A Freep.com proposal

[corktownyuppie]

I generally don't read the Freep.Com comment section because the level of dialogue falls somewhere near the median level of intelligence on daytime talk shows....somewhere between Maury Povich paternity testing and a Jerry Springer marathon.

A radical proposal, for any of you who work for one of the daily rags: You don't print anonymous editorials, right? Why not hold online comments to the same standard?

...the Times has been using both "regular" comments and Facebook comments side by side for months, and according to Orr, "the level of discourse - the difference - was pretty stunning," explaining that the Facebook comments barely required any moderation, but the traditional commenting "immediately plunged into the lowest common denominator - racism, threats, vulgarity. It was night-and-day."

This kind of accountability isn't something that is going to be easily accepted by everyone online—think about the outcry about Google+ demanding real names be used—but it does suggest a potential way out of the occasionally frustrating, depressing world of comments sections ruled by fake names and attempts to win arguments with insults and shouting the loudest.


Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/08/22/...#ixzz1VoUekYp4

For what it's worth, Time Magazine..."Facebook Comments Make Websites Smarter, More Polite"

Online forums are one thing, so I'm not necessarily hard-pressed to make the suggestion for blogs or places like DYes. But if journalistic publications want to be taken seriously, maybe we can work to re-consider whether the safety provided by anonymity is really all that valuable when weighed against the almost useless discourse that spews from writers whose identities are screened by the "hoods" of cyberspace and usernames.*

*[[making subtle reference to the Ku Klux Klan)