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The Sun Chronicle Wants Readers to Pay and Use Real Names in Order to Comment

by Matthew Zuras on July 16, 2010 at 06:30 AM

sun chronicle logoThe bad experiments in paywalls have begun. We knew we'd be seeing more newspapers and magazines charging readers to access some (or all) of their websites' content, and we knew that there would be a lot of crazy attempts to implement paywalls before anyone found a sustainable model (that is, if one exists at all). Local newspaper The Sun Chronicle, based in Massachusetts, has come up with one of the silliest ideas we've heard recently: charge readers to comment on articles.

The fee's not egregious. In fact, it's only a one-time payment of $1. But we imagine people will be less likely to pony up the cash when they find out that the transaction must be done with a credit card, and that the name on the card will appear alongside any comment they post. Now, we're not about to defend the uglier side of Internet commenting, to which we at Switched are daily subjected when people, behind the mask of anonymity, come to rant, rave and spew spite. (We've wondered about those commenters' motivations -- particularly that time a commenter told one of our writers to "fall into a puddle of AIDS" -- but looked past it as an unfortunate consequence of free speech on the Web.) But are The Sun Chronicle's readers willing to forgo their anonymity for the promise of a forum scrubbed of angry postings?

The newspaper suspended its comments function back in April, and, according to the Guardian, the publisher, Oreste D'Arconte, stated that holding readers accountable would "eliminate past excesses that included blatant disregard for [its] appropriateness guidelines, blind accusations and unsubstantiated allegations."

We've laughed, cried and thrown things at the computer due to some of our wingnut commenters -- but they're not all wingnuts. We've had anonymous posters asking for advice about domestic violence, chiming in about their experiences with Facebook's flip-flopping stance toward religious commentary, and offering inside information from tech companies that we've called out for wrongdoing. If one of our commenters decides to dissent from a prevailing attitude, we don't think that they should put themselves in danger by using their real name to voice an opinion. That's not to say that some wouldn't be happy to use their real names, but paying for the privilege of identifying oneself doesn't seem, to us, to be on the right track. [From: The Guardian]

Tags: anonymity, commenters, commenting, comments, media, newspaper, newspapers, paywall, socialnetworking, TheSunChronicle, top, web

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