I used to be all about newspapers.  I used to read them cover to cover… everything from the dailies to the local weeklies.  That changed a few years ago, mainly because I found it depressing as hell.  I do, however, read a few of my more local flavored blogs.  Granted, most of them are Blogspot blogs with either boring as hell or ugly as sin templates, but this is blogging afterall ( where ”content is king” ) and luckily I use a feedreader.

One of the local blogs I read is Forest Hills 72.  The blog has, up until recently, allowed anonymous comments that at times got totally off topic and out of hand.  Admittedly, I was glad they stopped anonymous comments… even if it is only temporary.  I have found that 9 out of 10 times, the anonymous comments left on a blog don’t add to the blog’s appeal for a conducive dialogue.  There are, as expected, others who disagree.

So on the time-out post FOHI Alive had this to say:

The anonymous time out just incites more shocking anonymous postings when the penalty period is over. You have to let the people speak their mindzzz.

I then had this to say:

There is nothing being done against people who want to speak their mind.

There is something being done about people who want to spread hate speech, incite racism, and literally bring down the quality of the blog.

More importantly, people who speak their mind are being held responsible for their thoughts. They now need to own their words.

If they aren’t willing to do so, then they obviously don’t value their own opinion… and neither should we.

FOHI Alive then, as expected, said this:

Wow Watchdog..who are you?

The thing is, there is a big difference between those anonymous commentators and myself.  If you Google my sign-on/alias/handle, you’ll end up with a full page of accounts on sites that I have (Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, etc.) .  At the end of the page, it even offers to search for ”nyc watchdog” which if you do THAT search… lands you right here.  I have an online identity.  Anonymous commentators and even FOHI Alive don’t.  The things I say/write are mine and I can be held quite accountable for whatever they are, unlike the others.

Now don’t think that I am naive and think that people can’t just throw together a profile and make the exact same type of comments that they were doing before.  The difference is though, is that requires quite a bit of effort.  True proponents of hate speech will do just that… and in that way, the blogosphere is like life.  No one can stop someone from being an idiot.  In fact, it isn’t even against the law to be an idiot.  What it does do is force those idiots to become identifiable by a sing-on/alias/handle and therefore we are able to filter them out that much easier.  I stress the filter them out part, because I am a big believer that if you perceive someone to be a troll then you shouldn’t feed them.

What parts do you feel make up your online identity?