Thanks for all of your feedback on the question of whether Salon should continue to allow anonymous posters. We're continuing to kick the question around internally. I do think I was less clear than I should have been, and my post appeared to conflate anonymity with bad behavior. There are some threads where the most offensive posts are anonymous; in general, though, plenty of nasty comments come from people with screen names. I didn't mean to imply that ending the use of "anonymous" would end vicious personal attacks. We will be moderating a little bit more aggressively to deal with abusive posts, anonymous or not. But we will continue to allow you all to disagree vociferously with us, and with one another.
For now, I'd like to make a plea that people think twice about being anonymous. I have read all the reasons given for being anonymous, and some of them are compelling. But since you can choose a perfectly unrecognizable screen name, I think we're doing our best to let you protect yourselves from Googling employers, college admissions officials and stalkers.
We're also meeting next week to get a timeline on some long-needed improvements to letters that could include community moderation, filtering anonymous or other posters and other options. I'll report back to you when I know what's possible, and when. Thanks for all your good ideas. Have a great weekend. Especially you, moodyriver.
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