Slashdot Mirror
Washingtonpost.com Wants Identities of Posters
mytrip recommends a News.com account of a panel discussion in which the Washington Post's online executive editor Jim Brady argued against anonymity on his site. He's welcome to try to carve out a space for civilized discourse, but it seems that he can't help alienating the Net-savvy whenever he opens his mouth to speak of it. "... he would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards — and if need be — automatically kick them off for good. ... Brady also lamented that closing user accounts doesn't keep bad eggs off a site. They just come back and create new ones ... Brady believes that in the next five years people will be required to identify themselves in some way at many sites. 'I don't know whether we do it with a credit card number, a driver's license or passport ...'"
The easiest way is to authenticate by cell phone number. When you register for a site, your password is sent to your cell phone as an SMS message. One registration per cell phone number. Yes, it's possible to buy multiple SIM cards to get more phone numbers, but they're not free.
This costs the site about $0.05 for each message sent. For sites that derive some value from having members, it's worth it.
Slashdot would have paid about $50,000 or so in SMS fees by now.
Ever read washingtonpost.com's comments?
Guess what they're anonymous and they're basically worthless, consider the lack of any meaningful moderation system ala Slashdot. Comments in articles quickly become long, barely threaded and filled with idotic or worse comments.
It's the rule of internet forums, without some party moderating the debate, the troll wins and the comments suck.
Slashdot's answer is to allow the mob (users) to moderate, but Brady, since he's from the more traditional media, is wary of the mob. The mob has all sorts of biases and tends to reinforce its beliefs. It may be interesting discourse, but it can be difficult to get a balanced discourse -- and this is something the Post is committed to, for better or/and worse.
End result: The Post has moved slowly on user moderation and tried to keep moderation in the hands of a limited number of editors, which becomes overwhelming with so many posts and so many trolls.
His answer, is to require require people's ID to post on his company's web site. Throw in a little potential shame of trolling and see worthless comments decrease -- certainly people will think about them more.
Honestly, I think Brady's wrong on this point, I think the right answer is closer to Slashdot than what he envisions, but it's silly to try to slur the man as an enemy of free speech. Remember he's talking about the policies of the Washington Post on the Washington Post web site, not for the internet as a whole.
The biggest enemy to free speech can sometimes simply be too much noise.
Oh, and on a related note, you may be interested in reading an article Brady wrote on the event that CNET describes as a "notable history." It's available here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021100840.html
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
You haven't read digg recently, have you? Slashdot is in Valhalla compared to digg's moderation system, and that's because moderation merits in Slashdot are hierarchical - the first moderators were wisemen chosen by the Mighty Taco Himself. Besides, anyone can metamoderate. If they don't it's their problem.
In contrast, digg is open to hordes of uncontrollable moderation, and this is specially true when a scientology article gets modded down by the Hubbard hordes.
Having been unfairly modded down a few times myself by people who merely disagree with me (and conversely, occasionally modded up for no reason I can figure) I agree, it's not perfect. But it's good enough for everyday use, and that's good enough for the average blog-comment. We're not writing Great Literature here; we're yakking in the local coffeehouse or bar. And that means we'll have the odd spilled cuppa-joe or obstreperous drunk. It keeps the bouncers off the streets. ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What I'd like to see is a more "public" internet. Register your name, address, drivers license, arc of your piss, etc. at some place like Verisign. Let them hold on to all of the information, and on the web just go by a first name and a user ID. (I'm assuming that security happens by magic, and that these details are kept private.)
On the internet, everyone is an anonymous coward, and people behave differently when they have perfect anonymity. (It breeds asshats - check my posting history, I assure you that I have more kneejerk rants on this site than anyplace in the oxygenated world.)
If through some system, people were the same individuals everywhere they ent on the net - you only have a single account, everywhere - I bet they would behave differently. Even if there was no way to trace each netizen back to their flesh-and-blood doppelganger, it would be an improvement. It would let you ban people, not user accounts, or e-mail or IP addresses.
In some ways, this seems to be the original "spirit" of the internet, if there is such a thing. Someone more knowledgeable (read: older) can chime in, but relics like finger and .plan files seem to hint at this.
DATABASE WOW WOW
I worked at washingtonpost.com a decade ago, and knew Brady before he left the company and later returned. Back then we scoffed at The New York Times and their registration, flatly declaring that The Post would never require registration to
view articles. Of course, they implemented required registration after I left, and I've stopped reading the site on principle for that reason.
It was also said that we didn't want unmoderated user comments on the site because of (a) the liability, (b) the lack of credibility and (c) the troll factor. But users wanted it, so The Post is simply trying to balance the desires of its readers with its distaste for unmoderated comments. The things that keep the traffic up are the things The Post will swallow, no matter how distasteful. There was a time when The Post tried to prevent Matt Drudge from linking to its articles, but it couldn't get around the fact that he sent a huge amount of traffic to the site in those days, so it gave in.
Will authenticated posts happen in the next few years? Who can say? They'll probably try it, and if it's ineffective at addressing their concerns or traffic drops, they'll switch back. I don't really see it becoming an industry-wide norm unless someone loses a high-profile/high-dollar court case because of unauthenticated posts.
In any case, I can assure you that Brady is no fool, he knows he has competition (heck, he's from NY originally, and left The Post to work for one of its major competitors) and his intentions here are not "evil."
Signed, Anonymous
(Pun Intended)
It's relatively rare, but just this evening while meta-moderating I saw a "-1 Troll" moderation of a post that made some pro-Microsoft points, even though it was a well thought-out and informative post. It couldn't possibly be considered a troll by most reasonable people. Normally I don't meta-moderate counter to the original moderation unless it's pretty blatant, and this certainly was.
I meta-moderate whenever Slashdot indicates I can. In general, I'd guess I see one of these every 20-30 moderations (that's a rough estimate - I haven't kept track exactly), so I think it tends to balance out the vast majority of the time. That still doesn't mean it doesn't happen. In general, it's much more likely to occur with a post espousing a minority opinion here on Slashdot. i.e. pro-Microsoft, anti-OSS, political conservative / republican, religious, don't-believe-in-global-warming, think-Linux-sucks, etc, etc...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
On the internet, everyone is an anonymous coward, and people behave differently when they have perfect anonymity. (It breeds asshats - check my posting history, I assure you that I have more kneejerk rants on this site than anyplace in the oxygenated world.)
Just because you are a moron who can't tie his own shoes, does not mean I have a problem!
Seriously, you are spot on and more or less said what I wanted to say. Anonymity begets asshattery (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/) and I have my own history of Slashdot flamewars. People have a general tendency to behave badly when dealing with people outside their monkey sphere (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html) When combined with anonymity - and the lack of accountability that comes with it - people become seriously nasty. Debates that in meatspace would go like "I disagree because..." turn into "listen you fucktard...".
I'm not for eradicating anonymity as it can be needed in some cases, but throwing anonymity into generic, mundane interaction is simply bad for the state of human interaction.
Wrong!
Anonymity begets freedom. What you and the other guy are championing is the internet equivalent of an ID tattoo from birth.
You guys need to think about the consequences of what you are suggesting.
Weigh up the benefits of an internet "with less asshats" vs an internet with "complete government and corporate control"
Which one do you choose?
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"