Like any successful website or blog with comments, we generate a fair amount of comment controversy. We have valuable commenters who make the site better. We have trolls who perpetually criticize everything and everyone without adding much value to the conversations. And we have some commenters who alternate between those two positions. By and large, we think the commenter community we've cultivated here is the best in Western New York. It's certainly a lot better than what the Buffalo News has to deal with so we're grateful for that much.
Today, we published a story about a building for sale. A number of commenters - some long-time BR commenters and some newly created accounts - used the post as an opportunity to criticize the building's current owner. That criticism created real world personal consequences - the cost of which exceeded the value of the post. So we took it down. And we banned the trolls who created accounts solely to publish comments on that post. While we'll no doubt be criticized for taking the post down (as we were for keeping the post up), we believe it was the right thing to do. And to those who will comment here - anonymously of course - to criticize us for this decision, imagine if someone wrote an article about your house or company and anonymous commenters flocked to the story to call you names. We understand the internet encourages snarkiness, but really, just take a minute to consider the other perspective before you type.
Stepping back, this particular incident raises a frequently debated topic and one we think makes sense to address.
Many of you are likely familiar with Buffalo's own Seth Godin. He's a well-regarded internet thought-leader and he's made the case that 'anonymity is the enemy of civility.' He's written extensively on why more sites should put an end to anonymous commenters and his blog is a must-read. There is, undoubtedly, some merit to Seth's arguments. At the same time, anonymity has some value. Anonymity does, on occasion, allow people to speak the truth when they otherwise would be too afraid or compromised to do so. Indeed, that's why we have whistleblower protection laws because sometimes the truth of a comment matters more than the attribution of the words.
We think of each post as a mini cocktail party. You want the guests to be thoughtful, funny, insightful. You don't want someone who simply attacks everything and everyone. Indeed, the commenters who are consistently negative would likely never act that way if they were at a real life cocktail party; instead, they'd act like civilized adults because they lose the cloak of anonymity. In the past, we've built some features into the site designed to encourage commenters to add value - comment ratings, for instances. That particular functionality added limited value so we moved on. Now we're working on a new version of Buffalo Rising which would allow users to login with their Facebook accounts. And if we wanted to end the anonymity, we could force people to log in via Facebook accounts.
But we're not sure we want to do that. So tell us what you think about the role of anonymity in the BR comment streams and what you think we should do. And please, be thoughtful and constructive as we attempt to navigate what is a truly difficult terrain for countless new media websites.
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Today, we published a story about a building for sale. A number of commenters - some long-time BR commenters and some newly created accounts - used the post as an opportunity to criticize the building's current owner. That criticism created real world personal consequences - the cost of which exceeded the value of the post. So we took it down. And we banned the trolls who created accounts solely to publish comments on that post. While we'll no doubt be criticized for taking the post down (as we were for keeping the post up), we believe it was the right thing to do. And to those who will comment here - anonymously of course - to criticize us for this decision, imagine if someone wrote an article about your house or company and anonymous commenters flocked to the story to call you names. We understand the internet encourages snarkiness, but really, just take a minute to consider the other perspective before you type.
Stepping back, this particular incident raises a frequently debated topic and one we think makes sense to address.
Many of you are likely familiar with Buffalo's own Seth Godin. He's a well-regarded internet thought-leader and he's made the case that 'anonymity is the enemy of civility.' He's written extensively on why more sites should put an end to anonymous commenters and his blog is a must-read. There is, undoubtedly, some merit to Seth's arguments. At the same time, anonymity has some value. Anonymity does, on occasion, allow people to speak the truth when they otherwise would be too afraid or compromised to do so. Indeed, that's why we have whistleblower protection laws because sometimes the truth of a comment matters more than the attribution of the words.
We think of each post as a mini cocktail party. You want the guests to be thoughtful, funny, insightful. You don't want someone who simply attacks everything and everyone. Indeed, the commenters who are consistently negative would likely never act that way if they were at a real life cocktail party; instead, they'd act like civilized adults because they lose the cloak of anonymity. In the past, we've built some features into the site designed to encourage commenters to add value - comment ratings, for instances. That particular functionality added limited value so we moved on. Now we're working on a new version of Buffalo Rising which would allow users to login with their Facebook accounts. And if we wanted to end the anonymity, we could force people to log in via Facebook accounts.
But we're not sure we want to do that. So tell us what you think about the role of anonymity in the BR comment streams and what you think we should do. And please, be thoughtful and constructive as we attempt to navigate what is a truly difficult terrain for countless new media websites.
As a long time reader of BRO, I don't buy this attempt at an explanation.
There have been plenty of articles left up over the years which "generate" comments that call people names, criticize a business/person, make outlandish claims such as the ones that were starting to appear in the 888 Main article... and they were left up.
With all due respect to the decision makers at BRO, this one reeks of favoritism given the well documented relationship this site has with the folks in question.
Wait, there are trolls on the interweb now?
Good god, there've been dicks online since the early 90's, there will always be dicks. You can't "cure" anonymity online; the desire to do so is absurd. As for "well-regarded internet thought-leader".... nonsense.