commenter's first X comments be moderated. Most trolls have poor impulse control and can't behave themselves long enough to pass this test.

* Employ abuse reports and moderation for the rest.

Complementing this, make sure reporters/editors actively engage. People will behave better if they're truly engaged with and taken seriously.

Do these things and I think you can solve a lot of the problem of Internet snark and sniping, without losing anonymity's real benefits.

Zealots never see themselves
Posted by Sean Robinson 11/12/2009 5:12:24 PM

Anonymity is not sacred. Kindly get over it. We are not living in colonial days. It is reasonable to ask people in a public forum to put a name behind the snark.

Have you noticed that people give their names in town hall meetings most of the time? Go protest that.

Names raise the quality of discourse. You speak more carefully without the crutch of anonymity to protect you from stupid impulses.

Some people don't care about that. Fine. If you want a free-for-all, there are places to go online, as others have noted. That doesn't mean your particular venue has to adopt the no-standards standard.

Does losing anonymity lose traffic? Probably. if that's all you care about, run a porn blog. you'll get all kinds of clicks.

What's interesting is the odd dynamic of the debate. The free-for-all advocates are making status-quo arguments, and telling the rebels to stop fighting the tide, because this is the Way Things Are.

Defining an ethic
Posted by Paul Stern 11/12/2009 4:25:01 PM

I think it is important to note that no one is forcing any newspaper to allow anonymous comments. Neither is there such a thing as freedom of speech on someone elses web site or in someone else's newspaper. You have the freedom to start your own site, of course, and to use it to abuse, malign, distort, lie, and rant all you want.

(It would be unAmerican to make someone publish something he or she didn't want in his or her own newspaper, wouldn't it?)

The question for newspapers is whether they want to be associated with anonymous and unmoderated speech on their comment boards -- sometimes of the most racist, bigoted and plain old vulgar nature; or whether they want to stand for fairness, balance, accuracy, accountablilty, and the rights of the individual to confront his detractor.

Most papers would prefer being popular to being ethical, since popularity means page views, and page views mean potential revenue. They then expect their readers to believe that they are somehow not responsible when some anonymous troll makes injurious, hurtful, racist or inaccurate comment on the site they provide. (Under the misnamed Communications Decency Act they are not.)

I think the public knows better, and will treat the industry accordingly.

Respectfully, this is a really bad idea
Posted by Anonymous User 11/12/2009 3:36:26 PM

I can't believe I'm reading this, especially from a journalist. The United States was founded on anonymous discourse (which was mostly pamphleteering at the time) otherwise one would know exactly who you have to hunt down, belittle, denigrate, or harass the employer of, to make the speech you don't like go away.

The importance of anonymous speech is defined in the Supreme Court decision McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Talley v. California, Lamont v. Postmaster General, and even ACLU of Georgia v. Miller. The loss of anonymity is the loss of freedoms. I could give you a thousand examples where the lack of anonymity would stifle public discourse, the hardest hit would be victims who don't want to speak publicly due to stigmas or whistleblowers who fear retribution.

You can go ahead and try, but for every system you come up with to expose who someone is, freedom seekers will come up with a way to circumvent it, if nothing else than moving the conversation to Twitter or another method.

It's amazing that anyone would even consider throwing these freedoms away en masse just because of some name calling. But if you're looking for yet another way to make news sites irrelevant to public discussion, go for it.

How to implement?
Posted by Patrick Beeson 11/12/2009 3:26:20 PM

I think your intentions are good, but you're up against the grain of how the Web works (to this point anyway). The folks arguing for paid content are in the same boat.

A big part of the problem here is how you'd go about requiring users authenticate themselves. This is not only a technological problem, but a man-power problem as well. Both of these areas are hampered in today's newsrooms.

So let's extend the conversation to the application level: How do you propose implementing this?

Go for it. I dare you.
Posted by Mark Phillips 11/12/2009 2:07:17 PM

You're swimming against the current here.

The idea that a news organization can set the tone for debate across the Internet is absolutely laughable. The fact is, the floodgates are open. The proverbial microphone (in this case, the newspaper's press) has been grabbed from newspapers and they're not getting it back.

Yes, comments sections are riddled with "mean-spirited, divisive and cowardly rants."

And?

Are you, John Hatcher, now the judge who decides that those rants are unacceptable these days and that something must be done to stop them?

Do you really believe someone who is kind-hearted and nice gets on a comments section and begins to utter vulgarities in machine-gun fire succession? Or are those comments just a reflection of the people who live amongst us? I happen to think it's the latter.

To think of this as an issue that news organizations must rally against is really missing the larger picture. It's material more for a psychology course than a journalism one.

The point is, this is who people are these days. It's that simple.

Go ahead. Institute those rules that you speak about. Think putting up a wall for comments will drive more traffic to newspaper Web sites? Explore this rationale with some publishers and try to gauge their reaction as your hind end is met by a size 10 Florsheim shoe.

Whenever news people (primarily newspaper ones... I know, I've worked for plenty of newspapers) try to dream up a new way to control how people interact on the Internet, they fail. Do you know why? Because the masses can go someplace else. Lots of places. Places you've heard about. Places you haven't heard about. Places that let them express themselves — no matter how vile you might think those comments are.

Investigate where people want to go on the Web, what information they really want and provide it to them. Anything else will continue to drive newspapers and their Web sites down the path to the abyss.

In the Meantime
Posted by Philip Kay 11/12/2009 1:30:16 PM

How about segregating the anonymous comments from those that can be sourced? I commented openly on yesterday's NY Times story about Justice Kennedy asking for prior review of coverage of his speech at a high school. Mine was one of 141. The editors flagged only a handful, most of them signed "laid-off-journalist", "Student", "John" and "Ed in CT." If they like what the "student" had to say, why not contact her privately and encourage her to take ownership (they have our email addresses.) But let's keep the anonymous rants off to one side. Phil Kay

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