anonymous town square forum comments

I agree entirely and share your experience with the requirements to post on almost every other newspaper.

I believe that the quality of postings would go up if posters were required to use their real names but the quantity of postings would go down. Fewer clicks mean less as revenue.

A great example of the way in which anonymous posters lower the level of debate is demonstrated here:

Web Link

Unfortunately the Almanac does not have sufficient resources to monitor these postings on a real time basis and some really ugly stuff gets posted and can stay up for hours.

If people had to login to comment, then all the bullies would try to hack the server to find your name and address so they can bully you in person. Wait, didn't that already happen at least once? I am never ever going to give my name or email or home address to this website under any circumstances. Period.

If registration were required, the quality of the posts might will improve. It would also serve to chill the freedom of expression. Some of the better ideas have come from anonymous contributors. They need not be concerned about the political correctness of their ideas. If the Almanac required registration, the number of postings would decrease. One need only look at the thread which require user registration to post. There is virtually nothing written. Ad revenue would go into a tailspin. A good, but naive, suggestion.

Embarcadero Media should implement the Disqus Comment System on all their sites. Web Link

People can currently post Almanac links to Facebook and Twitter, and have conversations without the trolls.

Requiring everyone to post under their real name has been discussed at length on many forums. There are many good reasons why this is neither practical nor wise:

1. Misuse of personal info
All registrants must trust the site admins with sensitive private and personal information, while those site admins have not shown in any way that they deserve that level of trust.

2. Expense and need for more staff
Properly verifying anyone's identity is very time-consuming and thus expensive, and requires a lot of staff time -- which requires more staff to be hired just to do all the verifications. Identity theft is but one of the bad things that can happen to people whose private and personal info is held by people who have not been proven to be trustworthy. And who, exactly, gets to decide if those who now have this sensitive personal info are truly trustworthy?

3. Reprisals
It is quite possible that anyone posting under their real name who posts something that upsets people who have anger-management issues or are just plain dangerous will suffer unpleasant and even dangerous reprisals.

4. Chilling effect on info shared by those who need to be anonymouas
There are people in business and government who will never post under their real names because doing so would put their jobs at risk, yet who have valuable information that the public needs to know.

And good -- not censorious -- moderation can lessen the number of trolls and purveyors of hate and lies, but this requires a lot of time to be spent by the moderators. I can't help but wonder what was written in the posts that read "[post removed]" or "[portion removed]", and what, in general, will cause a moderator to delete any or all of a post. I read the Terms of Use, and I agree with them, but I can't help but wonder what a poster has to write that would usually be considered "offensive". Could that be something that might upset one of the advertisers even if the post were polite? I ask this because it is my understanding that newspapers get around 75% of the revenue they need to operate from ads, and it is therefore quite understandable for newspapers not to want to print anything that might cause any of their advertisers to stop advertising in their papers. That is quite understandable, but is still sad.

To sum up: it is not a good idea for an media outlet to require anyone to post under their real name.

To those who disagree with me:
Please give me good, solid reasons why any of the 3 reasons I gave for not posting under one's real name are not valid.

Here are four good reasons - The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Mercury News all require registration and, in most cases, use of real names.

When the Almanac wants to shut down discussion on a crime or political subject (presumably to avoid pressure from advertisers), all they do (right now) is restrict comments to registered users only. Only a handful of readers are willing to provide their private information to the Almanac, so the discussion quickly becomes an echo chamber of a few people, then it dies. Do we want all discussions to be like that, even about timely community issues?

[Editor's note: Your presumption is way off base. Advertisers do not pressure us, nor would we let an advertiser set the rules for our forum or our news coverage.]

To all --
I gave 4 reasons, not 3.

@ Peter Carpenter --
I was referring to requiring all commenters to use their real names and prove their identity before they are allowed to post anything. I was not referring to being required to register before being allowed to post anything. Registration never requires authentication of identity. Are you claiming that all of those media outlets you named authenticate the identity of all who are allowed to post comments? I am quite sure they do not and cannot do that. Therefore you did not disprove anything I wrote.

I think the chilling effect works the opposite way right now: people like Rich Cline, Jen Wolosin, and Karen Grove put themselves out there, offering ideas about how to strengthen our community--only to be scolded and mocked by faceless, nameless residents. Some of them offer constructive feedback and contribute meaningfully but many are just rude in a way that I think they wouldn't be if they were speaking face to face. Nextdoor is better, as it facilitates conversation among known people, neighbors with whom we will have repeated interactions. But there aren't community--only discussions there. I have seen so many interesting conversations here devolve into toxicity and ugliness. I have to believe this would happen less in an setting where we had to truly own our words.

NextDoor requires registration and verification and has neighborhood Leads that moderate any flagged postings.

There have been numerous reports of racial profiling and personal bullying on NextDoor. No way am I participating in political discussions or even discussing controversial community projects on NextDoor.

"There have been numerous reports of racial profiling and personal bullying on NextDoor. "

An undocumented claim but an unknown person.

Please, let's deal with facts.

If you do a Google search for "NextDoor racism" or "NextDoor racial profiling", you will find numerous reports from reputable sources, including the New York Times and CBS News. I am shocked that you have never heard of online bullying.

I have been a member of NextDoor since it started and a Neighborhood Lead for two years. I have never seen bullying on the neighborhoods that I follow.

You can find rumors of anything on the internet but that does not establish the truth.

Don't expect an online bully to accept the fact that online bullying occurs!

Let's get real: if we eliminate anonymous posting, there will be only one name consistently appearing on this page. He already consumes at least 50% of TownSquare space as is

There are clearly good and bad reasons for each.

Anonymity insures more comments and candid commentary often from posters who would never weigh in otherwise. The downside is some ridiculous, false or extreme comments. For me, the negative is very easy to identify and ignore.

Non-anonymous posting tones down the rhetoric and results in fewer but probably more thoughtful and substantiated comments. The price would be fewer postings, something I believe would be difficult to offset.

My good neighbor offers examples: "The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Mercury News"

He gets called on it and immediately deflects to a lame blog.

Wow.

Then, when offered some proof from the SAME NATIONAL publications he previously cited, he suggests they are internet rumor mills!

This is AMAZING. Absolutely incredible.

Thank you, Peter, for concisely and succinctly proving so much.

Truly grand.

Almanac - please keep Anon postings. But please improve the posting mechanism.

I have yet to see documented proof of bullying on our local NextDoor.

Allegations and rumors are not proof.

I have never posted under a different name. I wouldn't even consider it.

The message should matter more than the messenger. I believe its better to focus on the contents of their message, not the source of the message.

I don't see any point in caring too much about "who" says something beyond whatever handle they choose (be it their real name or a nickname); a good (or bad) idea can stand on its own and can be debated based on its merits.

I do agree that there should be boundaries to social media exchanges and I think almanacnews does a credible job for something that's difficult to do without imposing their own personal values.


Finally: "I have yet to see documented proof of bullying on our local NextDoor." It's a known fact that NextDoor has had to battle real issues around Bullying and Racial Profiling:

Mercury News article on profiling and bullying: Web Link

A post from the NextDoor CEO: Web Link

"Allegations and rumors are not proof."

Not rumors, there's your proof. (and yes, I saw that you narrowed the scope of your statement by using the word "local". Respectfully, that's neither here nor there; you're implying that NextDoor's method of identification transparency eliminates the likelihood of profiling, bullying and/or caustic online exchanges. That's clearly not the case, as these articles show. The fact that the NextDoor forum that you participate in may not have that same problem at the moment is not proof that the NextDoor authentication method works in addressing the problem we're discussing)

Train Fan – Thank you for the citations.

The cited Mercury News article never mentions bullying and concludes with this paragraph:

“And lately, there’s been this smart, thoughtful discussion about a program to provide overnight shelter this winter to homeless at a local church. Not everyone agrees on the solution, but people are mostly being reasonable and polite in their comments. Now, that’s neighborly.”

And the NextDoor CEO blog cited reports what NextDoor has done to prevent racial profiling – and has nothing to with bullying.

Peter I'm sure you've been around long enough to know the meaning of the phrase "the pot calling the kettle black."

I saw bullying on our local NextDoor. In Atherton.

On April 14, 2017, in a thread on dogs, someone raised concerns about pit bulls. A neighbor responded, "I posted to social media to contact [...] at her mothers house on [...] Lane, Atherton CA 94027 in hopes of having Pit Bull people reach out to her". The message included the full name and street name of the pit bull critic, and it was accompanied by a post elsewhere (on CraigsList) in which that information was also provided to a large audience. The Neighborhood Lead, whoever that was, was nowhere in sight.

I notified NextDoor via their privacy@ email address. At first, NextDoor didn't understand the problem. I persisted. On April 20, NextDoor realized there had been a violation of their terms of service, and they addressed it: the ND and CL posts were removed. Acknowledge of the problem had taken six days.

In this case, a verified name on NextDoor was used, along with knowledge of that person's residential address, to invite unwelcome attention from others.

I'm glad we have NextDoor. But let's not ignore the risk of revealing real names online.