The balancing act

In the Aug.10, 2008, Des Moines Sunday Register there was an article by Rekha Basu about the postings on the Register’s Web site.

According to the article, there are 22,000 “members” registered to post comments online. On their Website, there’s a convenient tab to sign up for membership and start blogging your heart out.

But the focus of the article is not on hearts – it’s about some of the wicked tongues of bloggers.

The headline (four columns wide) reads, “Spewing venom” with the cut line “Does online anonymity enhance valuable forum, or encourage posts that are rude, crude, hateful?”

Because the Register allows anonymous posting, they receive a lot of hateful, hurtful blogs. People feel free to trounce other people’s feelings, ethnicity, actions and pretty much anything else they care to “flame”.

After giving a few examples, Basu refers to the Register’s online code which “doesn’t allow obscenity, profanity or libelous statements, sexually explicit or crude comments about someone, threats or suggestions of violence. It forbids derogatory terms about a group and crude remarks about a child.”

The Register is currently receiving more than 2,000 posts each day and the staff can’t keep watch over that volume – they must be alerted to infractions of the rules.

So Basu, trying to understand the motivation of these flamers, queried them on her blog. The enlightening answers were:
* It’s fun to push people’s buttons.
* It’s fun to torment strangers – and this “fun” is called “lulz” because they enjoy making people
lose their cool.
* They like people to disagree with them so they can argue with those who disagree.

The main questions raised in the article are whether the good of posting (allowing an open forum) outweighs the bad (flaming) and what should/could be done to prevent the bad posts.

After presenting several possible approaches, Basu goes with “gradually start requiring people to provide their names.”

I guess that’s a start, but it seems like sort of a Band-Aid approach. Maybe the real issue should be addressed – why so many people believe freedom of speech means they can spew that venom with no accountability.

If our courts require an accused person be allowed to face their accusers, why aren’t flamers forced to face those they’ve so badly burned?