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March 20, 2007
Is the anonymity of the internet a good or bad thing?
I just posted a story titled "Is the anonymity of the web a good thing?", which is basically discussing some of the same issues that I was addressing in a previous post.
It is an important issue, so I wanted to point out this article to anyone who may have missed it when it was published online.
We allow readers to post comments on the end of articles anonymously, as do a lot of other newspapers around the country.
We are concerned with some of the nasty comments some readers feel compelled to post, but we are also concerned that moderating your comments, will effectively silence many of you.
If we require you to sign your name to all your posts, will that mean we would only get the "politically correct" responses, rather than how you really feel about the issues?
And if we require you to sign in, that just means you need a new email address, which aren't hard to come by these days, so how much would that really help?
I don't think anonymity online is the problem, but not realizing some of the people online are not who they say they are, might be.
I hope you, the reader, realize that some people will say things that are inappropriate because no one will know who they are.
The internet provides everyone a platform where they can express their views about pretty much any topic, but it makes it even more important that you trust the sites where you are getting your information from.
For under $100, I can set up a web site where I claim to be a medical center and start dispensing medical advice for a small fee, even though I have no medical training at all.
The web is a wonderful thing, never before have we had so much valuable information at our fingertips, but that doesn't mean the web is free of troublemakers.
At the end of the day, I still think allowing you to comment anonymously is better than the alternative, and we'll deal with the inappropriate comments as they happen.
Ideally, article commenting, message boards, and responses to blogs are your place to express your views, and you will demand from fellow posters that they stop using them to launch personal attacks on views they don't subscribe to.
Posted by Bustraan on March 20, 2007 9:24 PM
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