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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 ...'"
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
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)