A crucial issue is being debated right now in multiple courts and in public opinion: Anonymity on the Web.

An aging model who was called a “skank” by a blogger on Google’s Blogger service, for example, recently won a legal battle to unmask the anonymous poster. And just recently, an anonymous and controversial blogger by the name of PittGirl lost her job after her identity was revealed.

I do believe that if you’re going to attack anyone online, you should at least be identified. Many courts disagree with this however. The right to free speech is “construed as also protecting the anonymity of the person doing the speaking, provided that the content, be it spoken or written, violates no laws,” according to this article in ars technica.

Is it time to take our masks off?

OK. But what about other people’s publications and blogs? In my previous post, I wrote about a boy who had been killed while rescuing a duck on a rural road. In the comments section were an array of side arguments and nasty religious / political posts. Comments that had absolutely nothing to do with the story.

Is that speech protected? Absolutely. As it should be.

But why do respected newspapers like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch let readers go wild? If a reader wants to submit a letter or opinion column for the print edition of almost any publication, he or she has to go through a gauntlet of preconditions. But to submit an online comment, all that same reader has to do is make up a fake name.

I’m reminded of a hasty, half-true, half-incorrect comment I recently made on a friend’s marketing blog. My handle was my real name, Justin Rubner. Not some made-up name like SpyderWeb. Or even justin87645.

My (real) picture was even attached to the profile.

The commenter who razed me, however, had neither. Just a fake name to hide behind. He called me “insane” among other things.

I’ve been called worse. I didn’t lose sleep over it. But this does raise an interesting point.

Would this person have called me names if his comments were published with his real picture and his real real name? Probably not. At the least, he (or maybe she) would have been more tempered.

But this was just a blog. What about a major urban daily newspaper? Well, the same nonsense goes on. Much worse, actually.

I recently saw some unbelievably racial comments written about Mike Vick in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. It took a while for them to be removed, likely in response to a reader’s complaint.

I’m no Vick fan; I love my dog. But the racially-charged comments on that particular story sullies the AJC. And the comments on the duck story makes the Post-Dispatch appear second-rate. Ditto for any other publication that allows carte blanche, laissez-faire access to everyone with keyboards…and grudges.

As the news industry prepares to eliminate the use of dead trees so that it can fully enter the online world–that day is nigh–the industry will have to deal with interactivity in a much smarter fashion than it has already. It cannot simply not provide this interactivity. (I’ve increasingly noticed that publications have abandoned their comments sections, most likely because the comments  require too much policing.)

Conversely, the news industry cannot provide unlimited access for readers to publish silly, hateful or nonsensical comments. It belittles any publication. As much as I dislike what Vick did, to see posters calling him a “monkey” (and worse)–in one of the biggest metro dailies in the country–is mind boggling. Again, how many people would say those things if those things were right next to their names, locations and pictures?

Any major media entity–whether a high-subscription blog, a daily newspaper or a weekly magazine–ought to start developing systems that:

• Require all posters to use real names and locales–just like the print edition.
• Verify e-mail addresses and identities–yep, like the print edition.
• Encourage the addition of real pictures. I don’t know how real pictures can be verified, but it’s worth a try for smarter people than me to figure it out.
• For larger publications with the manpower to do so, once the computers do the filtering, then humans should do some editing themselves. Some already do this. But not enough.

Yes, I said it. I know a lot of people will disagree, especially those who feel that social media is the solution to all of society’s ills. But my answer to this?

Publishing your thoughts in someone else’s publication is a privilege. Not a right.

I also know that as publishers, we all crave reader comments. We may get a lot of readers. But when our stories or opinions elicit responses, it… somehow…validates us.

So, I know that providing these restrictions will hamper some readers to make the effort. But these restrictions also will make your content that much better.

I also know that there are some instances that require anonymity for the safety of the source or reader. But these instances are few and far between.

I’ll end with one smart Post-Dispatch reader, David11:

“StlToday.com/moderator/whomever – WHY are stories like this even open for comment??? These tragedies are NOT political issues and families/friends of victims should NOT be subject to idiotic, judgemental, insulting, and just plain insane comments. Just report the story and leave the comments off.”