Why I am for anonymous comment on newspaper sites

Times journalist David Aaronovich tweeted earlier today asking for comment on the following:

"Can anyone think of a reason why commenters on newspaper sites should be allowed to be anonymous, or use pseudonyms?"

He currently seems firmly of the opinion that comment should be 'attributable'. I disagree strongly with this and want to set out as concisely as I can why.


It boils down to 2 basic reasons: I don't believe the reasons I hear against anonymous commenting, and b) there are several reasons why I can see it's a good thing


Points against anonymity (I will respond to any others given) with my answers in bold:

1. “…If you want to say it, put your name next to it.” But WHY??? We haven't been given a reason
2. "It makes abuses easier as in the Guardian comments on Belle du Jour": The case of what was said about Belle du Jour was horrible, but the real culprit was the Guardian for not acting quickly when Dr Magnanti sent numerous complaints and requests for the offensive comment to be removed. Also see my point below re: free speech.
3. "It adds a measure of quality to the discussion": good point - look at Youtube. I suggest that the best answer to this issue is good (but sparing) moderation, not a measure that is as likely to curtail good comment as much as bad.
4. "I can't think of a reason for anonymity": Terrible argument. Just because you can't imagine a situation where it would be useful doesn't mean there isn't one (this error in logic crops up all over the place!). Secondly, the burden of proof is on those against anonymity in my opinion. They have to tell us why it's a bad thing.
5. "The internet is not as anonymous as you think it is": (good luck finding info about me from a dynamic IP address then:) This is a problem, but not a reason to make it less private

Points in favour of anonymity: 

1. It promotes free speech. This way everything is out in the open, including the crazy stuff. By far the healthiest way of dealing with it.
2. There are several good reasons why, if one did have to give ones true identity out, it might stop one from saying what one thought and knew:
• Someone's job may be put into jeopardy precisely because they are in a position to know more about a subject than others on the comment page. Their input may be crucial to people's understanding of an issue - and may be morally more important
• One's own personal circumstances may stop one from commenting, eg on health, money, or relationship matters that one wants to keep private. This has happened to me several times - there is NO reason why people need to know all about my life, but I still have much to say on certain topics.  
3. Personal threats routinely happen on the web to those who express their views 
4. Precisely the lack of privacy we already suffer from. People's private data is misused on the web enough. We need to protect people from this.
5. Conversely, people can fake identities if they wish. Most users will often just see the users name and assume it is true
6. People must be able to judge on WHAT IS SAID in a debate, not the person saying it. Ad Hominems fly about more than any other kind of false argument and are useless in assessing an issue. This is crucial.

Statistics/research bias:

Aaronovich said to me "what about a piece of research done - you'd want to know the interests of the people doing it"?  True but really it is the research that stands up or fails: Is the denominator big enough? Are the conclusions valid? Could there be confounding factors that haven't been accounted for? Have participants been asked leading questions?  Usually bad research sticks out like a sore thumb to those who are practised in assessing it. 

One of the sticking points with statistics is this: Is there any chance the numbers could have been tampered with? Do we need to repeat the research? In this case then yes, knowledge of the interests of those doing the research IS useful, but I suggest this is not relevant to the argument over comment anonymity. In this case we have to assume that anyone may be biassed, but we have to judge the arguments on their own merit.

If someone is offering eg: statistics on a comments page, we're right to be wary of them if the source of the statistics is unknown. 

Parallels with historical research

Similarly historians routinely look at an authors opinions/interests when assessing his/her journal articles. As if History has conducted in the same way as politics. I can only say that if you don't have much evidence, then your conclusions are that much the less valid.

Good debate needs to be as close as possible to Mathematical proof or a jury's "reasonable doubt" - and as far as possible from bickering historians arguing over scant evidence that is entirely inconclusive, as happens all to often in that discipline, in my view.

BBC Radio 7 >> BBC Radio 4 Extra

I'm rather worried about the pending image-change for my favourite radio station in the UK.  BBC Radio 7 is full of the most marvellous drama and readings. The comedy I personally find boring most of the time, but here's just a small sample of the programmes that I've enjoyed, off the top of my head:

The "Falco" stories dramatised with Anton Lesser in the main role, superb!
"The tenderness of Wolves" an adaptation of a recent novel,
"Professor Challenger" stories by Conan Doyle,
A selection of Somerset Maugham's stories,
"Doctor Finlay's black bag",
A life of Colonel Toosey (WW2 general portrayed in Bridge over the river Kwai)
The rather confusing, but very entertaining Paul Temple mysteries
A reading of Ian Fleming's "Casino Royale",
the Father Baldi stories,
A dramatisation of "Fatherland" by Robert Harris.

I could go on and on. These programmes (and others) kept me sane during 2 very stressful stays in hospital. I'm hoping the high quality content will continue but the name change - if it's necessary at all - is rather ominous. BBC Radio 4 comes across as way too opinionated politically and rather too keen on "educating" us.*


* In our time does manage to educate very well, as does More or less. Other programmes suffer from the editorial slant of those in charge of R4

Sulk

Completely despondent today. Why? God knows. A mixture of watching Micro men (see above), thinking about a certain person (see above)

Also listening to Primal Scream - Come together - I imagine she danced to this as a young thing, but that is purely my invention, I'm making history up. It's the first time I've listened to it properly, missed out on it entirely when I was that age - too busy doing whatever the BLOODY HELL it was I did with those years. I never used to dance - particularly to this stuff. Now I think it's wonderful

(actually some good memories round then. But I was a repressed, frightened kid. And I let it blight my life then and perhaps I still do)

Got a bit of a test of character later this week, too. Can't see a good day happening for a little while. I don't expect this mood to last - in fact why the hell am I talking about it? The point of this blog is the rest of the world!

Everyone seems bad-tempered in the rest of the world, though. Ridiculous. My theory is that weather conditions mean that everyone in a city wakes up with the same headache on the same day and goes through everything in a bad mood. I do wonder what's set me off this last week. Had one amazing day then 7 pieces of nonsense masquerading as "days" and not deserving the title

A day

A difficult day in some ways.

I have a beautiful little family that might be enough joy for anyone, but there is a sad weight in my heart. There is someone else I miss every day. Sometimes it's not so hard to live with, but like an old war-wound there are days when it makes itself felt, and I have to stop myself going to see her. I bumped into her the other day. We looked at each other and went out separate ways (me first for some reason) I tried not to look back. Eventually I did, and she was gone.

Now ain't that sad? "Don't get sentimental it always ends up drivel" says the song. It's trying to tell me something.  I guess it's being emotionally tired, as opposed to physically tired. I had little motivation, just a few tired dreams still knocking around in my skull. Everyone seemed bad-tempered today.

TinyBuddha is telling me to go with the flow. Not bad advice.

Watch Micro Men

I seem to spend a large amount of my online time bashing the good old BBC. Forget their politics for a moment, and look at drama...

Micro Men is having a second showing and is available on iPlayer for a week:

BBC iPlayer - Micro Men

I urge you to watch it. If you remember the ZX Spectrums and BBC Micros that many of us (ahem) learned about computers from, if you remember the excitement of the time, you simply must see this. In fact if you've no interest watch it anyway  - wonderful fun.

We live in anti-patriotic times in the UK. When I was growing up there as still just an iota of the feeling that we might be growing up to achieve great things - at least in one of my schools. There the teachers excitedly showed us these new little contraptions, put together by eggheads like the strangely charismatic Clive Sinclair.

Micro Men tells the story of the development of these computers. It misses out lots of things, but there's thousands of little nods to bits of history the nerds will know about. Also actors from Blakes 7 and Doctor who in the early 80s are entertainingly cast as minor characters. Sophie (formerly Roger) Wilson, an important character in the story, makes a cameo appearance as a pub landlady in the closing shots*

Near the end Sir Clive talks about the boffin in his workshed being one of the things that made and kept this country great. I've mentioned this idea in discussions of the Industrial Revolution (earlier). Compare and contrast..

*If you think "who the hell is she", look up the ARM processor on wiki, and quite possibly inside your very modern phone...

Sad days

One of the dearest friends of my life died a couple of weeks ago. She was 90, she was losing touch with the real world, her "quality of life" was atrocious with the pain of cancer, incontinence, depression, and the possible onset of dementia. In some ways her time had come and it was a relief that she was released. When I heard the news I was absolutely full of a bad head-cold. I'd been expecting the news for a while, and I felt a sort of numb sadness, but at the time (as since) I felt little else, though this counts as a major bereavement.

The lady in question looked after me daytimes from when I was 2 yrs old. I stayed in touch all my life. Her husband died in 1995, and she complained how much she missed him ever since. Our visits to her became more and more to be sad occasions, with her suppressing a tear at our leaving, and a long sad walk for us back home.

I wondered from quite an early age how sad it would be to lose her. Sitting at the top of a double-decker bus after saying goodbyes, I felt the lump in my throat one day as I realised there would one day be a time when she was gone. It was unusual for the 7/8 year old me to be moved by that sort of emotion, but it did happen from time to time. I phoned her on the anniversary of her husbands death one time - I was on a lonely, beautiful hill in the Lakes - and she rang off with "Love you" as she often did, and afterwards I cried on a bench in the middle of nowhere.

These past few years were slightly under the shadow of this inevitability, wondering how I would take it. And here I am taking it with a little sadness, but perhaps not facing up to my grief. I surprised myself - wondering if I'm somehow now completely numb. I suppose it will slowly come out. I want to write down my memories of my friend. (what I'm saying now seems so flat!) So I'll make a brief start in this entry.

Here was someone who loved children all her life, and they loved her back for it. She would "fall in love" with some of the children she looked after. Her house was often full of grandchildren, children she was nannying, or had nannied (?). It became a sort of social gathering place for quite a few of us. She'd want us to keep ourselves occupied quietly and sometimes we managed to, but not always - causing her some little stress. It was a strange set-up. But she and I remained on good terms for life.

She said I was like a "second son" to her. There was a way she had, of letting you know things - as a way of telling you you were one of the people she wanted to hear things - a kind of recognition of the place you had in her thoughts. I believed I had a special bond with her. Now, in a way, I like to imagine that she had such a bond with many others, just so her life would have been that much the richer for it. We hardly ever saw anyone on our later visits to her. How could someone of such experience, love and dignity seem to be so alone in her last years? I suppose I will never know the answer to this.

Managers

It can't be a new phenomenon for managers to try and play mind games with the people they supervise to get better productivity out of them. Must be the 3rd oldest profession, or something near :)

No doubt some managers (and there are too many of them) would read that sentence and scoff, thinking "Just try supervising people's work" (I have done so a couple of times, though not on a level of huge responsibility) They would argue that it is incredible how hard it is to reliably get people to do their work

Perhaps they might also secretly wonder at just how stupid some of the people they supervise seem to be (I'm just guessing here) I recently talked to a lecturer talking about his 1st year students - they were astoundingly lacking in initiative it has to be said, but they are just out of school, so ok. I envisage a manager giving instructions to someone - then disbelieving the level of misunderstanding that has occurred. 

Of course this is best done by email or paper, so everyone can check what was said and which side misinterpreted or whatever. Trouble is when a lot of management is done by word of mouth and it's hard to tell your manager he/she remembered that wrong!!!

But I get the impression of an army of managers in the UK all working on their careers and having a real wheeze organising other people's work. Apparently they can't be relied upon to organise themselves - we're all too thick so we need MORE MANAGERS to sort it all out, run our lives, decide where our careers go etc.

Why have we forgotten that giving people responsibility oft times brings out the best in them? rather than spending vast amounts of money on bickering, career-centred managers on an ego trip

rant over