I asked a question of the Social Media: Engage panel at Internet Summit ’09 about 30 minutes ago and since that moment I’ve been thinking about online anonymity. People seem to hate it.
When I blogged about the upside and relevance of anonymous comments as they relate to news stories, some people balked. Jason Falls said at Social Media Business Forum last month that he wishes newspaper sites would stop allowing anonymous comments altogether. I get that. I know the drama that ensues when people hide behind the cloak of anonymity. Heck, I live it as part of my job and I don’t always like it.
But I still maintain that there is a place for it. You shouldn’t always have to be who you are just to communicate across the web, whether you’re on a social site or otherwise.And not everyone has awful intentions. So, I am going to take this to the extreme.
If anonymity is no longer needed in society, let’s just get rid of the Witness Protection Program.
Let the people who snitch on the mafia boss and turn in the mass murderer come forward publicly and deal with the consequences that may come their way because they decided to speak up. It’s all about transparency and openness right? That’s what everyone is saying. Be who you are. Show your face. Is this a fair comparison? Maybe not, but I think you can better see what I mean by bringing it to that level.
The statement I made during my question of the panelists was that people are trying very hard to separate their personal lives from their professional lives in the social space, and even though that is probably impossible, they shouldn’t have to share their identity with everyone who visits your site just to interact with your content. That is how I feel about it. Alex Withers, head of Digital Media at the US Golf Association Association agreed. He discussed other options for registration on their site that do not reuire revealing your true self, as did Jennifer Sargent, CEO and Co-Founder of Hitfix. Withers had stated earlier that you should not create your own database of anonymous people, particularly when you can use Facebook Connect, something they didn’t do when placing a live chat window next to a live video stream of the U.S. Open. He went on to say that the content in that chat was not something they wanted on the site so they killed it. That was what they had to do. I’m sure it was ugly. But maybe it would have been better if it were moderated. I know, I know you need resources to do that and not everyone wants to hire people to do that….
I also know this is a topic that many people disagree with me on, but we can’t agree on everything.
Forcing people to share themselves with your audience may keep them away. So let’s keep that in mind. Perhaps the strategy to focus on if you take this route is engaging lurkers, because I think you’ll have many of them. May as well figure out how to keep them.
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November 6, 2009 at 7:57 am
Karen Gutierrez
Angela,
Thanks for bringing community issues to the forefront with posts like this. Like you, I’ve wrestled with the craziness that can ensue in a community when there is a culture of anonymity. But at the same time, we know there are great benefits to letting people be more candid than they otherwise would. To me the key is “community.” If you’ve established a true community, people care deeply about their reputations and relationships within it, even when no one knows them by their real names. This serves as a check on how far they’ll go in comments. It’s especially powerful when the community is local and there’s a chance members will meet IRL.
Opening up newspaper stories to anonymous comments by readers does not establish a community, nor does enabling live chat next to streaming video of the U.S. Open. It’s okay to try those things, but know in advance what you’re going to get, and have a plan for managing that. At Enquirer Media, where I managed a moms community for several years, the eds made a decision to hide comments on newspaper stories, so people at least would have to click if they wanted to see the crazy. (Readers were complaining that they hated the hate, so to speak, but had no way to avoid seeing it.)
An option for initiatives such as the golf chat might be to empower someone within the community of golf fans to moderate on a short-term, volunteer basis. Well in advance, seek out candidates who’ve already left a trail of thoughtful comments on other golf sites or their own blogs. There aren’t that many people with the right combo of wisdom, patience and knowledge to moderate, but the good news is that promising candidates are easy to spot.
November 10, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Angela Connor
Hi Karen: Thank you for such a lengthy thought-out response, and kind words. I can relate to what you shared about having the comments at lease one click away from the news stories. I’ve been in those conversations as well. What you’re suggesting takes time and effort and you and I both know that some organizations feel that too much effort for for community building is a no-no!
I hope you’re right about the promising candidates.