Monday, September 1, 2008

Anonymous comments II - rejecting them is big mistake!

GUEST POST: Recipients and Publicity'S comment to "Anonymous comments - automatically rejected":
garnel, I must say that you have done more harm than good here with this suggestion that Dr. Eidensohn has incredibly taken you up on, and I wish he hadn't.

Just how many people do you think read this blog? And surely of those, it is a VERY small fraction that wish to post ANY comments and even fewer who wish to post anonymous comments. And of all those, ALMOST all are highly intelligent and experienced BLOGGERS who can follow the comments of MANY anonymous posters simultaneously, especially since Dr. Eidensohn keeps his own main posts essentially brief, and most posts have historically not drawn more than a handful of comments (usually less than ten) on this daas torah blog and the one time that a post recently drew a little over twenty comments with a perhaps less than half being anonymous, you press Dr. Eidensohn's panic buttons and he responds to YOU alone for some odd reasons, and he then willingly sets up a new self-defeating policy based on YOUR narrow and tendentious input alone because ONLY you seem to have had trouble with following posts by anonymous posters. If you are that cognitively challenged it may indicate something else not related to blogging (how much do you know about blogging and posting on the web by the way?) but this phony "cure" of literally forcing people to take on ID's (like cyber yellow stars, lehavdil) is coercive and silly in the extreme and with all the bold announcements it makes this Blog seem somewhat stilted and comical and intellectually challenged, unable to hold up to rigorous debate with comments coming in at a steady rate, not quite at lightning speed ever, you must admit (as Dr. Eidensohn does not allow automatic postings and insists on reading each new post himself) and claiming to be artificially worried that comments can be "sneaked on" here when Dr. Eidensohn as this blog's owner has all the power to edit out and remove any and all posts at will and not just anonymous ones. Even me having to argue this with you is such a waste, but it sems you don't get what you are doing to harm this blog's heretofore dynamism and fluidity.

Who knows, soon we may even be told that no comments will be allowed unless we first click on the "PayPal" button and make a donation to Dr. Eidensohn for the "privilge" to post a comment, like some kind of cyber-toll, since you have already come up with your own cyber-censoring and digital excision of anonymous comments, because who can tell where things will lead once people start making up their own crazy infantile excuses-for-rules in the name of "helpfulness"?

So that this silly ban of anonymous postings is a scare tactic that works AGAINST the interests of the blog and its owner who should desire and relish MORE traffic and interest in his posts and not create fake barriers that put people off.

To repeat, posting anonymously is assumed to be a UNIVERSAL virtual right (good pun!) in the Blogosphere by EVERYONE, which works far different to USENET or Email lists.

Bloggers EXPECT and indeed deserve more lattitude in how to name and frame their posts, and if they wish to be anonymous, provided they are polite and reasonable, their is no reason to ban them outright as if they were some sort of "new kind od treif" which they are most certainly not!

Admit it, you made a mistaken and clearly INEXPERIENCED feeble suggestion and in turn Dr. Eidensohn as this blog's owner who is anxious to please and streamiline made a poor decision to his own detriment. Maybe when his posts attract hundreds of anonymous posters each he would get nervous, but quite honestly the UOJ blog has allowed hundreds of anonymous psost when he deems them appropriate and noone has ever complained of confusion.

When in doubt ask questions and seek clarifications but do not stifle people'e rights to answer any way they please, including anonymously.

So why do you have to assume that people posting and reading this blog are more thin skinned and by implication more dim-witted than UOJ's anonymous posters when they are clearly quite the opposite.

So have the guts to withdraw your suggestion because as you can already see, rather than encouraging more comments, it actually reduces and stifles them, and we all lose because many fascinating and important statements and arguments are often made by anymous posts and posters.

8 comments:

  1. Yes, stifling anonymous comments will reduce the volume of the comment list. But how much substance is being lost if the commenter himself doesn't think the words are worth standing behind?

    Perhaps an exception should be made if the post reveals something the person might not want to have as a first impression of himself.

    -micha

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  2. RaP! Whoa boy! "cyber yellow stars"?!

    I personally find the numerous anonymous comments irritating but tolerable. However, R' Eidensohn's solution is not a big deal. Haven't you ever read Ann Landers or Dear Abby? Every letter is signed by a silly pseudonym, like "Upset in Philly" or "Anxious in Wyoming." It should not take much effort on the part of the highly intelligent commentors to come up with some such temporary name.

    It will do little to improve the quality of comments, but it may help readers follow the conversation better.

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  3. Failed Messiah is the only other blog that I know of that rejects anonymous comments.

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  4. not a fan,

    Just as a counter-example to your comment, R' Harry Maryles strongly requests on his blog (Emes Ve-Emunah/Haemtza) that commenters refrain from using "anonymous" as their alias. I don't know whether he automatically deletes comments signed off as "anonymous," but the feeling I've gotten from my own experience lurking in the blogosphere is that concern over this issue is fairly common.

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  5. Um, 'scuse me for a second.

    RaP, your initial accusation against me was based on an error which makes the rest of your poorly written missive just so much more toilet paper.

    If you go back, you'll note that I did not plead with Rav Eidensohn about anything. Nor does he have any special reason to listen to my requests. (He's probably still rueing the day I found his blog in the first place and began annoying him!)

    My call was to the various "anonymous" posters themselves. I requested that THEY take on imaginative pseudonyms that make no sense, like "Flatulent Leviathan", "Beans in the Cholent" or "Receipients and Publicity".

    Oh hang on, that last one's taken, right?

    It would not take much brain power to come up with a silly pseudonym to represent oneself on this blog. Certainly it could easily be done in a way that doesn't identify the poster. I would suggest that you're the harmful one here by insinuating that the various anonymous posters lack the imagination and initiative to try this method.

    You may have said more in your post. Franky, I got bored after the first few paragraphs and it all seemed repetitive anyway.

    So, once again, I didn't ask the blogmaster to do anything. Which means you owe me the apology.

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  6. Rabbi Maryles does not reject anonymous comments.

    Its not a big deal just sign me........

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  7. Micha said:
    "But how much substance is being lost if the commenter himself doesn't think the words are worth standing behind?"

    The point is not whether the words are worth standing behind, but some people endure abuse because of who they are, rather than what they say. For example, I have made posts as "anonymous" that RaP has politely disagreed with or agreed with. But as "Bright Eyes" I get the full wrath.

    There is a place for anonymous posting, in my opinion, but there is also no harm in adopting multiple online personalities and using different pseudonyms.

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  8. To bright eyes: My oh my, I am sorry to have upset you, but my comments were directed at your words, nothing more and nothing less. At any rate when you now say "There is a place for anonymous posting, in my opinion, but there is also no harm in adopting multiple online personalities and using different pseudonyms" -- it therefore means that you will now actively act counter-productively, and that's what any poster can do, and take on any number of multiple sockpuppet IDs' that just gummy up a blog. It also means you force me to take a closer look at all posts with new names that attacks my comments because I should assume you are behind it. What a sad admission you have made in your post here.

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