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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.
Before you balk at the title of this post, hear me out. I have written in the past about the cloak of anonymity worn by trolls and how it allows them to run rampant on the internet with no real accountability or repercussions for their actions. I know firsthand the issues that can and often do arise as a result. Believe me.
I’ve been dealing with this for some time working for traditional news organizations and being directly involved with user comments. User comments on news stories can be vicious and vile. We happen to have moderators at my current company so our comments are a bit more tame. I oversee the team of moderators charged with approving and disapproving comments in real time and they do a great job.
There is some benefit to allowing screen names. Actually there is a need for anonymity in journalism. We need people to provide tips and leak information so corruption can be exposed.
We want the person who knows the bank robber or who saw the hit and run to step forward. Anonymity has often led to justice. It has brought down corporations, resulted in putting criminals behind bars and would-be serial rapists where they belong. Whistle blowers are very important in our society and anonymity allows a certain safety needed for many people to come forward.
The university or state employee that can post an internal document on a news site anonymously can make a big difference and be a great service to a community.
So as much as I hate what anonymity can produce online , let’s not forget about why it is still important. You can’t always put your face behind your message and that’s okay.
Transparency is the buzzword of the moment, but not everything belongs out in the open.
Remember, Deep Throat?
This is the question I wanted to ask the woman who called asking me to remove a comment, actually several comments, she’d posted on a news story.
Wait, let me be honest and tell you that after a ten minute conversation I did ask her that question. And her answer, though lame, is a common answer provided by those who experience commenter’s remorse and go to great lengths to find the person who can actually remove them - ME. First they email, then they call. The call comes first if the comment is particularly troublesome.
The woman I’m talking about in this instance said she was caught up in the moment and couldn’t help herself. Yes, go back and read that sentence again. She couldn’t help herself from posting a comment that could possibly jeopardize her job. She’d posted some telling information on a crime story about the suspect, and guess what? She had that information because she works at the hospital where he was treated.
Some common sense in this situation would have gone a long way.
It would not have taken Nancy Drew to solve that case had it become an issue or if it leaked that the information was on the site.
Since this woman was nearly in tears, I removed all four of the comments, but not before encouraging her to be more careful and making her understand that it was a complete courtesy on my part because it is not our policy to remove comments and we are not obligated to honor her request.
But in this economy, I don’t want to see anyone lose their job and if I could do my part by removing four comments, so be it.
But just when I thought she understood my message and would take heed, she asked me to ban her account completely because she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t do it again.
I was floored.
Can we get a little self-control with that common sense?
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This is a cross post from the American Society of Business Publication Editor’s national blog.
Engage or Die: Why your publication must embrace social media
Would I like you to click the link and read the post? Yes, but that is not the point of this particular post. I am bringing it to your attention to highlight a different lesson altogether. It’s one that I believe is greatly overlooked but can be done almost daily, and without a great amount of effort if you’re passionate about a topic.
Let me tell you how I got the opportunity to blog over there.
It all came from a thoughtful comment I left on a post that was recognized by the editor who later contacted me and asked me to write on a specific subject. That was not my goal when I left the comment. I was just doing what I do: Participate in the conversation, add value when I have it to offer and share my passion about online communities, social media, journalism and a few other topics that I pretty much live and breathe.
But the opportunities didn’t stop there. I was also asked to come speak to a group of editors in Washington, DC next month. All from one little comment.
Do you see the amazing value in that?
This is why I always say that we have to communicate like the whole world is watching. Chris Brogan often talks about providing value and readily sharing what you know. I think comments is one of he easiest ways to do that on a large scale.
Have you ever seen entire posts on popular blogs that stem from the comments? That is often where the reading gets good and the conversations reach a whole new level.
There’s power in the comment box. Share what you know, and scour the comments section of your own posts for nuggets of wisdom and ask for more. It’s the ultimate community builder.
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- Giving up comments is the wrong thing to do
- User comments: The ultimate community service
- It’s never too late to start moderating comments
- How I got my online community on the Walmart radar
Wait!
Before you hit the send, reply, submit or post buttons, ask yourself this question? Do I want the whole world to see this?
While the “whole world” concept may seem a bit dramatic, if something you’ve written gets in front of the wrong set of eyeballs it will certainly feel as though the whole world has seen it.
While it is never our intention to flat out embarrass ourselves, plenty of people do it everyday and I think it can be avoided rather easily.
How you might ask? By operating like a public official. As a journalist, I know that I can submit a Public Records Request and get copies of emails received and sent by anyone whose salary is paid by taxpayers. So, even though my salary is paid by a private company, I operate as if I’m accountable to the masses.
As the Managing Editor of an online community my written words are often shared publicly and I am extremely aware of that. What that does is make me communicate very carefully and with an amazing amount of tact, even when the situation may warrant a different type of response.
If a member attacks me in an e-mail, I respond professionally even when it kills me. What I’ve found is sometimes my response prompts them to change their tune and a real conversation often follows. That isn’t *always* the case but it happens often enough.
I received an email from a member a few days ago about a woman she thought was attempting to scam the community with fund raising efforts for her terminally ill son. She had conducted quite a bit of research and shared the results in the email.
I didn’t bash the woman but I did indicate in my reply that I was going to remove the blog from the homepage immediately, investigate further and remove her from the community completely if she was running a scam.
Well, the member who emailed me posted my entire response in a blog warning the community to be leery about the woman in question. I didn’t know she would do that because it was an e-mail between the two of us and quite honestly I was not thinking about it when I responded. But boy am I glad that I’ve programmed myself to be careful with my responses. That could have been ugly.
The point of this post is simply to raise your awareness. You never know where your words will end up, so be careful.
Reputation management should start with you.
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A Korean actress, said to have spent hours reading online comments about herself, was found dead earlier this month. She committed suicide.
Her name is Jin-sil Choi, and this blogger says her death for Koreans, is very similar to Americans waking up tomorrow to learn that Angelina Jolie had died the same way.
She cared about what people thought of her, even if it was in the form of anonymous comments left by people hiding behind that cloak of anonymity that I often write about. In a previous post I mentioned an e-mail I received in which a member of the community I manage called me the “n-word,” followed by the b-word.
I was a bit miffed, but I chose to move on for my own sanity. I also know that I am in a role that sometimes makes people hate me. All community managers are. It comes with the territory. Blogger, Martin Reed wrote recently that the abuse we receive from the public is an indication that we’re actually doing our jobs.
But I don’t think that translates to a famous actress, and I wish that she had not given these comments so much power. It’s disturbing to envision her reading so much negativity in one sitting, and doing it over and over again, if that was indeed the case. It would be akin to reading an entire book of hate mail.
The issue in some circles is whether or not the comments should have been there in the first place, and I do have an opinion about that, but I won’t share it. Not in this post.
My single goal here is to express my sadness and offer condolences to her family and the fans who loved her so. I just hope she read some of their comments along the way.
Some alarming news out of Maui this week.
Alarming to me that is.
Anyone who has read this blog on a regular basis or some of the comments I post on various journalism, and social media focused blogs, knows that I am an advocate of user-generated content, particularly allowing comments on news stories.
So, when I learned about the Maui News killing comments all because of, (get this) ABUSE I saw it as a huge loss and felt extremely disappointed. I still am, and it’s days later.
Of course there’s abuse!!! This is the internet, and we all know that the cloak of anonymity can bring out the worst in people. It’s all laid out in detail in this MSNBC.com story.
But abuse can be managed. This is not that difficult. The answer as I’ve said time and time again, is to hire moderators. This can be done and done well, without stifling the conversation. Moderation is not the end of the world. It can be the beginning of a new world where a news site can actually have civil discourse generated by users, connected to their content.
Set guidelines, but be fair. Don’t give up altogether.
Suggesting that internet users opt for sending in letters to the editor as opposed to leaving a real-time comment is pretty, well…old media.
Engage your community. Give them a voice.
But set limits. Make “civil discourse” the goal and define what that means. If you weed out the crap while being fair and consistent, you might be pleasantly surprised.
Just don’t give up.
Have you ever come across a comment on a news story that you knew should not be there? I’m specifically talking about on websites where the comments are moderated.
We already know that a large percentage of comments on newspaper websites are not moderated by humans, but simply vetted by a filter which can only do so much against the clever commenter’s of today who are intent on spewing hate and pushing their crude agendas. So, when you see those types of comments on those type of websites, you’re usually not shocked.
But, comments on certain types of stories can make it past the best team of moderator’s when the moderator isn’t well-versed on the topic or is faced with some other “barrier to entry.”
That barrier can be cultural or racial. It can be caused by a generation gap, geographical differences and even personal backgrounds.
It’s important to remember that news stories are extremely diverse and the content runs the gamut.
So, much like news organizations have strived to build newsrooms that reflect the community, it’s important that those who are now dealing with content submitted by the community have diverse backgrounds as well, so that they can work to decipher what is being said, and whether or not it’s appropriate.
In my next post, I will share several resources that moderator’s can turn to when faced with unknown acronyms, clever slang and other types of content and innuendo that’ likely not the type of content you’d want affiliated with your organization.
While catching up on my twitter reading tonight, I came across this comment from Patrick Thornton aka jiconoclast:
I want to talk about comments some more. It seems to be that building community has to start from the beginning.
I have to disagree with that. Now, I’m the first person to rag on newspapers for moving at a snails pace, requiring that even the most minor decisions are made by committee and for blatantly ignoring the obvious for years through institutionalized denial and arrogance.
But, I’m not sure that many news organizations were aware of, or expected the kind of drama that comments connected to news stories would bring. Yes, it’s ugly and it will only get worse before it gets better. But it can be done. I know this for a fact.
We moderate comments on news stories at WRAL.com and as the Managing Editor of User-Generated Content, I am largely responsible for the policies that come along with it. Comments weren’t always moderated, but we took control of the content associated with our brand, made the change, and we’re still going strong. Do we get complaints? Yes, but not nearly as many as you would think and most importantly, people also know that they can come to us and engage in civil conversations about the issues that affect them and the community they live in.
So, is it too late? No! I think all news organizations should moderate comments, and the sooner the better. Would it have been ideal to start from the beginning? Possibly. But, you may even score points for changing the situation for the better.
8 reasons people rarely login to news sites using Facebook
July 8, 2010 in Journalism, comments | Tags: journalism, comments, facebook, online news, ReadWriteWeb, Gigya, third-party login, news sites | 8 comments
ReadWriteWeb posted fascinating results about the use of third-party logins earlier this week revealing that Facebook dominates all others. What that means is people are opting to login to other websites using their Facebook credentials more so than others. But, when it comes to news sites, Facebook falls way behind.
It seems that when using a third-party login to post on a news site, Twitter is the clear winner, with only 25% using Facebook. Now, keep in mind that this is only the people who use a third-party login. I’m sure a great deal have separate logins for their favorite news sites that are independent of their social networks. That’s important to note.
This news isn’t surprising to me at all, thanks to my behind the scenes view of some of the outrageous comments people post on news sites. I have what I believe are unique insights into why this is occurring, based on my previous position as Managing Editor of User-Generated Content at WRAL.com and my days as Multimedia Editor at the Sun-Sentinel where I was involved with the website Sun-Sentinel.com. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know about my love/hate relationship with comments and some of my crazy experiences related to managing an online community.
(Feel free to read through some of the archives of this blog to learn more about this love/hate relationship in posts like: “Why did you post that comments?” “It’s never too late to start moderating comments” or “Giving up comments is the wrong thing to do” or The Cleveland Plain Dealer finally acknowledges user comments)
Because of my experiences I believe the results presented on ReadWriteWeb via Gigya are absolutely true, but I also have assumptions about the results that I’d like to share:
Here they are:
I could go on and on, but I stopped at 8 because I didn’t want to write a top 10 list. In an effort to allow communities to express their opinions, news organizations often open themselves up to a lot of craziness, and given the topics that make the news, that will always be the case. I personally believe that moderating comments is the answer, but I’ll spare you all that I can say about that.