There have been reports today about an industry body led initiative to stamp out anonymous online commentary. AdNews was mentioned so here's our take.
On 30th August 2011, AdNews published a set of community guidelines under the banner “We ain't afraid of no troll”.
The article opened with a series of abusive and libellous comments which were never published on our website as examples of how we moderate.
We designed a logo to symbolise our guidelines and encouraged other websites and blogs to share the logo. You can read the article here, and the comments thread, which features some lively debate.
The article reignited a debate about anonymous commentary. It was circulated by members of The Communications Council board via email, who "congratulated" AdNews on the initiative.
On 13th September I was phoned by Daniel Leesong, the former chief executive of The Communications Council, who vacated his position last week.
Leesong wanted to convene an off-the-record meeting with the editors of the other magazines and blogs, Communication Council chairman Anthony Freedman, and himself.
The idea was to debate online commentary, with the aim of reaching a consensus between the editors and adopting a policy on what's acceptable and what isn't.
I gave Leesong's plan some consideration, but two weeks later decided I would not be involving AdNews in the proposal, and wished him well with his plans.
We have a set of what I believe is robust community guidelines. The decision to publish the guidelines was merely a formalisation of what AdNews has been practising for some time, and came weeks after we changed our comments registration process to require an email address.
AdNews is an independent publisher, guided by its own editorial standards. And the guidelines work.
We don't try to make capital out of persistent trolling, mindless abuse, irrelevant off-topic comments, or obviously commercial and spam-like posts.
We allow anonymity - which I believe in - if you respect the standards of the community. Your real identity is never publicly or privately shared. We don't out people.
If it means a smaller volume of comments then so be it. Interestingly, AdNews has experienced a rise in comments since the making public its position, and I hope that continues to be the case.
The idea behind publishing the guidelines was to remind site users of what's acceptable on the AdNews website, and give our journalists a rulebook to guide them in their moderation.
The reason I've decided to write about the approach by The Communications Council is because there have been a number of reports today about their efforts in this area, which has effectively broken the off-the-record condition attached by the trade body.
More importantly, one of the news stories carried a quote which said the source of the quote "believed all the publishers were open to trying to address the problem", which isn't quite true so I wanted to set the record straight and reaffirm our position.
AdNews declined to take part in the meeting. The "problem" has never been a problem for AdNews and that remains the case today.
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