After about a year of allowing site visitors to comment on any story, The Sacramento Bee in California is reworking its commenting policy. 

At first the paper allowed commenters to hide behind pseudonyms.  However, to a few people's surprise, this freed some commenters to earn the rather mild title from staffers of "provocateur" as they slung vitriol of all types at those who disagreed with them. Some site participants stopped participating out of annoyance and disgust.

To counter the provocateurs, the Bee will soon require all commenters to user their real name on the site.  While, as ombudsman Aramando Acuna notes, this will likely lead to fewer comments, many readers support stripping anonymity away from commenters.  Further, the paper hopes that this policy will lessen the need for it to monitor and approve or reject every comment before it is publicly posted.

Hopefully, this will work.  Let's also hope that no one will hijack another person's name and spew vitriol on the site to disgrace a their reputation.  Identity thieves don't need credit card numbers, addresses, and social security numbers to harm another's life.

Yeah, you can never win, but for everyone's sake, let's hope that policies like those that The Sacramento Bee is implementing will succeed.

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