Niagara At Large Will Not Post Anonymous Comments On This Site – And Our Applause To The Buffalo News For Being The First Daily Newspaper On This Continent To Ban Anonymous Comments On Its Web Site

By Doug Draper, Niagara At Large.

When we launched Niagara At Large nine months ago as an independent, alternative venue for news and commentary for our greater Niagara region, we made it clear from the start that anonymous comments will not be posted.

Buffalo News Managing Editor Margaret Sullivan is showing leadership by imposing the first ban on anonymous comments on the website of a daily newspaper on this continent. More on that brave decision further down in this aritcle. Photo courtesy of The Buffalo News.

This decision was made to discourage uncivil comments, including insulting and defamatory attacks on individuals or groups who are either in the news or care enough to share news and commentary, along with their real name, with online sites like this. It was made to discourage the kind of verbal spitball we see being hurled by anonymous bloggers on websites, including far too many being operated by supposedly reputable newspapers and broadcast outlets.

We believed, from the start, that if we require people to post comments under their real names, there would be a far greater likelihood of receiving comments tempered with a degree of thoughtfulness and civility.

To date, Niagara At Large is pleased to say that since January of this year, this site has received more than 1,500 comments to news and commentary on the site and readers that have shared their names have posted more than 1,200. By any yardstick, that is a pretty good response considering that some very good and experienced individuals in the news business warned us at the onset that we may not get many people willing to comment to posts on this site if we required them to share their real names.

However, there are still readers, and we’ve had about 300 to date, who send us comments with pseudonyms like ‘Rick Ramrod’, ‘Torpedo Tom’ and ‘Sexy Cool’ tagged to them, or comments with names and email addresses we cannot verify as being real through attempts to email these people or call them on the phone. The majority of these comments have so far confirmed our view that people who prefer to remain anonymous or use false names are more interested in breathing fire at others than engaging in a civil debate. In fact, some of these people have engaged in commentary that leads one to believe they would be better off seeking some professional help in anger management than attempting to post their remarks here.

That is why Niagara At Large will stand by its policy – a policy that has been available for all to read since our inception by visiting our site at www.niagaraatlarge.com and clicking on “Comments Policy” below our masthead – and it is why we applaud The Buffalo News (the only good daily newspaper left in our greater Niagara region, by the way) for becoming one of the first, if not the first daily newspaper in North America, to require readers to share their real names in the comment section of a newspaper-sponsored blog site.

Buffalo News Managing Editor Margaret Sullivan has made a noble and courageous case for requiring those who would comment to news stories and editorials to share their real names on the paper’s blog site in columns in the News, and Sullivan has shared the reasons for this pioneering stand in interviews with other media, including CBC Radio this summer. It is a case she has made, we would submit, with a great deal of integrity and principle.

Sullivan admits in her columns and interviews that she has met a good deal of opposition to those who want to go on firing in their anonymous rants. But she’s also noted that supporters of the new policy have told the paper they “are relieved that the astonishingly hateful and venomous commentary on news stories will likely be restrained once people have to identify themselves. They are hoping for a measure of civility, without the loss of wide-ranging discussion and diverse viewpoints.”

The best to Sullivan and her great paper in showing such brave leadership, and we believe that she (and we) are on the cutting edge when it comes to demanding some accountability from people who share their comments on line.

There are no doubt those out there who feel they should have the right to say whatever they want about another individual or organization online, up to and including accusing them of something as off colour as pedophilia, and that anyone who blocks them from spewing that kind of venom is standing in the way of their rights to express their views.

Well some of us are here to tell you that expressing our views comes with a responsibility to be personally accountable for them, as in having the courage to stand behind them in name, and to express them in ways that does not involve personal attacks of the most vile sort.

Niagara At Large is excerpts below, from a column by Margaret Sullivan and published in The Buffalo News this summer, discussing that newspaper’s groundbreaking decision to require people who share comments on the paper’s website to share their real names.

We most certainly welcome you to share your views on this policy by following the links for posting a comment at the end of this article.

(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)

Seeking a return to civility in online comments
By Margaret Sullivan
Some editors were sitting in a news meeting one morning not long ago, bemoaning the often outrageous, intolerant and hateful online “comments” attached to stories on The News Web site, when News Business Editor Grove Potter uttered a simple but eloquent truth:
“Let’s face it,” he said. “We’ve created a class of anonymous flamethrowers.”
He’s right. We have. And shortly, we’re about to change that dramatically.
Online commenting began, a year or so ago, as a way to engage our Web readers and give them a chance to air their points of view and get some discussion going on the topics of the day.
Quickly, though, the practice degenerated into something significantly less lofty. Particularly on stories about inner-city crime — but not only on those stories — reader comments can be racist and ugly. In fact, we’ve been shocked at how seemingly routine stories can elicit comments that veer off into offensive territory.
One local reader, Bob Gallivan, wrote to me about it recently.
“What is intended to be an open forum for individuals’ thoughts and opinions is all too often the outlet for small-minded, omniphobic hatemongers, racists and just plain mean-spirited people,” he said.
Media organizations all over the country, particularly newspapers with active Web sites, are struggling with this subject. There’s no easy answer. The tension is between wanting to take advantage of the freewheeling expression of the Internet and wanting to keep standards of reasonable tolerance and decency on a public site.
After quite a bit of internal discussion, The News — in the next few weeks — will make a significant change. We will require commenters to give their real names and the names of their towns, which will appear with their comments, just as they do in printed “letters to the editor,” which have appeared daily for many years on the newspaper’s op-ed page.
It will mean that Web site readers must fill out an online form and include a phone number that we will use to help verify that they are who they say they are. It won’t be foolproof, and it will be somewhat labor-intensive for us, but we think it will raise the level of the discussion.
“We hope to raise the level of discourse by providing a measure of accountability,” said News Online Editor Brian Connolly.
The change arises, in part, after other methods have failed. The commenting was set up with certain restraints built in. One was self-policing — if a number of readers flagged a comment as unacceptable, it would be taken down. Another was monitoring by editors here, though the high volume of comments on dozens of stories a day made that impractical.
In some recent cases — for example, the celebrated Batavia arrest for adulterous sex on a picnic table — we’ve taken the more extreme measure of not offering commenting at all on stories that seemed most likely to descend into the gutter.
But, despite these precautions, trouble crept in anyway, like Peter Rabbit squeezing under the farmer’s fence. We have felt for some time that The News’ reputation for fairness and good taste was being damaged.
Clearly, it’s time to do something about it.
The changeover to the use of real names and locations will happen around Aug. 1. Before that, we’ll give our Web readers plenty of notice about how to comply with the new procedures.
The aim of publishing reader comments, all along, has been to have a free-flowing discussion of stimulating and worthwhile ideas — something of a virtual village square.
Now that people’s names will be attached to their ideas, we’re hoping that aim, finally, will be achieved.