By Scott Tibbs, December 10, 2010
Imagine it is the middle of July, and you go outside to mow the lawn. You finish mowing, come inside, and sit in your favorite chair. After working in the hot sun, you are very thirsty. There is a freshly-poured glass of your favorite beverage, with plenty of ice, sitting next to your chair. Now you are holding the beverage in your hand. Rather than bringing the glass to your lips and quenching your thirst, you sit there whining because you are thirsty.
That's the mentality of the pathetic column by Bill Strother on December 6. Once again, someone from the H-T is whining and crying because of the tendency to comment on stories anonymously.
The Herald-Times allows anonymous comments on news stories. They could ban anonymous comments right now if they wanted to It would be a very easy change to implement, especially since everyone has to pick a username. They could simply require that the username be the first and last name of the poster. Rather than actually do something about the problems created by anonymous comments, the H-T chooses to whine about it. The H-T is very thirsty, but won't sip from the ice-cold beverage in its hand.
Of course, if the H-T actually solved the problem, they would not be able to write pathetic editorials crying about it.
I have an account on HeraldTimesOnline, and I post with my real name. I am convinced that the anonymity offered by the Internet is the single worst thing to happen to political discourse in the last 100 years. When there is no fear of being held accountable by name in a public forum, people will post all kinds of filth, including libelous personal attacks and engage in outright cyberstalking. I've written about anonymity many times, and I believe it is almost never a good thing.
Of course, that's not the point of this post. The point is this: the crybabies in the H-T newsroom need to put up or shut up. Either ban anonymous comments, or stop crying because people are commenting anonymously.
