Wow. Bill Nemitz wrote a column on Thursday about people who post Reader Comments under pseudonyms "Cowards find courage at the keyboard." Predictably, it hit the fan. There are over 200 comments on the column as of this writing.

Since the topic of handling public submissions online is a lively topic around the newspaper industry, not just here in Maine, I sent a link around to a couple of industry email lists, and over 40 people on those lists sent replies with their thoughts or questions.

Rather than address them individually, I put together the following email, which also might address some questions you have about Reader Comments.

Here's the email:

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A number of people have weighed in with questions or comments following my post about one of our newspaper columnists taking anonymous commenters to task.
I hope this background and perspective is useful:

- Why do we have Reader Comments on all stories? Because since 1995 our operating philosophy has been to use the Web to expand the traditional role of our company beyond journalism but within our core values as a community resource. At the outset, some "user generated content" consisted of literally handwritten submissions and photo prints. Remember Koz.com, circa 1997-99? We were early adopters, and late bailers. Today we consider that all submitted comments, photos, articles, events -- and ads -- are a unified spectrum of Mainers' involvement in our sites. No doubt in another five years, it will look more different still.

- To be very clear, this is not journalism, nor does it flow from our mission as a journalism organization. It flows from our broader mission as a community resource. In other words, we're not doing Reader Comments because everyone else is. And stopping is not an option.

- A person must register before being able to submit anything: comments, photos, an ad, whatever. They need to provide an email address, and the registration doesn't happen until they respond to an email sent to that address.

- All submitted content, including Reader Comments, is reviewed by the MaineToday.com producers. At the moment, the newsrooms of our three papers are not involved. During this review, the standard is for rejection, not acceptance. In other words, the assumption is that almost everything goes up, with exceptions noted in our policy. (We understand that this is not true moderation.) Some content goes live immediately and reviewed later, some is reviewed before going live. So far, we estimate that less than 5 percent of comments are rejected. Based on what I've heard around the industry, we may be lucky.

- Most Reader Comments are reviewed before going live, which means that comments posted after-hours won't go live until the next morning. We have an informal process where after someone posts 25 comments and none is rejected, their comments might be enabled go live immediately. Those comments are reviewed afterward. If one of these "Regulars" violates policy, he/she gets kicked back to ordinary status.

- Contrary to many in our industry, I do not believe reader contributions can be managed simply by putting better technology in the hands of the users. Human beings need to be involved behind the scenes on an ongoing basis. Some could be committed volunteers, but some must be on staff. I also don't believe we could ever guarantee "real" identities without visiting people's houses or requiring a credit card.

- Our philosophy on Reader Comments is summarized by this metaphor: we are dropping a microphone into the conversations of the community and relaying what people are saying. Is most of it useful or worthwhile? Sometimes people post useful factual information that advances a story. But much of the feedback we receive about Reader Comments is that people enjoy seeing what other people think. If that's their standard, who are we to decide what's useful?

- Yes, the columnist violated our company's policy of protecting users' identities. I don't want to say it's understandable, but it happened because of a combination of chance and lack of awareness of the policy. We'll try hard to prevent it from happening again.

- Where this is heading: we are looking at a more unified platform for all user submissions, whether comments, photos, etc. tied into a user's profile page. We believe the "profile page" will be a powerful force, when a person's postings all appear on one page. We hope to include aspects like rankings and possibly various levels of exposure that the user can choose to view comments, or not. Plus offering different ways to view them, like reverse order, or not.

I realize there are strong opinions out there contrary to the opinions offered above. This is a work in progress, no one has it figured out yet, so we intend to keep moving and changing.
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That's what I wrote, and I expect the industry list will light up again.
More importantly, let's hear more from you:

MaineToday's managers are spending Thursday and Friday hammering out a strategic plan for 2008.
We do this every year, and it's a tough process. There are literally dozens of great ideas, but limited time and resources. So we have to make choices, make good plans, but also be prepared to be flexible as the year goes on.
Every major feature you've seen on our site came out of those plans over the years: reader comments, blogs, the new Real Estate section, redesigns, myMaineToday, Seen - everything.
With more and more involvement from people all over Blethen Maine Newspapers, the list of ideas grows even longer.
What do you think our priorities for 2008 should be? What could we make better? Have you seen features on other sites that you'd like to see here?
We'll be checking your comments below as we meet this week. Who knows - maybe your idea will change everything.