GigaOM writer: "Anonymity has real value, both in comments and elsewhere." In the wake of the faux lesbian Damascus blogger, the question over whether or not to allow anonymous comments is being raised again. Some claim anonymous comments allow for dissent and are essential to democracy. Other claim that that anonymous comments lead to harsher, uncivil conversation that serves nobody. [more inside]
posted by zooropa on Jun 20, 2011 - 36 comments

Though not the web institution of Jim Romenesko's Obscure Store or as overexposed as Dave Barry's Blog, Chuck Shepherd's NEWS of the WEIRD is a fairly good source for news stories that are... well... WEIRD. And Chuck's the only one who has collected a list of stories that "now occur with such frequency" that they are NO LONGER WEIRD. Quite a resource for judging how our society has changed in the last umpteen years.

In semi-related news, Barry is semi-retiring his weekly column, but we still have AutoDave, the automated Dave Barry column generator. Still, I suspect he did it just to upstage Dan Gillmor's farewell column, as he gives up the old-media columnar life in favor of "Grassroots Journalism".
To Dave Berry, 'Grassroots Journalism' is writing about the brown patch in your lawn directly over the septic tank.
posted by wendell on Jan 2, 2005 - 12 comments

Free as Air, Free as Water, Free as Knowledge : is my favorite link to quote people these days. I like especially the references to Ben Franklin. How do we resolve the problem of fair use in a market driven world? Dan Gillmor's latest column, which calls for people to get active on the issue of fair use, brought the speech once again to mind.
posted by artlung on Apr 8, 2001 - 12 comments