Looking for answers in an online world

As a native of the place, I wrote last week about D.C. statehood - specifically, about a cynical deal to trade a congressman in Utah for one in Washington. A snide and facetious comment about the Constitution inspired as much e-mail and online comments as anything I've written in a while, which proves yet again how badly I predict what will provoke readers.

The Internet foment came as I was arguing with myself about what role these pages and their editors and writers should play in an electronic world. Last week, one of our fans had gotten something wrong in a comment, perhaps intentionally. I was one keystroke away from correcting him - which would have represented my first online comment - when I stopped.

Nowadays and for years now, our practice has been to post editorials, columns and your letters at PilotOnline.com and then watch what happens. If somebody gets something wrong, or lies, we let it go. If someone asks a question, we don't answer, at least online.

That's a remarkably passive experience for a remarkably interactive medium and for some pretty engaged journalists. And, I'd argue, it ensures that the online experience isn't what it could or should be.

After years here, and after years of talking with you, I know who the people of Hampton Roads are. But I don't know - literally - who the people of HamptonRoads.com are.

There was a time when online comments were attached to real names and actual persons. After a system switch a few years ago, we now have folks with handles like jack_mclovin and Proud Native. Those may or may not be real names, but there's still no easy way to identify the people behind the monikers.

As an editorial page, we don't print anonymous letters to the editor or anonymous columns. Editorials are unsigned simply because they are the voice of this institution, its editorial board, and not of any single writer. News stories include anonymous sources only under very specific, extreme and rare conditions. The reason? Anonymity is just too powerful a weapon to be used lightly.

I have had countless e-mail conversations with hundreds of readers since I started writing this column. With few exceptions, those exchanges have been civil and respectful, even when we've violently disagreed (as I'm now doing with a formidably smart retired Navy commander concerned about my attitude toward the Constitution). But, usually, we each know who the other is.

Taking responsibility for what you say isn't exactly a radical idea. It's why news stories have bylines and why my picture is printed in the first column. But in the online world, anonymity is a predicate. Anonymity allows freedom, but it also allows license. Because of that, it makes PilotOnline.com at times a very ugly place.

I know, I know. The answer to ugly speech is more speech. But I have a hard time spending time - or asking others to spend time - in a place where people feel no civilizing restrictions on their speech.

So here's the dilemma I'm facing: I love to talk with readers of The Pilot. Those of you unlucky enough to have sent me an e-mail know that I'm hardly shy about responding to civil disagreement. But that's because I have a pretty good idea who you are. I have your e-mail address. You are a person behind a handle.

In our forums, you could be anything or anyone. And while that has a liberating effect on posters, it makes many of us - and I'm speaking for thousands of readers - uninterested in joining the conversation.

Ignoring that vigorous debate, though, is like ignoring the sun coming up. It is going to do what it's going to do. So, then, what should we do?

This is not a rhetorical question. It's a real one, prompted by this idea: How do we create an online opinion space that meets the journalistic standards of this newspaper's editorial page, that respects the debate itself and the people in it?

Perhaps the standards in the two forums - print and electronic - are irreconcilable. Perhaps online forums will always be wilder and woollier and nastier because anonymity allows them to be. Perhaps for that reason, it will always require a more dedicated effort to cull the trolls. Perhaps anonymity itself is the problem, and we should limit comments to subscribers or to people willing to identify themselves. Perhaps the situation is already as it should be.

I honestly don't know. I'm pretty sure about this, though: If there is an answer, somebody will let me know. My e-mail address is donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.

Donald Luzzatto is The Pilot's editorial page editor.