Wednesday, 11 April 2007
Comment is free?
Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian argues that The blogosphere risks putting off everyone but point-scoring males
While "censorship" is never going to work, the idea of an online reputation is already important. I am very aware that anything I write - whether here in this blog, or on my work sites such as Reach Further or the Adelie Project or on a forum or someone else's blog - is part of the whole "Helen Whitehead" online persona.
There is an obvious other side to this though. Jonathan Freedland says "Might it not be possible to have a single online identity, one that you cared about, even if it had little connection to your identity in the real world?"
There's the rub - why have only one online identity? I actually have two others. One is a fictional experiment and the second is for anything that I think is outside the professional Helen Whitehead persona... nothing untoward of course, merely the run-of-the-mill social and domestic activities that are the equivalent of the "private life" one has outside one's work. For example, a contribution to a domestic appliance recommendation site. I hope both my "real" identities have a trusted reputation online. But for others they could have as many identities as they need to use to abuse others, which do not affect their trusted identity. There isn't an answer other than to behave like civilised people. And some people just won't.
posted by Helen Whitehead 1:07 PM
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