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Running a Non-Partisan Political Forum?
cptnHaddock asks: "The internet was supposed to give a new breath to democracy. While there has been some interesting initiatives, I feel a lot more could be done. Do you have any experience, tips to share, about running a non-partisan political forum? How to encourage well-thought postings and filter out the cynical ramblings, and how to moderate without censoring? Is there any good software that you would recommend for that task? Are there other solutions even better suited to running a policy-oriented discussion board?"
Impossible.
Next question?
Why isn't this under the Humor section?
Just ban all posts and all stories. Well, you can allow porn.
Monstar L
...and that you know will reply in the fashion you desire.
That pretty much limits it to just yourself. But it's a start!
Politics and religion are two of the hottest flame-war topics EVER. You either choose to moderate EVERY comment (you are "censoring" your own board) or you accept the fact that there will be heated disagreements and non-polite exchances.
Oxymoron... How about a forum where the partisans don't just degenerate into having a flame fest.
No this isn't troll, just an observation that all political discussions, in any forum, are partisan.
One might hope for non-partisan consensus to emerge from a forum... but I wouldn't count on it.
I started a religion forum about six months ago, and I too was worried about flamewars and intolerance. Suprisingly, we have had very little name calling at all on our forum. Most of our members have came from slashdot through my sig link, so I guess that helped us get members that were above average in terms of writing and discussion skills.
We use phpbb with a few mods, like quick reply and a captcha system that doesn't really work. Most of our top posters have mod abilities, so that really helps us control the spam posts. Amazingly, for a religious forum, we haven't censored any posts in six months. Basically, just encourage rational debate and I don't think you will have any need to censor.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
It's not going to ever look non-partisan unless everyone's posts agree with your politics. In which case, you don't really have a non-partisan forum at all, but a you-partisan forum. What's worse is politics is nasty enough that even experts cannot be relied upon to settle disputes: they come with their own biases. There's the whole epistemology problem to contend with.
I think the best you can hope for is for everyone to be civil, but even that's only enforceable if everyone's already civil: uncivil moderators would make uncivil moderations. Just look at slashdot's moderation for an example. (and it's a good system for doing what you propose.)
In short, always be wary of politicians who want to "get rid of the politics" surrounding [thing x] because what they really mean is that other politicians should conform to their partisan position. "Bipartisanship," for instance, is really just a weasel word for ending debate without really arguing one's case thoroughly.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If it's an obvious troll, delete it. Otherwise let it stay.
You need maximal freedom of speech for proper discourse.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Have you not seen some of the political discussions running amuck here?
Even with the mod system, the filtering in "pref's", and the karma system, most political battles^Wdiscussions resemble fireworks on the 4th of July, only with nukes, WMD's, and hookers...er, what was we talking about?
BTW, sorry I don't have something more positive, but good luck with that anyway- it should be an interesting experience!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I'm actually doing this, and I can give you advice about some sections of it.
/. but it is a much bigger target - and even here it's not too big of a problem.
Firstly about ACs and flaming, we run it through a university society so most people who come on are from a university (and as such there is little flaming and trolling). We are open though for anyone to post on it, but I think most people wouldn't hunt out a small system on the net to try and troll. I know you get it on
I think If you want it to be non-partisan then you need to put up non-partisan stories and just let everyone have their own views and post them. You can even put up partisan stories but just try to make sure that they are fairly ballanced in number. For us me and a firend put up the stories, he's a Labour supporter (and a Blairite) whereas I'm a member of a conservative party. It's not normally that hard to see your own bias.
If you live in the UK getting access to non-partisan representations of the news is easy (because all our TV media has to be non-partisan). It might be harder if you want to do US news but you could always put up a right and a left wing interpretation of the story and then let people talk about where they feel that they are on it...
If you want to try and encourage well thought out discusion you should consider getting some friends and along with yourself post your own opinions on the stories in a well thought out way (especially at the start) so that people can see top quality examples of discusion and reason
As for moderation on the whole I'd say don't. I've had people say that they think that 9/11 and 7/7 were justified etc. and I've just left it, people can see bullshit and often don't even flame back (but can tear their poor arguements appart). I would delete something which used overly offensive language, or an obvious flaming comment (like "Bush is crap and likes to have sex with dogs and children!" - you know it's a lie and it has no point).
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
If it's an obvious troll, delete it.
Speaking as someone over the years who has been derided on political forums as both a far right rightwing extremist and a left wing nut job, when it comes to politics, trolling is often in the eyes of the beholder. What would be considered trolling in a left wing forum would be seen as a valid opinion in a right wing forum and vice versa. This is due to the different "hot buttons" partisans of different parties are programmed to have.
I'm currently struggling with just this thing myself. I'm in the process of setting up a blogsite/message board for people who refuse to dirty themselves through alignment with a political party. You are right that freedom of speech must be maximal for proper discourse in one sense, but in another, unrestricted political discourse goes like this once partisans of any major group join in:
partisan: "This issue that my political party told me is important is important so I'm arguing it."
partisanx: "Really, well why do you personally care about it?"
partisan: "for the reasons outlined by my political party."
partisanx: "yeah, I've heard of all that before, do you have any opinions of your own?
partisan: "these are my opinions, I just happen to agree 100 percent with my political party.
partisanx: "yeah, sure you do. When I want to hear your political opinion, I'll go read your parties talking points. Thanks for playing."
partisan: "This issue that my political..."
ad nauseum.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
1. allow only discussion on events that happened atleast 120 years ago in rural Sweden
2. no Swedes
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Hm...
I, too, have often thought about creating a forum where well-reasoned ideas could be expressed and debated. However, actually allowing for democratic participation usually results in the debate turing to jingoism and argumentum ad hominem. I have formulated a plan in an attempt to overcome these problems, but failed to implement it due to the amount of time required. I will describe that plan forthwith so that you might consider it as a possible answer to your inquiry.
The subject for the debate is posted on your website. Three days are allowed for people to submit position papers and arguments, preferrably with references backing up their assertions. The best four or five papers are published and the authors are invited to debate their points (with or without a moderator) for the next two days. Following the two day debate, the general public is allowed to post to the discussion. The discussion by the general public can either be unmoderated (ideally democratic) or a moderated (egalitarian). I believe a Slashdot-type moderation system could be appropriate.
Depending on available resources, there is no reason you could not post one or more debate topics each day -- a rolling series of debates, as it were. But, as should be self-evident, the effort required to read the position papers and select the conferees could be substantial.
I have seen forums come and go while certain ones stay. They have several factors, but in terms of administration:
1. I would think the first step would be to go out and attract/recruit the core group of people who share your vision and are enthusiastic about it. The core group is very important, as they set the energy and the mood for everyone else. They are also the ones you will eventually trust to place moderators when the forum outgrows your oversight.
2. Set clear and simple policies and rules that encourage the atmosphere/cooperation you want in place and enforce them consistently. Be fair and explain the actions you take and have the moderators explain themselves to the group when they make a decision, don't make decisions that are arbitrary. People can see when you are being fair or when you are taking sides due to varying factors such as cronyism, partisanship, etcetera.
3. No censorship of purely political speech. It may see like "no duh!" but enough political forums decide to censor views that are not compatible with the moderators/leader of the board. Even over objectionable views, there are ways to win over them without resorting to this.
Okay, that aside, let's discuss what you want. You want a non-partisan board. The origin of partisan is of course party, like political party. The role of the political party was always to band individuals together into a force that has power. The downside of a political party is that over time a member had to trade in his individual thinking and go with the groupthink of the group, sometimes with issues that had little to do with the original goal of the group.
Political parties/movements have done or promoted some good, such as the abolitionist movement, women's suffrage, and of course our own revolution.
Political Parties have also done a lot of bad: the Communist Party in Russia and elsewhere where they have actually taken power, the National Socialist party, etcetera. In America, Political Parties have not been this evil, but have set the current political system (which I think should be unconstitutional) and climate to their advantage and have wrought the current situation.
In this sense, the way to minimize partisanship is to get in your core group of people who are for independent politicians (no party affiliation mandatory) and where political parties have little meaning to them. Meaning that your core group should be people that don't follow a party line, but decide issue by issues. People who staunchly stick with their parties will always have a conflicting interest to be partisan as a show of loyalty/teamplaying for their party.
You will likely also want people who are not afraid to blast both sides equally.
Like many social human endeavors, since politics is the assertion of one's own ego, don't expect a lack of shrill bickering though.
You have to decide what's most important to you: reach or principle.
/. has, but then you run the risk of people moderating people down based on petty squabbles (as has been seen occasionally on /.).
On the one hand, many of the free discussion forums are flooded with people who spout hateful gibberish about politicians they don't like or blind lovefest for politicians they do. To keep these people out, you might want to consider charging membership fees. People seem to pop off a lot less when it costs them money to do so.
On the other hand, charging a membership fee may create a problem with reach. Some people may be the sort to engage in insightful political discourse, but aren't willing to spend money on the privilege.
You could implement a reputation/rating system like
We have had an excellent forum that has a reasonable sized user base, an extremely diverse set of viewpoints (Your standard variety of mild to hard core democrats, republicans, libertarians, but also views from communists, fascists, etc.), and consitently high quality posts.
There are rules that people are expected to follow regarding respecting those you are discussing with. While there are occasional flame wars (and people are suspended from posting for a brief period of time when it gets out of hand), it doesn't require anything particular draconian. Requiring respect in a public discussion is not censorship.
ornery.org for those interested.
LetterRip
Parent sure has a point though.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
You have to find a way to prevent high-traffic, partisan political sites from sending large numbers of their members to your forum. Maybe have a quota for the maximum number of new members who can register in a day?
Also consider having three forums: one for liberals, moderated by volunteers within the forum; one for conservatives, moderated by volunteers within the forum, and one non-partisan. That way, the people who really just want to be partisan can talk amongst themselves, and they can censor the other side as much as they want within their own forum. Make it so new threads on the non-partisan forum can't just be created by anyone, but on specific debate topics pre-arranged by "community leaders" from the partisan forums. This will hopefully cut down on the amount of moderation work that needs to be done by you.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
http://whatswrongwiththe.us/
Very interesting (even if I'm not american myself and the site focus on US issues). It is slash-based, so provide the moderation system you know can help filter the comments. However, the site does not have that many comments yet.
Animoog.org
Instead of focusing on parties or current (cliched) discussions, start with first principals and try to steer discussion toward principals upon which people agree on, THEN apply the reasoning to current events.
For example:
Abortion - pro or anti? -- Wrong!
To what degree should the law force dependency on a person? Can the law require a person to allow the use of their body to host another, even if it means the other may perish? Could we force a person to donate blood or an organ? -- Discuss the principal, then work up to 'abortion' - the specific application of the principal.
This will probably still backfire, so you will have to moderate - there are a lot of asshats out there with axes to grind.
Good luck and post a link - I'd welcome a positive political discussion.
Yes, and the Pope is infallible.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I was thinking about this issue recently ...
If you have a large, public forum, and use a moderation system, it seems that partisans would mod their side up and the other side down. They may balance each other out; in fact, the flames that provoke outrage should attract more negative mods, and those that can make arguments that appeal to the other side would be left alone (or modded up).
You could also hand out many, extra, '-1 partisan drivel' mod points, maybe 1/day/user, to filter out the remainder of the flames.
I'm curious - how do you/these people act on their political views
I don't know how the forum will turn out. It has not been launched yet. I have secured a server for it and am in the process of configuring the software and choosing a layout. My plan is to attempt to draw independent minded people to the forum and then see where the chips fall.
but, I can tell you how I handle this so far...
Direct action, single issue stuff (pro/anti GM, etc), industrial action (strikes/ direct confrontation, etc. All of these, none, some I haven't mentioned?
If my own reasoning tells me that I should take part in a boycott, then I will take part in a boycott. If my reasoning tells me to take part in a strike, then I will take part in a strike. My reasons will be my own.
My personal issue with partisans is not that they work together towards common goals, doing such is the backbone of a healthy democratic republic, a form of government which you could say I am a true believer in. It's what has become of the political debate as a result of the partisans spreading the message on "issues" with memes and cult like group think.
For example, I don't ever take part in a group movement because some partisan friend of mine emailed me to sign a petition. How many people do you know who are like that? Be honest. They get a petition from someone they know who shares their partisan views, then out of reflex, without any type of real thought, reason, or seriously considering the other sides views, they sign the petition and become diehard supporters of it. Those are exactly the type of people I'm not interested in talking to because they have nothing of value whatsoever to say. If you want to hear the opinions of people like that, simply read what their partisan group has to say or tune into their favorite pundit. In my experience, such people make up the majority of partisans who argue politics online. That's why the majority of political forums are usually nothing more than echo boxes, or echo wars.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
I could see that it might not be too bad if there were no anonymous posting.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
First off, I think you're bound for failure. However, if you really want to do this, there's a feature you should absolutly not impliment. Friends. Nothing like a /. zoo. Friends will be people that agreee with you. Foes will be people that disagree with you. Soon it degenerates into killfile.
Some say don't censor, but that's wrong. You should. Too often the shrillest voices take over the discussion. Be fair though. Five years ago Jonah Goldberg fired Ann Coulter from the National Review Online, for her notriously shrill and childish name calling. He said that there was no place for that in a serious political discussion, and he was absolutely right. (Five years later, he's realized that playing Coulter's childish game is what makes money, so he's done a 180 and wrote the self-paroding and hypocritical "Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton," but that's for another discusssion.)
If we weren't called ReTHUGs even before we talk about anything. Talk about censorship.
Maybe what you're trying to do is to set up a centrist blog.
There is no such thing as nonpartisan polical discussion, but there are a surprising number of centrist blogs, running normal blog software, that succeed in perpetuating a culture of thoughtful comments, rather than paranoia or personal attack.
Spam's more of a real problem than trolls.
It was started by a couple of people of centrist inclination getting together and recruiting a initial core. That's since changed drastically, but it's still going strong.
I post at one called Centerfield. It also includes a blogroll of other centrist blogs.
A few reasons :
If it's a US-centric forum, you can't avoid partisanship. One of the very cornerstones of US political practice is partisanship - the system has largely been warped from a rational discussion of issues and direction into an "us vs them" argument ("this isn't an argument, it's just contradiction!" "No it's not..."). Of course, there'll always be a few truely non-partisan people around - the people you want to attract - but they always seem to end up being attacked by both sides.
And that's another point: you will be attacked. Trolls, swarming, astroturf, DoS, legal threats - anything and everything, every dirty trick, will be used by one or the other to destroy you. Because you threaten their beliefs, because you threaten their cosy bipolar system, and sometimes just because they need to rile up their army of like-mided followers to attack something.
(A little aside: every organisation of any power or size has some sort of hidden master/slave structure. In left-wing organisations, the two parts are sometimes called "members & militants". The militants are, well, militant; they make policy, choose targets, etc. Members exist so that (a) the militants can point and say "look, we have 30,000 supporters, so we must be right!", and (b) because 30,000 members turning up at a rally is much more impressive than 10 militants...)
Finally, it's impossible to keep it non-partisan. Gradually, in 100 different little ways, the group will show a consensus biased towards one side or the other. Even these little biases will attract one or two like-thinking members, and discourage one or two others. Eventually the tipping point is reached - and in these things, that point is almost invisible - and the bias becomes unrecoverable.
So, nice idea - and one I applaud tremendously; I can see my own country's political system becoming more and more party partisan every day because that's what the parties desire. But, ultimately, doomed to failure. It'd be a nice windmill to tilt at for a while, though...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Seconded! Ornery.org rules. Possibly another reason it works so well is that Orson Scott Card (who owns the site) tends to attract thoughtful people of all political stripes. This keeps it from getting bogged down in any particular ideology.
:D
By the way, nice to see you here, LR. This is PS.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to join the Ornery forums, you should know what you're getting into. The standard greeting there is "Welcome to Ornery. You're wrong."
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
GAOSKEQIAPYCYFOHaHSG(?
Is this some sort of anti-Da Vinci code??
There is such a word as alot, and it is roughly a synonym for allocate.
Assuming you're American, you need to remember that a NON-partisian organization needs to include ALL political parties and ALL voters. This includes independents, Libertarians, Greens, Socialists, Communists, and all the other 'minor' ideas. Non-partisian doesn't mean just democrats and republicans, do you hear me League of Women Voters?
As for the moderation issue, make it clear and make your users agree to a 'debate not argue' concept. By example, I was at a political rally for PeirceForOhio.com last week. A Green supporter, a Blackwell supporter, and I were having a discussion about poltics. We disagreed, but we were amiable and making points all around. Another rally-er came over and started ranting while we were having a nice conversation, irritated all of us.
Your users need to be reminded that a discussion forum is for DISCUSSION and is not a pulpit.
See also issues arising from Godwins Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
A strategy that I use on a non-political board is NEVER to delete posts. I move, split, and edit and every time I have to moderate I make it clear why the thread was moderated. I and the other admins also listen to and respond to issues with moderation, but not in the moderated thread.
Also consider having three forums: one for liberals, moderated by volunteers within the forum; one for conservatives, moderated by volunteers within the forum, and one non-partisan. That way, the people who really just want to be partisan can talk amongst themselves, and they can censor the other side as much as they want within their own forum.
That's a bad idea because it provides two nurturing pools for partisan extremism to let people gear up for battle before going all out in the "non-partisan" forum. People can argue with a "public" face and then bad mouth in the "private" partisan forum. Unless you restrict access to the partisan forums, then they'll just become battlefields as well. If you let moderation filter out people in the "wrong" area, then they'll quickly become two camps that accuse the otherside of close-minded censorship.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
THIS is pedantic.
In so much as I try to encourage political debate on the forums for my politics game here:
http://www.positech.co.uk/forums
I think I've been ok so far, even though the discussion is fairly sparse. One reason for this is that the nature of the game is entirely about politicl policies and actual implementation, rather than rhetoric or 'principles', so possibly that skews the discussion away from the more flamebait related areas.
One thing I suspect helps si that if I start a poll or topic, I always try to rpesent both sides to the question within the question itself, in order to get the principle of balanced debate there at the very start.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I will say this is impossible.
Oh, the board will stay fairly-civil -- at first. But political boards suffer from a decay effect: over time, the conversation decays and devolves into mindless ad-hominem attacks and factless "IMO, this is what we should do" ideological partisan squabbles.
The problem is one of regression towards a mean value of quality. On any given board, as the population rises, the ratio of insightful, intelligent commenters to moronic, idiot blatherers widens. The behavior is very much as if you were traveling leftwards from the right tail on a Gaussian (normal) curve of quality (where quality rises as you go rightwards).
This is because your board will start out being frequented by people closest to you in your social circle: your friends, maybe family, and whoever you make aware of your board online (e.g. people reading your sig, if you put a link there). But over time, word-of-mouth -- viral marketing -- ensures that word of your board will spread from person to person, and like a disease, if the board is considered worthwhile by enough people, you'll see exponential growth, and with it, a rising number of people who don't know you, who have no connection to you, and thus who don't have any incentive to behave the way you would like them to (i.e. civilly and by your definition of "reasonably"). Thus, the amount of crap you will believe yourself to be seeing will rise.
You can try to filter out trolls. But they will always exist. By employing a small group of trusted moderators, you can filter out cynics and anything else you like -- but in so doing, you will run the risk of being called an opponent of free speech (and rightly-so, although, being a privately-run board, you are perfectly within your rights to do so. But I really don't understand why you would want to filter cynicism or anything besides spam or legally-questionable or off-topic material).
I have argued for years online. Even when there are intelligent, worthwhile people to talk to, it is a pointless venture: 99% (and I don't believe this is an exaggeration) of the people, whether participating or lurking, will *not* be convinced by your arguments. You, in turn, are very unlikely to be convinced by somebody else's arguments.
(Personally, I *did* change once due to online debate: from what amounted to basically an Americanized version of a European social democrat to a libertarian/classical liberal that I am now (with only the issues of free speech and gun control remaining constant throughout my various political transformations). And before that, I changed once due to real life debate too, from a somewhat-libertarian Republican to that Euro-like social democrat.)
If you want a classic example of what happens to argumentative quality over time, look no further than Slashdot. All the users with low UIDs (4 digits or less) tend to be very smart, well-reasoned people without a trollish bone in their bodies. The same cannot be said for most of the rest of us in the 6-digit UID range. (Oh sure, the occasional worthwhile poster will appear every so often as more people learn about the board. But they are the exception, not the rule.)
Remember the Pareto Principle (a.k.a. the 80/20 Rule): 80% of your board members (given a sufficiently-large population) will be worthless, while the other 20% make it worthwhile to you and those considering the board...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Just to make sure you get your facts right,..
I'm being OUTRAGEOUSLY pedantic!
I do not think this is the best place to ask your question HEIL HITLER!
http://outcampaign.org/
If you want something seriously useful, then you need to consider various scenarios that a toy site can ignore: e.g. what happens if Karl Rove hires a few dozen people to get on your site, and pretend that they're several hundred different people, who all just happen to be presenting a similar spin?
Myself, I think the only reasonable answer is that you have to abandon anonymity. Every user account needs to be tied to an actual person in meatspace.
(All of which means that I think both slashdot and wikipedia are essentially toy sites that are on their way down the tubes.)
I know this is probably never going to be read, but I'll have a quick say anyway.
:)
I believe the best and most civil forums have roughly 5-20 active participants. Any more and you just have fools who join strictly to post "all liberals hate America!" or "all conservatives are Nazis!" With a smaller community its much simpler to run because the extremists can always be bashed back into line (ie. www.tdtalk.com)
Anyway, good luck
The MPOV sounds like what I was thinking about. I used wikipedia's NPOV only as a well-known example.
:)
:) No offence?
The important part is having simple, clear guidelines (that work) and respecting them.
The problem is the "that work" part since I can't see any set of rules without its problems. Especialy since in a debate it's expected to use whatever means to win. How long will neutral issue statements resist? Either they'll lean towards a POV, or they'll be contested as leaning, or both. Anyways, I promise I'll take a look at the links you provided. Right now in my timezone it's early morning and I have to go to bed
Also I'd like criticise you a bit about hitting on wikipedia. I realise it's not perfect, but it's not supposed to be. It *is* however very useful, and the world is a better place because of it. And yet almost every time it's mentioned it's about a flaw or another. Sounds a bit like "XP is a bad OS" and "Microsoft is evil". None is true, but makes people feel good saying it.
I'm sorry about saying that, especially when your post is way more useful than mine
Oh, and I'm not a wikipedia cultist or anything. Lately I've just used it for finding anime reviews...
:) See? this is exactly what I meant! Any of this may be true but guess what?! i don't care. The only reason you get to say this shit is because wikipedia is famous and wales is a celebrity. Why? because wikipedia is something useful, to lots and lots of people.
You know what I do care about? That I can find the Naruto list of story arcs there. Yes, even the fillers. And it's pretty up to date, too.
That's neither true nor relevant. I have certain opinions on varouus political questions, such as Iraq, stem-cell research and so on. If I were running a political forum, I'd rather see posts supporting my position than attacking it. To the extent that I'd have an agenda, that would be it. However, even if I didn't understand that, I could still keep that forum nonpartisan. All I'd have to do is allow posts on all sides of those questions, never censoring those I disagree with, my site would be as non-partisan as is needed.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
In any case AC, to address the substantive points buried in your post:
Yes, but once you get beyond the "toy site" level, encouraging participation is not the problem. There's no shortage of comments to read on slashdot -- there is however a shortage of people who know what they're talking about. Discouraging frivolous activity would perhaps not be such a bad thing.As far as new sites are concerned, it could be that the solution is to gradually ramp up the access barriers; except that then you have to watch out for regular users feeling betrayed by changes in the ground rules.
I can see how this is a concern but (1) for slashdot to know who each poster is is different from the readers knowing this -- admittedly there would still be risks to a brave AC from government demands for identity, for example. (2) I think that these concerns are usually exaggerated -- our culture is drowning in fear at present (don't give that guy who cut you off the finger, he might have a gun!) and we really need to get over it.It's possible that there is a compromise system that would be workable for slashdot: currently there's a three tier system: ACs/logged-in/logged-in-with-karma-bonus. A fourth level for people with verified identity might be a good-enough fix that doesn't completely do away with anonymous voices. (Note: paying customers would automatically be in the fourth level, a point that you'd think would appeal to the SlashMasters...)
Now now, you're letting your rhetoric run away with you. It's all well and good to delicately suggest that I want to sneak around in a black hood gunning down fine upstanding ACs such as yourself, but if you start acting like you've proven the point you just end up looking nutty.