Editorial page editor Donald Luzzatto, in an article this morning, discussed the implementation of the new commenting system on the Opinion channel of the paper’s website:
At the PilotOnline.com Opinion channel, the online masks come off today. Starting this morning, if you want to respond to a letter, column or editorial, you’ll have to provide the same thing our authors do: Your real name and your hometown.
Except – the new system doesn’t appear to be completely in effect yet 😳
A side benefit of the new system: my columns are now online. 
Yes, they are out of order and the email link doesn’t work but hey – I ain’t complaining 😉 . I’m just happy to have them there. (Besides, if anyone wants to email me they can always use my contact link.)
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
But golly, if people’s online opinions are linked to their real names and hometowns, where am I going to get my daily fix of closet racism?
Ha! 😆
You mean I can’t call myself “Brian Kirwin” any more?
On a more serious note, the idea that I have to give the Pilot a credit card number to post an opinion is genuinely creepy. Maybe the Pilot doesn’t intend to use the information, but the truth is that systems like this can be and are hacked routinely.
I agree with the inherent creepiness. At the very least I’d prefer to see a wider variety of authenticators so that I can select the one that sketches me out least.
Sketchiness notwithstanding, I’m also disappointed that this particular authenticator will effectively prevent adolescent PilotOnline readers from offering comments as easily as their parents. If, hypothetically-speaking, Kerry Dougherty posts a column online about that school in Norfolk where there’s been alleged systematic cheating on SOLs, and a student at that school wants to comment that she personally has never been encouraged or facilitated to cheat on a test by a faculty member, that’s a point of view I’d like to hear.
Way more than I care about the impassioned and authenticated yet ultimately uninformed points of view howled down from the back-row seats on the jury of public opinion, anyway.
The FAQ states that the credit card number is not kept.
This will reduce the number of comments they get. We used to have those sorts of registration requirements on our website and never got any comments. When we took them off, we did. I understand the impulse, because the mask of the Internet does tempt some people to act like fools.
Probably but since it only applies to the opinion posts (a small percentage of the content), it won’t have that much of an effect. And it may raise the level of conversation.
Anyone willing to place a wager on whether or not this has to do with some potential lawsuit and/or liability issues brought up by the Pilot’s lawyer?
I wouldn’t take that bet, only because it only applies to a small portion of the content and not the entire site.
CO: They may feel that it helps efficiency. If you allow anonymous comments you then need to monitor the site to take down those that could be libelous or use bad language, etc. Their thinking could be that if people have to use their names their langauge will be better and they will be reponsible for their own libel and slander, although I’m not sure they’d be right on that last point.
The Federalist Papers were written anonymously.
When I’m looking for Federalist Paper-quality thinking, I know I go straight to anonymous newspaper comment sections . . .
~
As I’ve gone on about at length, I think that anonymity serves a very important purpose. It also helps turn most newspaper comment sections into the cesspools that they are. I think I’ve shifted my views on how essential anonymity is, though. Sure, this move will (I assume) deprive PilotOnline readers of the well considered and useful opinions of folks like Silence Dogood. On the other hand, most people probably aren’t reading them in the first place b/c you’ve got to slog through an enormous pile of crap to get to them.
Incidentally, while I have been known to fire off a LTE when the mood strikes me, when it comes to newspaper websites I’ll only ever leave a comment on the sports section.
Alex Ovechkin’s turned in two lousy games Saturday and Sunday. The only bright side to his poor skating on the puck last night (particularly on the power play) was that it was still at least a minor improvement over his inept stick-handling in Buffalo the night before. While he may be the franchise’s marquis player, Bruce Boudreau still needs to consider bumping him down to the second line and spreading out his ice-time among some of the other left-wingers until Ovi can get his act together.