The Huffington Post, which is my major source of news and perhaps that’s laziness on my part but despite their journalistic shortcomings they cover an incredibly wide range of stuff and have an active commenting community, are changing their comments policy.
The Central Scrutinizer, Arianna Huffington
They say that you can’t be anonymous any more, but I’m not really clear what they mean by that since they also said in the same article that it won’t affect people who are already commenting, and I don’t see how both of those can be true, especially those of us who are commenting anonymously now.
But I think maybe they mean “anonymous to the HP,” in other words you can still use a pseudonym, just that the moderators need to know who you are in real life. I thought that was already the case, but what do I know.
We will see what happens, but the announcement was nowhere near as clear-cut and sharply defined as the reaction to it, which was swift and overwhelmingly negative, with people threatening to quit in droves and I think quite a few of them quitting in reality. That strikes me as jumping the gun, but everybody chooses for themselves.
They say it’s to get rid of trolls, which is sort of a loose term. You call me a troll, I say I’m stating a legitimate opinion. But I can see the point. There are shit-stirrers, there are trouble makers, and people might be less inclined to post stupid but provocative comments if somebody actually knows who they are and where they live.
On the other hand, it could have a chilling effect on the dialogue, discouraging some of the more radical (i.e. more interesting) ideas.
Personally, I think they would be better served by hiring a few more moderators (stop being a bloody cheapskate, Arianna – it’s not as if you ever had to work for the money or anything) and paying more attention to the comments, because somebody can be a troll on one subject, on one day, in one particular mood, and otherwise a brilliant and insightful person.
It should be about the comment, not the commenter.
www.gurukalehuru.com 