:::Today's New York Times contains an article on recent moves by internet luminaries to clean up the blog world through the establishment of voluntary standards of behaviour. Among the most potent proposed standards are a ban on anonymous comments and the deletion by blog owners of threatening or libelous comments.
Tim and I have become convinced that permitting anonymous comments on our blog tends to promote a sub-Christian blogging environment--and that internet anonymity is directly tied to internet irresponsibility and sin. For this reason we do not permit anonymous comments on this blog and we require accurate email addresses of all commenters. We also remove blasphemous, libelous and contentiously sinful comments and make no apology for so doing.
This doesn't mean that all comments on our blog are carefully vetted for name and email addresses. Some commenters who write pseudonymously on this site are known by name and email address to Tim and myself. Though we're uneasy with this degree of anonymity, we have thus far permitted those who wish to operate this way to do so. We probably would not continue to do this if these commenters engaged in heated comment wars with others.
This blog is like our living room. We invite lots of people here who may disagree with us and whose views may not accord with ours. But we expect civility, and we won't let this space become a launching pad for sin.
And if you run a blog we urge you to adopt similar standards. When even the New York Times advocates ethical standards higher than those of most Christian bloggers it's time for Christian bloggers to clean up their act.
Isn't that the truth? I have had blogs elsewhere and have allowed anonymous comments for a long time. I also allow comments that contest things I've writen (although so far here, I haven't shared much worth contesting...I do have values and opinions and backing for both, though that I might share one day...), but what I do not allow, and never have, are comments that are simply out of place and down right rude in context. We have never expected everyone to agree with us on anything shared and I suspect most people are the same way. Life is such that we are all different, but we have much to offer regardless of that. Differences are often actually superficial. It is the heart of the person that shows the serious difference.
Some of our guildelines, such as they are, for our own blogging. Really, I'm just small potatoes here. I'm raising my children in the country, enjoying the bounty of Internet access, and if someone wants to stop and read a while, I'm greatly honored that you find my chatter worthy of your time.
We respect the spirit of civil disagreement.
We agree to agree and to disagree-as strongly as need be-without crossing the boundaries into unacceptable content (see below).
We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked that is:
- Being used to abuse, harass, stalk or threaten a person or persons
- Libelous, defamatory, knowingly false
- Infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of any third party. (If you quote or excerpt someone's content, it is your responsibility to provide proper attribution to the original author. For a clear definition of proper attribution and fair use, please see The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers at this URL: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/.) This is something that has been an issue for myself personally in the past, so I take close steps to watch it now.
- Contains editorial content that has been commissioned and paid for by a third party, (either cash or goods in barter), and/or contains paid advertising links and/or SPAM or "Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages."
Honestly, I would think that if you truly had a disagreement with something written by another, lodging a complaint in their comments, anonymously, would be mainly for 'show' purposes. Anyone with a true, heart-felt disagreement is most often willing to back up their words with dialog, and I don't know about other places, but in my world, people don't talk to themselves much. They like real conversations with real people, and that includes names.
All that aside, I thought the article was rather interesting.
