Script of TEDx speech

1. The other morning I was getting ready for work, putting on my makeup while listening
to my 7-year-old son tell me about the new house he built in Minecraft.
This typical morning routine was interrupted by a text from one of our local editors,
alerting me to a comment problem. Someone had posted potentially harmful
insinuations about a school principal.
I quickly navigated to the problem story. As I became distracted, my son grew upset. I
apologized to him and tried to explain the situation in terms he could understand.
“Someone is being bullied right now on the website, and thousands of people might be
reading it. So I have to stop it right now.” He understood, and watched with a serious
expression as I removed the comment.
As you probably know, this is not an unusual situation in the world of online
communities. Theories abound as to why people sometimes are less respectful of others
online than in real life, and many believe anonymity is the problem. “If only people had
to use their real names instead of hiding behind their keyboard, online discussions
would be civil,” they say.
I disagree that the solution is that simple. Why? Because I’ve been watching where it’s
been tried, and it’s not working. Moreover, there is a lot of good that comes with
anonymous commentary.
Although I removed the comment about the principal, I also emailed the commenter
and asked them to contact our schools reporter with any information they may have.
Turns out, there are indeed potentially newsworthy problems with the principal. Once
the facts are known, we may find that the comment was the tip we needed to uncover
an important story.
***
Online communities have been around since the ‘70s, starting with listservers and
bulletin boards, evolving to chat rooms in the ‘80s, then sharing platforms like Napster
and online gaming communities in the ‘90s. In the early 2000s, forums were the thing,
then came blog and news comments. All along, anonymity was the norm.
With the explosion of social media in the past five years, people began getting
comfortable using their real-life identities in limited ways online. The mainstreaming of
social media has, I believe, caused a backlash against anonymous commentary on news
sites. Millions of people are on Facebook using their real names, and many see no
reason why people who post comments on news stories can’t use their real names, too.
The thing is, there’s a big difference between sharing cute cat videos on Facebook under
your real name, and commenting about a problem in your kid’s school on a news site

2. under your real name, like the parent here who says: “Being the new kid in the school,
our son was faced with bullying.”
People frequently pine for the “old days” of letters to the editor, when “everyone had to
put their name to their opinions.” Actually, an interesting historical point is that
anonymous letters to the editor were common until the 1960s. A 2005 research paper
in the Journal of Mass Media ethics determined that editors began requiring names for
a couple of reasons. First, they had strong personal biases against anonymous writers
(some calling them crackpots with selfish personal agendas). And second, from a
practical standpoint, requiring names was an easy way to limit the number for
publication. The fact that newspapers are liable for everything they publish almost
certainly was a third, unspoken factor.
But it can be argued that these real-names policies are in direct contradiction with a
basic tenant of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless. On the reporting side,
anonymous sources are frequently used in news stories. Reporters are careful to vet the
information, of course, and guard against being used by sources with personal agendas.
But editors have been unwilling to extend this practice to letters.
And it’s the voiceless who are most hurt by real-names policies. A 2004 national survey
found that 35% of respondents who had never written letters to the editor said they
would want to do so if their names would not be published; among those respondents,
women, racial minorities, and urban residents figured prominently. Indeed,
demographic studies of letter writers indicate most published letters are written by
people in middle to upper socio-economic classes. Realnames policies tend to protect
the powerful and the status quo.
Many papers have seen a huge decline in letters to the editor since the advent of online
commenting, and as comments have replaced letters, there is pressure from certain
members of the community, and even some readers, to bring real-names policies to the
comments.
But if real-names policies discourage the powerless from voicing their opinion in letters
to the editor, they do so in spades for online comments. What you say online becomes
part of your digital footprint, searchable forevermore. A letter to the editor in the paper
was read by a few hundred or thousand people, then disappeared into the archives on
microfiche. Information posted online can haunt a job-hunter for years to come. I’ve
seen it happen.
At AnnArbor.com, we surveyed readers to find out whether they would be willing to
comment using their real names, and if not, why not. The vast majority said they would
not comment if required to verify their identity. Of those, the most frequent reason
cited was employment concerns.

3. Think about it. If you’re the owner of a local shop in town, would you really feel
comfortable expressing your opinions on local political issues for the entire community
to read? Wouldn’t you worry that you might alienate potential customers who don’t
agree with you? That same concern applies to attorneys, doctors, non-profit leaders,
and business and service-industry workers.
Public sector employees have also expressed concerns about using their real identities.
I’ve seen teachers comment on our sites using their real names, and some have told me
about the backlash they’ve received from school administrators for doing so.
And how about low-income people, who live with violent crime every day in their
communities? How likely are they to participate in important discussions about the
problem if they have to use their real names?
Still, people argue, it would be worth the reduction in participation if the result was that
comments are more civil. The assumption that real names equals civility is hard to argue
against because it seems so intuitive. And if we could just force everyone to use their
real names, we’d no longer have problems with incivility, bullying and libel online.
Right?
One of the girls who bullied Florida teen Rebecca Sedwick posted this defiant message
on Facebook. But she’s a kid. Adults know better, right?
This lovely comment by someone using his real name was posted on a crime story:
“White folks get job training, get a job and buy a car. Black culture. Stick a pistol in some
cracker’s ear and car jack his car.”
On stories about sexual predators, you’ll find a lot of victim-blaming. “This little tramp
has some VERY stupid, incompetent parents,” a guy, using his real name, wrote on a
story about a local teen who disappeared with a 37-year-old man.
I could fill an unlimited number of slides with examples like this and much worse. I
periodically go to news sites where commenters use their real names and see how long
it takes me to find a racist, homophobic, sexist or otherwise offensive comment. Usually
it takes a mere couple of minutes.
Beyond my own anecdotal evidence, though, there has been some research on this
topic. The popular blog comment hosting service Disqus analyzed their comments and
found that commenters who use pseudonyms are the most productive members of the
community. They participate more often, and their comments are rated as more
positive than even those who use real names, as indicated by the number of likes and
replies. The negative factors — the number of times a comment is flagged, deleted or
marked as spam — were relatively consistent across identity types.

4. The Disqus research makes an important distinction that I want to stress. Usually when
we’re talking about anonymous comments, what we’re really talking about are
pseudonymous comments. On most sites, users are required to create an account that is
linked to a real email address in order to comment, and they have to use that same
account every time. As they accumulate a comment history and a place in the
community over time, users take pride in the online persona they have created.
Another study compared comments on news sites that have anonymous commenters to
those that use Facebook for comments. On the anonymous sites, about 50% of
comments were deemed uncivil, while on the Facebook sites, 30% were. Sure it’s an
improvement, but it’s still a third of comments that are uncivil — and that’s with people
using their real names.
So while there are certainly nasty comments out there, they’re almost as likely to be
posted by someone using their real name. Jerks will be jerks, and many don’t care who
knows it. The problem isn’t anonymity; it’s the removal of the intimacy of in-person
communication. The problem isn’t new to digital communication, either, but it is
heightened by the ease, the megaphone and the sharability of online postings. We as a
society are learning to adapt to this mode of communication, and requiring real names
does nothing to teach people how to behave online. In most cases where it’s been tried,
three things happen. It reduces participation, because most people don’t want to use
their real names. It causes most of the discourse to become bland, because most who
do participate using their real names feel inhibited. And there are those who are still
uncivil using their real names or who circumvent the real names policy with fake
accounts.
***
On MLive, we find that anonymous commenters contribute in a number of high quality
ways. The first that comes to mind for most people is whistleblowing. However, this
type of comment is actually pretty rare, and in most cases, we remove true
whistleblowing comments — at least until we can verify the information.
More often, commenters do add general tips and bits of information to stories that go
beyond what our reporters have written. Increasingly we are seeing people who are
somehow related to a story joining the conversation in the comments on that story. On
breaking news articles, eyewitnesses often add their perspective in the comments, like
this example where a witness to the scene of a homicide says: “It was a zoo down there
with close to 200 people standing around acting like fools.”
On tragic stories, relatives of victims often voice their sadness, as in this example where
a father wrote: “The woman killed was my daughter. Her son was life-flighted to Motts
and is in stable condition.”

5. Readers not necessarily connected to stories give reporters constructive feedback. This
can sometimes have humorous results, as in the case where several commenters took a
reporter to task for calling 20 grams of marijuana “lots of pot.” One commenter wrote:
“20 grams is a large quantity? Maybe to a Lilliputian.”
But most importantly, anonymous comments can generate conversations about
problems in the community and discuss solutions. A recent study published in MIS
quarterly showed that when people are anonymous, they are more creative and willing
to discuss difficult topics critically. This commenter on an affirmative action story
launched a frank discussion when she wrote: “I am a woman engineer of mixed Native
American and white heritage, and I am deeply and profoundly against affirmative
action...”
Unfortunately, research shows anonymous commenters are less likely to be taken
seriously. There’s a tendency to dismiss unidentified commenters as “anonymous
trolls.” This dismissive attitude has led a lot of news sites to take drastic measures to
either attempt to force commenters to use their real names, or to shut down comments
completely.
PopularScience.com shut off its article comments in September, citing a study that they
say showed comments harm readers’ understanding of science. The study did show
some differences in how people interpret a story based on the tenor of the comments.
But to conclude that comments should be shut down is a big leap — a classic throwing
the baby out with the bathwater move — especially when there are proven ways to
keep online conversations civil.
***
Bringing civility to an online community is essentially a three-step process: Govern,
Engage, Evolve.
Governing refers to all the ways a site moderates its comments. Personally, the steps I
take include setting clear rules and enforcing them through warnings and comment
removals; maintaining a public blog where people can ask questions and get answers
about moderation, like this exchange where I told a commenter that “Calling people
cronies and entitled idiots crossed the line”; and emailing rulebreakers to communicate
why their comments were removed or their account disabled.
If a commenter is, say, blatantly racist, I’ll just ban them and notify via email. But if I
think a commenter is reformable, I’ll start a conversation with them about how and why
their comments violate the rules.
When commenters post information that is misleading, or that clearly promotes a
personal agenda, we remove the comment and contact the commenter. If the email

6. bounces, the commenter is banned. I have to be able to contact people when they post
problematic comments.
Sometimes this approach works great, as you see here with the commenter saying
“Sometimes it doesn’t occur to me that someone would read it who could be hurt.”
Other times, I get a virtual mooning in response.
This is the type of commenter likely to complain that their First Amendment rights are
being violated on MLive. To which I say, “You have no First Amendment rights on
MLive.” The First Amendment doesn’t apply to the website of a private company. But I
also remind them that, outside of hate speech, it’s possible to communicate pretty
much any idea in a civil way — even ones I find personally repugnant. As long as they
keep it civil, they won’t be moderated.
The second step, engage, refers to authors and other staff members participating in the
comments, answering reader questions, and even posing their own questions in order
to send the conversation on a productive path. In this example, the reporter posed
several questions like this on his story about gay marriage, and the conversation was so
civil and on-topic that nothing had to be removed. I know from years of experience that
this works, and a study by the Engaging News Project at the University of Texas recently
confirmed it.
And the final step: Evolve. By that I mean, never stop expecting and demanding a higher
level of discourse from your commenters. You got rid of the “isms”? Great, now work on
getting rid of name-calling and personal attacks. Then snarkiness and low-value, drive-
by comments, like “Thanks, Obama.” Then start to combat commenters who threadjack,
and challenge commenters who push misinformation. I’m currently in the midst of an
ongoing series educating readers on how to discuss hot-button topics in a civil way. In
many ways, it’s similar to how I teach my kids to express themselves: by using a lot of I
statements rather than you statements, as in this example where I advised a commenter
to “Talk generally about what your religion teaches, rather than tell someone they’re
going to Hell.”
These are the hallmarks of a well-managed online community. I hope that if you
recognize a well-managed community, and the topic interests you, you’ll feel
comfortable joining the conversation. Your perspectives and insights can play a part in
shaping public opinion and finding solutions. I also hope that, after what you’ve heard
here, you might think a little differently about anonymous commenters. That you might
be more inclined to look past the lack of identity and consider the comment on the
merits of its content.
I truly believe online comments, managed correctly, can be a powerful vehicle for
constructive community dialogue, particularly as people who traditionally haven’t been
able to voice their opinions are able to do so. And I hope someday, perhaps when my

7. son is old enough to participate, we will have adapted enough to digital communication
that civility will be the norm — real names or not.