Treat your audience the way you’d like to be treated: identify yourself and your biases clearly.

The comments in the post Creating A Space for Community Conversation sparked this post.

One of the many great questions in the comments was:

Should staffers be required to use their real names when commenting on their paper’s articles?

Yes – all staffers should be required to use their real names.

A modified version of the Golden Rule is a simple ethical guideline: Treat your audience as you would like to be treated.

For the most part, we’d like to discourage our users from coming on our site, assuming fake names, and posting comments they don’t necessarily believe in, just to start controversy. Those people are called trolls, and they are disliked because they make it harder for people to have conversations.

It goes without saying that reporters are required to use their real names when commenting on a story; the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal fired a reporter in 2006 for commenting anonymously on his own work to ’set the record straight,’ and the L.A. Times reassigned Michael Hiltzik for posting anonymous comments on a District Attorney’s blog. Hiltzik was reprimanded for violating the Times‘ ethics guidelines, which state: “Staff members must not misrepresent themselves and must not conceal their affiliation with The Times.”

But what about other employees of the paper? What rules apply to them? And what of the question posed by Matt Writt in the comments of Creating A Space for Community Conversation?

I’ve taken it upon myself to create an alter ego who posts comments, often with the intention of stirring up a debate. [...] Since I’m not a writer, our readers wouldn’t recognize my real name even if I were to post comments as Matt Writt. Therefore, what harm is there in using a pseudonym? In other words, my real name is just as anonymous as my fake name. And unless my alter ego is either relentless in stirring debate or inconsistent in positions taken on issues, how would this anonymity engender mistrust?

Matt brings up an complicated point – let’s take it back to the Golden Rule. Would we want our audience to come onto our site and comment on a story without revealing that their brother is featured in it? Or that their PR office represents the restaurant that they are praising lavishly?

We certainly can’t stop a commenter from hiding their affiliations, but we can encourage transparency by practicing it ourselves. Creating a community where folks feel comfortable acknowledging their differences and discussing them in a constructive fashion is hard work – and leading by example is an easy way to set the community standard for behavior.

Matt works for the paper; an obvious bias. Given the small staff of alt-papers, it’s likely that he might be friendly with the reporter whose work he is commenting on – friendly with the section editor, copy editor, editorial designer. He might even know the subjects of the article, or patronize some businesses mentioned. These biases are transparent only when he identifies himself as an employee of the paper.

And on a legal note: Matt may not be bound by the ethical responsibilities of a journalist, but as an employee of the paper, the comments he leaves on the site could be legally construed as part of his job duties, which would leave the paper liable for anything he says on the site – whether he uses his own name or not.

[A note on personal transparency: I identify myself as LauraFries.com on this blog, which is the name I use whenever writing on the Internet. The blurb about me on the 'About the Author' page on this blog (accessible via the 'About' page or the footer navigation) links to my personal blog, with more than ample documentation of my own biases. I adhere to our Editorial Policy stringently.]