More On Rockville Central’s Comment Policy: Full Names Required
Nov 4, 2009 11:05 - 2 Comments
Dear Readers:
Thank you for continuing to make Rockville Central an important destination for information and opinion about what’s going on in Our Fair City. Yesterday we had 1,836 page views, which I believe may be a record for us. As a recent article made clear, we continue to try to hone our comment policy and to balance openness and responsibility. We discovered what looked like abuse of the commenting system and implemented some controls that we hope will put an end to it.
We also want to let you know about another control we are formalizing. As many know, we in general are opposed to people commenting under pseudonyms, even ones that are not meant to hide a person’s identity. But we believe that Rockville Central needs to be a forum where people truly own their words. We do not want things written in the comments that people would not say to one another face to face, in a public setting.
For that reason, we are going to be requiring comments to be attributed by first and last name before we approve them for publication. That includes pseudonyms like “Fred In Hungerford,” even if the comment is positive.
If feel you have a pressing need to remain anonymous due to personal safety reasons, please email us and ask ahead of time ([email protected]).
Cindy and I know that there are some people who will be made uncomfortable by this. We are sorry, but believe this is best for the overall health of the space. There are many forums where people can comment and express opinions anonymously or pseudonymously. This is not that place.
Thank you.
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Read our comment policy. Please be civil. Don't write something you would not say to someone's face. COMMENTS ARE MODERATED. We reject comments with vulgarities, obscenities, or that personally attack other commenters. We also reject comments that do not use full names. We MAY BAN ip addresses where we detect multiple aliases posting.
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Two ideas:
-How about a thumbs up/thumbs down tool for folks to use in response to comments.
-How about a feature to watch specific comment threads to which one has not commented (lurk)
Keep up the great work!
-Jonathan SMITH
(formerly Jonathan in NMC; yeah, I really am Jon Smith - talk to my dad about that)
So here is the Jonathan Smith. There were 2 Mayors from East Rockville in 40’s-50’s Richard Weddle Grandin Ave 300 block and LeMar Kelly 200 block Baltimore Rd. But was known as Croyden Park back then. Rockville was such a wonderful and close city then. We were so blessed to be there then.