by BrandondelPozo » Wed Dec 01, 2010 5:24 pm
The knee-jerk reaction against anonymous posting shows how far we’ve fallen from our noble roots due to the damage that stupid people have caused on the wider internet.
The Federalist Papers were written by a guy named “Publius.” As it turns out, this guy was three people: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.
They thought that fairly-written and fairly-considered ideas were more important than authorship and the biases that often come from knowing who wrote something. You can’t say that the Papers weren’t an important part of our civic life. If they would have been less incisive and forthcoming a document had there been some requirement that they not be anonymous, then we would have been poorly served by such a policy.
And such a policy serves us poorly here as well. I feel the two rules of this forum are redundant:
1. Use your real name.
2. Be kind to your neighbors.
The first is meant to strongly encourage the second, but as long as you are honest, candid and acceptably kind, there is no need to use your real name, per se. This is especially so when your worry is that if you say how you feel, certain neighbors won’t be kind in return to you.
Let’s say, for example, that a person works for a well-known journal of liberal thought, but is sick and tired of increases in local property taxes. She might like to start a debate about the need for the next round of increases, or the effectiveness of her (liberal) elected officials, but worry that if she posts, her boss will fire her for departing too radically from the image the journal is trying to keep up. We’d be doing her a disservice by not letting this woman post anonymously.
Now some of you might say that this isn’t that type of town. That there aren’t people who live here who take things very personally, and would hold it against a person for speaking her mind about important issues that affect us all. If you think that this is true—that people in Cold Spring can speak their mind about things without worrying that some folks will hold a grudge because they would perceive they’d been slighted—than just ring out in a chorus to this effect. If you resoundingly do, I’ll withdraw this argument.
To be certain, speaking one’s civic mind in a way that is fair and honest is a more important end than simply knowing the name of the person making the statement. I say let people post anonymously when the feel they have to, but be prepared to summarily delete their posts if the are unfair, etc., or violate the kindness rule. There may be a Hamilton or Madison among us.
I think people should be able to request a pen name account, and not just post "anonymously." This way, we can judge a person's output over time, get a flavor of who we are dealing with, and ban her if she deviates from the values of thoughtfulness, respect and tolerance that should prevail here.
