Every so often the issue of whether Tnooz should allow readers to comment anonymously against stories comes up again.
Since we launched we have had the same policy, although it has never been communicated (my bad, as the US contingent at Tnooz would say).
We allow readers to comment without them having to publicly state their name or organisation.
But anonymous comments come in various forms.
There are the ones where those that are looking at the site only see a name - these are people that have opted to leave a website URL blank when submitting their contribution to an article comment thread.
Sometimes the name is nonsense, made up on the spot to get the comment into the system.
Invariably, these people have used their own email address to submit the comment, so behind the scenes we know who is behind the disguise.
And then there are comments that have no indication at all as to who it is, more often than because they have either left the URL blank or used a made up web address, as well as submitting the comment via a bogus email address (me@me.com or annoyedreader@rubbish.com are variations on a theme).
For the latter we usually check the IP address and, more often than not, are able to work out which organisation the person was submitting the comment from.
This is often quite an amusing process as it often throws a light on what those without a public profile within an organisation are thinking. Real voices from the workforce, you might say.
It is actually rather funny that so many people forget it is easy to work a lot of things out with a trusty IP addresses, especially if a reader has commented using various names but always from the same location.
Anyway, why do we allow this to happen?
We do so because often the comment adds to the conversation, rather than it being promo spam (which we almost always delete). If someone has something interesting to say about a subject matter, but would be dangerously exposed by saying so, then we think they should have that opportunity.
We still, of course, cover OUR own backs for libel as the publisher of any comments.
Here is a great and very recent example of why we let it happen:
Our North America editor Dennis Schaal wrote a great story last week highlighting how a string of travel planning startups appeared to taking inspiration from site-of-the-moment Pinterest.
Someone called "Josh" added a number of comments to the story, all of which fuelled further discussion to what was already a pretty decent conversation taking place.
When confronted later on by a reader, Jeremy Head of TravelBlather, Josh responded:
I am anonymous for now, but like everyone else, consider myself an insider, a lifer (travel) looking in from outside… I like to jump fences to see if the other lawns are really green, concluding that – every lawn has some kind of a weed, persistence is what will rid the lawn of it.
Jeremy, not to take anything away from the conversation but anonymity allows for proper perception from a wider audience without any bias.
It’s like 'an Airline guy? a Hotel industry professional? a travel professional? a travel media executive? a travel writer/blogger? an analyst? a travel technologist?', each one of these entities bring (incorrectly and sometimes correctly perceived by others) a certain type of baggage/bias along with them from the industry or trade they are part of, in conversations such as this and the importance, experience and value of inputs they share and the observations they make gets notionally diluted with what they say and how it is understood or misunderstood by the community and that is one of the reason for the anonymity."
Apart from the excruciatingly long final sentence, "Josh" is right.
And that is why we allow some anonymous comments.
NB:Anonymous face image via Shutterstock.