Washingtonpost.com Wants Identities of Posters 336
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 ...'"
Cell phone number (Score:4, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [washingtonpost.com]
He should talk to the editor of the print edition (Score:1, Interesting)
But this idea is almost forgotten in the modern cult of efficiency. Why have an editor review a comment when a computer (with the comprehension of a lump of silicates) can do it for you? An ideal breeding ground for flame wars. Yes, there are moderated lists out there. But they are relatively rare.
Re:trust him with my details? (Score:3, Interesting)
There does not seem to be anything remotely approaching a complete solution. There are easy ways to increase the cost of disruption that don't increase the cost of cooperation too much. A CAPTCHA is the most obvious example.
A 'probationary period' is another way, where you have to post a dozen or so insightful posts before you are gradually allowed to make more posts without them waiting for approval (you crowd-source the approval to your own users, much as
It's still a tricky issue, especially in forums meant to be very fast or very distributed (such as USENET and IRC).
Of course, this guy is off the deep end.
Re:Not everyone has figured out user moderation (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:trust him with my details? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cell phone number (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not everyone has figured out user moderation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cell phone number (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cell phone number (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, great (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, great (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:It's completely different (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, that's nothing. You've clearly never read the YouTube comments. And strangely enough, those of some major newspapers and media outlets. I can't remember exactly where it was, but I think it was ABC News (America) that was just full of insane people on every thread about the Democratic primaries. The "nerd oriented" sites have nothing on those which appeal to the general population. Which is odd, because I thought nerds were experts at being trolls and anti-social loons, but you learn something new every day.
Re:Not everyone has figured out user moderation (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:Yeah, great (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
It's better than anything else (Score:3, Interesting)
Until we find something better Slashdot has proven to work better than all the alternatives, and they do spend time tuning as well...
Re:Yeah, great (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not just have a subscription with the paper automatically give you an account with the newspaper, then? That would at least partially solve the problem as you'd have the subscription info to tie the account to the person getting the paper.
Re:Yeah, great (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
I recently received this comment
"haven't got the guts to show your face i see!! thats cos if i found you id KICK YOUR FUCKING ASS!!!"
for exercising my free speech. (Burning a US flag)
People just aren't responsible enough to be trusted with not having anonymity. Sure you get asshats and they piss me off as well but overall we are better off than if we didn't have the option of anonymity.
Re:I disagree (Score:1, Interesting)
In a library, when somebody's yelling or otherwise being obnoxious, people have no choice but to deal with it - they're forced to, and the only thing you can do is ask the person in question to shut up, or throw him out if he doesn't.
On a website, it's different: a bad comment will not appear in a more obnoxious fashion than a good one (assuming that you can't set an arbitrary font size etc., of course, but you CAN make that impossible on the web), and in fact, bad comments don't have to be seen at all. Take Slashdot, for instance - the moderation system works, doesn't it? When was the last time you actually SAW a GNAA comment without actively looking for one? And even AC comments regularly get modded up to +5 if they deserve it.
Put another way, it's possible to make disruption of the discourse impossible. If the Post isn't doing that, it's their own fault.
Re:Ever read washingtonpost.com's comments? (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose the easiest way to deal with this is for there to be a slashdot-like mechanism - it does work well most of the time - and for there to be some users (probably a small number of Post staffers) who can act as supermoderators to ensure that important dissent doesn't get lost. Of course, the moderations made by the supermods should be available for people to see so that people can decide for themselves if the supermods are being fair.
I'll take Fair and Open over Balanced; I can make my own mind up. (Not that there's anything wrong with Balanced as such.)
Re:Yeah, great (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
He's acting like a traditional news editor (Score:2, Interesting)
Even 'Letters to the Editor' are tightly screened and edited so they meet the standards of the newspapers.
So his position on wanting to control the comments on his site aren't out of line, if you're looking backwards.
Let's look forwards, shall we?
He's not going to suddenly 'get' the ways of the internet. He's not going to understand that he can't screen every single post on his site. He's going to look at how people react and be dismayed that the comments are under the banner of his illustrious paper.
Unless he finds some manner of complete control over what gets posted on his site, he's not going to be happy. Expect more internal moderation prior to posting, etc.
Local papers have an easier time dealing with this because, well, they're local. They generally don't have the number of eyeballs on them so their comments can stay pretty on track. Something like this, no possible way.
The most logical possible outcome I see coming from this is two places for comment. The 'approved and moderated' ones that are attached to the stories and 'the riff-raff' ones that are delegated to some odd link off to the side. Kind of like burying a story on the inside of page 4. You can say it was there and it wasn't your fault people didn't read it.
Re:Yeah, great (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, great (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, great (Score:3, Interesting)
Me too (Score:1, Interesting)
-Anonymous Coward
Re:Yeah, great (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm confused. What bizarre notion of "free speech" are you working from that would *force* anyone hosting any forum to allow you to post whatever you want? Am I an evil censor because my home page lacks a "post a comment!" button? What if I accepted comments by email and posted my favorites on my home page? And how would it be different if I turned on some blog software and started weeding out the crap after the fact?
People who host conversations are free to set the rules. If you don't like the rules, find some other forum. Or set up your own--it's never been easier or cheaper to do so.
When government regulation, policies of an isp monopoly, or whatever, prevent you from doing that--then you can complain about censorship. Till then you're just doing the equivalent of complaining about the rules people set in their own living rooms.
And, sure, I think there's some value to mostly unmoderated forums that allow anonymous speech, etc. I just don't think that *all* of them have to be that way. There's room for multiple approaches to forum moderation to coexist, and we should encourage experimentation.
Re:Yeah, great (Score:3, Interesting)
If you believe otherwise, perhaps you could explain how? Thus far you've presented nothing but a desire to eliminate freedom in exchange for your right to avoid being insulted online. As another poster suggested, if free thought scares you and rudeness hurts your feelings, perhaps you should stick to network television.
Re:Not everyone has figured out user moderation (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a next level to participation in Slashdot, and I hesitate to mention it: formal groups. Trolls have already done it in the past, I'm surprised no one else has. Forming an explicit group of users who agree to use their mod points to further certain classes of comments. For example, Appledotters modding down anything critical of Apple, or a group of Windows users that make sure intelligent, rational posts about Windows aren't unfairly punished by irrationally anti-MS zealots. I'm going to disagree with Spun here, there is definitely groupthink on Slashdot, but it's not absolute. There are very large groups of specific opinion that will punish you if you effectively say the wrong thing, but not everyone thinks the same thing.
What's wrong with Karma? (Score:2, Interesting)
People who're "new around here" or tend to troll tend to have their messages buried. The messages of established, insightful posters tend to float to the surface. A very lightweight and open system of moderation allows anonymous messages of value (like that of the parent) to be "modded" into higher visibility.
Additionally, giving certain "privileges" to quality posters allows you to retain the core discussion group. There's no need to set up additional barriers to your potential readership.