I will suggest that now that you found a way to control the comments , you may spend some time to explain to DeBolt that He is suppose to be a reporter not a cheerleader for is favorite city candidate , and that hes reports need to be less opinionated and more real facts !

Andrea, thanks for posting this (similar to the version a little earlier on Palo Alto Online).

These statements embed an assumption I know from much experience to be mistaken -- it's contradicted by abundant Internet history, and if you like, I can demonstrate that to you.

"Requiring registration is . . . neither a way to avoid anonymity or improve the quality of comments."

A similar claim appeared in the Voice several years ago, by your predecessor as Voice editor, responding to many complaints about tone of online comments. He (like the statement above) focused on "anonymity" as the issue, arguing that verifying real identities was impracticable.

Yet for the tone of an online forum, anonymity isn't actually the central factor at all. Registration is. Registered users (regardless of screen name) leave contact information in the hands of the Voice (the email contact is confirmed as part of the procedure).

30 years of public internet forum history (far longer than Town Square has existed) show that what makes the big difference to forum tone is a sense of accountability. Registration accomplishes that. The effect is as much psychological as practical. Posters who _perceive_ their posted content as traceable back to them (even if just by a forum moderator) behave differently from those who feel their comments are unattributable.

I made this point privately by email, first to your predecessor, then to you not long after you joined the Voice -- offering to show you examples demonstrating the effect of registration (not anonymity -- that's really far less important, and there are indeed occasional good reasons for some postings without real names, as you wrote). Neither of you responded to those emails, so I tentatively assumed that the firm's leadership knowingly chose to omit the registration requirement in order to increase traffic and "page hits." You are probably aware that many other print publications with online fora do require commenters to register (usually without a real-name requirement). If you would like to learn more about registered vs non-registered forum comparisons, please contact me privately.

Thank you! I really like the forums here - often, I learn something new especially from anonymous comments. I much prefer this over sites that require Facebook for commenting, and *certainly* over sites that require the real name etc. In fact, I find it remarkable that the Mountain View Voice often has much more interesting / insightful comments than larger publications such as the SJ Mercury News, even when the same topic is covered. It's day and night! So, please keep your forums available including to those who may be hesitant to register / provide their real name / etc. (in case it's not obvious, I strongly disagree with Mr. Hauser) - you're doing us a great service. Low-friction commenting is the way to go.

To be clear, I was not posting about any matter of opinion above. Some people may personally prefer either anonymous or unregistered options; some people may not find the "disrespectful, derogatory or inflammatory comments" objectionable, even though they are what characterize the Town Square forum in some people's perception (one neighbor, for example, mentioned giving up on reading the Voice online, because of the comment tone, which he summed up as "scary" -- obviously, you won't see any comments here from people like that, whom the current forum drives away). Those are all matters of personal opinion.

The effect of registration requirements on comment _tone_ is not a matter of opinion though, but historical record. Whose upshots not everyone knows about, and (as with so many other bits of reality and history) not everyone will LIKE.

And there is really no problem for people to create a new email and register under a pseudonym, almost no matter what you do, short of requiring a credit card and matching the identity that way. Or require them to come in and show their driver's license. One reason I have been anonymous is that there have been such people (or at least one) who register many times with fake names and attack me personally. Given that there is no way to stop this from happening, I appreciate being able to be anonymous. I then laugh when I see them attack some other anonymous person claiming it is me....

I *know* there is valuable information and discussion that would not (or could not) have appeared without the near-complete anonymity provided here. Assuming that anyone anonymous is a troll is prejudicial.

I applaud your choice to include the anonymity option in the face of whatever studies are brought forth on more broad populations may suggest or by just following whatever model other publications may provide. Allowing moderators the ability to allow anything from anonymous posting to using their judgement on when to shut down a poster, or the entire topic, is the right way to go.

Cheers to the MV Voice Staff treating those who may need anonymity with respect!

Thanks to the editor for posting this. I disagree with Hauser. A desire to be anonymous doesn't mean a poster is necessarily avoiding accountability (although it frequently means we're trying to avoid retribution). It often means that it's much easier to post a comment without logging in. If you remove that option you will get fewer comments and therefore a more narrow scope of opinions. I think your current system is working well.

So, does that mean I will be censored if I complain that Daniel DeBolt is supposed to be a reporter not, a cheerleader for is favorite city candidate (LS), and that his reports need to be less opinionated and more real facts!

Does that mean I will be censored if I argue against tall, high-dense, apartments which one candidate wants to have built in order to drive down housing prices to the point where his children can afford to buy any home they wish?

Does that mean I will be censored if I suggest that residents vote for candidates that welcome home owners and want to protect our neighborhoods?

Notice that I don't hide behind a pseudonym.

@ Konrad@Sosnow.net

"Notice that I don't hide behind a pseudonym."


Given your history of rants on these blogs, I would think you would prefer anonymity . LOL

I think "More anonymous" just proved the point that people who use pseudonyms use them, more often than not, to engage in personal attacks rather than discussing the issues.


Jim Neal
Candidate, Mountain View City Council
https://electneal.org

There is one candidate that I believe has a very negative history with veterans.
I would be very afraid of retaliation from him.

I also thing the Voice has been very biased it reporting on one candidate and worry what that could mean.

I find it interesting that in August and again in September the Voice had an article about Alison Hicks and the survey and an editorial by Jane Horton, neither of whom were identified as board members of CEPO- a non-profit associated with one candidate.

Also, I don't want anyone else looking at the picture of a woman candidate. DeBolt, knows exactly who I am talking to. It is terrible and the Voice should be ashamed of publishing such a blatant slap in the face of this candidate.

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

@A Senior Veteran,


BTW, I was an a Army Officer during the Vietnam War.

You wrote "There is one candidate that I believe has a very negative history with veterans."
Do you mean the one who went to school at the Farm and was a leader of several anti-war/progressive organizations?

Note that CPEO Executive Director Lenny Siegel Received U.S. EPA’s 2011 Award for Citizen Excellence in Community Involvement

I see from past Voice articles that Jane Horton has been associated with the EPA.

Could it be possible that Jane Horton and Lenny Siegel are associated?