Slate.com - Anonymous comments: Why we need to get rid of them once and for all

[Cant trust em]

Troll, reveal thyself.


http://www.slate.com/id/2287739/pagenum/all/#p2

[pacalo]

1. I like the idea.

Best rule of thumb, like the author said, is don't post anything on the internet that you wouldn't mind your mother reading. But for the weeds in the garden who get a thrill out of disrupting, & for those who are paid to disrupt, requiring true identity would weed out the big-talking, cowardly troublemakers.

[AlabamaLibrul]

3. I don't like this.

I wouldn't mind my mother reading my political views and other online comments, but I sure as hell don't want my boss reading about them. "Right to work" state, dontchaknow.

[pacalo]

7. Yikes -- good point.

Long time ago I was a secretary at a non-union plant in the employee relations division that, in part, dealt with prevention of unions forming. That, plus the fact that my husband is still an employee there, prevents me from wanting my name or his name "out there".

[walldude]

4. LOL.. Every once in awhile I send my posts to my mom

and she's always bitching about my cussing...

A couple years ago I wrote a post on DU called "You didn't get mad when" about the heath care bill. It was hugely popular here, then someone edited out all the nasty shit I said about the tea baggers and the post went viral. It was all over the net, Facebook, and e-mails. So my mom sends me this e-mail she got with my edited post, and sends it to me(not knowing I was the original author) and says "see this is how you do it, right to the point and no cussing".

I laughed my ass off, sent her a link to the original post. She wrote back "I can't believe that was you. I'm very proud, but now I hope you see why the world has editors."

She had a point :)

[pacalo]

6. I love that story! And I remember that great OP!

:yourock:

[GreenStormCloud]

2. No thanks.

In the more innocent days of the internet, 1998, I was active in a forum that was about poker. I was using my real name. I attracted the attention of an internet nut who didn't like my opinions. He researched me and found where I lived. Then I had to deal with a stalker. I want my anonymity, for my own safety.

[Modern_Matthew]

5. No. The Internet should be even more anonymous than it is right now... nt

[boobooday]

8. Anonymity and democracy have a long tradition of happy collaboration

Enabling those fear repercussions to get important information out.

And I happen to love Internet trolls - but that's just me. :7

[Journeyman]

9. If freedom of speech is to have any practical application, then it must include. . .

the right to be silent, and the right to not share with my neighbors and friends those opinions which I prefer to keep to myself, or which I have not sufficiently developed so as to feel comfortable sharing.

Ask "Cincinnatus." For if "Cincinnatus" could write The Federalist Papers helped by "Brutus" and "Cato" and be published thus anonymously throughout the original Colonies, who in the States today can deny me the right to communicate with my neighbors as "Journeyman" or "Cant trust em" or even "Dalton Trumbo," if that's my desire.

The internet might be a slightly more civil place, were we to all publish under our true names, but it would lose its edge and too many would be too afraid to speak their mind, even at the risk of being corrected, if they felt their innermost thoughts would become common fodder for the world to debase.

edited for grammar