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Anonymity on the internet and online comments
I received a press release today from Zogby International, a polling firm, saying that 60 percent of Americans believe that anonymity on the Internet has made us less civil.
That's not surprising. I think many would agree that not being required to use a real name makes people "braver" and it makes people say things they might not otherwise say to one another.
However, according to the Zogby poll, only 21 percent of people think that real usernames should be required, and 81 percent think that people will always find a way to hide their identity.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL RESULTS OF THE POLL
That's not surprising. I think many would agree that not being required to use a real name makes people "braver" and it makes people say things they might not otherwise say to one another.
However, according to the Zogby poll, only 21 percent of people think that real usernames should be required, and 81 percent think that people will always find a way to hide their identity.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL RESULTS OF THE POLL
posted by The Middletown Press at
10:41 PM
5 Comments:
People have their own preferences they can use only their first names, anyways there are a lot of people with the same names first names. My point is as long as you have an opinion share it, it depends on the readers whether they let it affect their own point of views.
One of your sister papers has finally implemented a superior commenting system. I think you may find that if you use a better system such as Disqus or Intensedebate, you will improve the quality of the commenting and perhaps have to rely less on moderating.
But while I am at it, I will inveigh again as to the ever-worsening quality of the Middletown Press website. It is now so completely overloaded with horrible adware in the form of pop-ups that force spawning of new windows, animated advertising graphics and the latest "navigation" bar and "peel-away" pages that it has made the experience of using the site entirely loathsome.
Please guys, pare it down, or start over.
I agree with Mr. Lebowski on both issues.
Also, since nastiness breeds nastiness, the Middletown Press is an active part of the problem. With so much nasty attacking going on, it would take more bravery than most to list a name to be a target of the MP comment trolls.
If you are going to give them a forum, you owe us reasonable monitoring and deletion of libelous attacks.
Definitely some people do find more confidence if they hide their real identity in the internet.
Why not have the Middletown Press website utilize the already available facebook comments plugin that a number of other online newspapers/magazines require for commenting? To post a comment a user would have to enter his/her facebook login information. This would allow folks to post as themselves, using full names and photographs, and would certainly encourage civility and intelligent discussion in the comments.
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