One of the recent kerfuffles in the legal blogosphere (or, if you must, the blawgosphere) is about anonymity. On blogs.
Yeah! I know! But they all sound so serious!
Dan Hull started it (this time) with his declaration that What About Clients was now a “Wuss-Free Zone.”
Effective July 1, 2009, and absent compelling reasons, this blog will no longer print any comments of anonymous bloggers and commenters.
Nameless blogosphere participants, in our view, are rarely worth anyone’s time, thought, or respect. Anonymous writers have already “discounted” themselves. You can discount them, too, without worrying you’re missing anything. They are second-class citizens, at best.
Elsewhere, he explains:
Comments from identified humans are easier to swallow because they have more credibility. A reputation–of a real person, who has taken a risk–backs the comment.
Not usually. Sure, if you’re Gerry Spence, your representation precedes your blog, but not for the rest of us. I mean, who the hell is Dan Hull? Who the hell is Windypundit? He’s the guy who writes the What About Clients blog, and I’m the guy who writes Windypundit. That’s all I know about him, and that’s all you need to know about me. We’re names on a web site.
If I poke around a bit, that site also links to the Hull McGuire website. Of course, now, so does mine. More interestingly, the Hull McGuire web site closes the loop with a page for J. Daniel Hull, and that page claims he’s the author of the What About Clients blog.
It sounds like we’re making progress, but we’re not making a lot of it. All we’ve proven is that the Hull McGuire site and the What About Clients blog correlate with each other in support of the Dan Hull hypothesis. We still haven’t proven that there’s a real Dan Hull out there who’s behind that identity.
Pretty much the same argument applies for Mark Bennett at Defending People and Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice. The only thing I know for sure about either of them is that they are the people who write those blogs. They could each be written by a team of law students, or they could both be written by Norm Pattis just to punk the blawgosphere. (On the other hand, Brian Tannebaum—as revealed by his Twitter stream—is an obvious artificial intelligence experiment designed to mimic a human Twitterer.)
The same can be said for this blog and my identity. I claim to be Mark Draughn, and three or four of you have even met me, but how do you know that’s my real name? Even people who’ve known me for years and recognize my face can’t be positive I’m the author of Windypundit merely from visiting this site. Anyone could use my name and post a few photos of me. You’d have to know me and hear me take credit for Windypundit before you could be sure.
Even then, what would you be sure of? That I’m the guy who you’ve known for years as Mark Draughn? Fine, but you never asked for my ID—which could be fake anyway—so how do you know that’s my real name?
Actually, that last paragraph goes too far and reveals the problem with this kind of thinking: Names just aren’t that important. We’re not asking the right questions. When it comes to bloggers, the key question is why does their identity matter?
Ultimately, a person’s identity comes down to a collection of claims about them. If you sign up at a bulletin board site, they ask you for your email address and send you a confirmation email which you have to click on. This establishes the claim that you are a person who controls that email address. That’s not much of a claim, but it proves crucial when you lose your password, because they can just email it to you. (And it proves you’re a real person so they can sell your address to spammers.)
When you buy something online with a credit card, they ask for the number, the expiration date, and the secret number on the back. This establishes the claim that you have access to the credit card. Since you could have stolen it from a purse or just copied someone’s information, they also ask your for your name and address, which establishes the claim that you know something about the registered card owner. It’s not quite the same as proving the claim that you are the card owner, but it’s close enough to do hundreds of billions of dollars in online sales every year.
In my case, I make few claims that cannot be checked by reading my blog. I claim no credentials as an economist, so if you want to know whether my economic opinion is worth anything, you’ll have to read the rest of my economic writing on my blog and decide for yourself. If I tell you which camera to buy, you’ll want to read my other photography writing and look at my pictures and decide for yourself if my advice is of value. It’s the same for everything else I write about—politics, civil liberties, movies, music—the blog stands for itself. I am who I appear to be.
That’s the case for most bloggers. Their reputation stands or falls on the contents of their blog alone. The name has nothing to do with it. As long as their identity is established with enough integrity to tie them to the contents of their blog—easy enough to do when they sign the blog articles—it doesn’t matter what name they use.
It’s a little different for lawyers. People can check out my work on Pacer, or the decisions in my appeals on Lexis, or newspaper/magazine/books about my cases on Google. Some lawyers leave a fairly large wake, so it’s easy to find far more about them than the stuff they post on their blog. We can say anything we want about ourselves, but our body of work either exists or we are revealed to be full of baloney.
Of course, if you can’t find that stuff out about a lawyer, you’ve learned something as well.
Hull is talking about commenters, not bloggers.
In the case of an established anonymous blogger (“WindyPundit”), the reputation of a person who has taken a risk and expended some effort backs the comment. If you spew venom or nonsense in a comment, we know where to find you.
Even if there were no name connected to WindyPundit, we would know where to find WindyPundit: right here. WindyPundit has put a good deal into this blog, which endows WindyPundit with credibility.
The bulk of anonymous commenters have no investment in their reputations; they are nothing more than timestamps on comments. With no investment at stake, they have less motivation to speak the truth, to make sense, and to be civil.
The ratio of signal to noise among anonymous commenters is low enough that filtering them makes sense.
shg, Very true. That was my point in mentioning super-duper-lawyer Gerry Spence, but it applies to slightly less famous persons such as yourself or anyone else with a real-world track record. There is the issue of whether the writer of Simple Justice is the “real” Scott Greenfield that we can read about elsewhere, but at this point I think it’s safe to assume that if you aren’t the real Scott Greenfield, he would have sued you for defamation by by now.
Mark Bennett, your comment is completely correct and dazzlingly brilliant. I know this because I was planning to say just about the same thing in my next post on this subject.
The real Scott Greenfield wouldn’t have sued me. He would have tracked me down and beaten me to a pulp.
But I was unclear, for which I apologize. My point about the track record is true for criminal defense lawyers, since almost everything we do is in court and produces a record. On the other hand, for a guy like J.Daniel Hull, whom I have had the great fortune of meeting under circumstances where I learned that within his field, representing major corporations, he is one of the most respected lawyers in the country, he won’t have the same type of track record because of the different nature of his legal work. When I grow up, I want to be as well-regarded within my niche as Hull.
And as Bennett states, there is a huge divide between bloggers, who are there, day after day, to be read, considered, vetted, and/or disgraced, and commenters who can flit in and out without establishing any credibility or track record at all.
Re: “Ultimately, a person’s identity comes down to a collection of claims
about them”.
Huh? Really? I will pretend you are joking.
As an initial matter, thank you Mark Bennett, for the help. Stand-up guy you are–like my parents taught my brother and me to be when were growing up in Chicago.
Mark Draughn, I’m sure you’re a nice guy–and meant no harm. But internet posts (and comments) like your post–including the flippant attitude behind it–are exactly the kind of Net “discourse” that, if taken one very small degree further, can and does hurt the reputations and livelihoods of people who have worked hard to have good careers and reputations.
If you had done more homework, I bet that you would never had finished and published this one. I assume you (or your lawyers; anyone on the
Net in full-metal pundit-mode should get some) are too smart for all this–but you just couldn’t help yourself. You had to try to be profound. Dude, in this instance, it just didn’t work.
One fair thing in your post: you regularly give your identity so people can know who, where, what, etc. Thanks. And that’s very good. The irony here, however: disclosed identities are supposed to ensure responsibility and accuracy. You know, homework. Getting it right. In this case–even in a post about anonymity on the Net–it simply did not work:
First, as Mark Bennett implies, do read again all the WAC? posts on the no-anonymity subject my blog wrote about (a couple of authors–both real) and maybe more carefully. They were about responsibility and fairness. About protecting reputations. And giving anonymity to those who need and deserve it–i.e., those who cannot communicate safely any other way, and will not abuse anonymity.
If want to understand why “no wuss” zones are important–to me, at least, and a few others–check out the popular Above The Law blog any week day and read all the hate, racism, half-facts, bogus “opinions” and outright slander that goes on there every day by nameless commenters–many of them young lawyers–who think that shooting anonymously from the hip is cool and part of an American tradition in public discourse.
Second, if you are going pursue in a post an argument about “claims” of anyone’s identity, please do a better job with your research. For example, like many lawyers, I’ve been around a long time. Old guy. Boomer. Have had a non-commercial blog for 4 years–and it is about ideas my firm cares deeply about. (Corny, huh? Hey I’m from the Midwest.)
But I have been practicing law for 25 years. There is lots of information on me, and on many other lawyers, who do federal court work, have worked on Capitol Hill, work abroad, do lobbying, file FOIA requests, obtain/amend permits, comment or testify in regulatory hearings, speak to various groups, are interviewed by the press, raise money for candidates for office, etc. All these folks have “real-world” track records and credentials. The sources are official government sources, mainstream media (things by me but also about me), institutions of higher learning, state bars (4 in my case), case reporters, the Federal Register, case reporters, PTO and Library of Congress filings and many other sources other than our own blogs or websites. Like many of these other folks, I’ve been writing professionally since 1976, and in private practice since 1981. Re: actual humans, and real people, you can get a lot of information–though rarely all you need–through generic or third-tier research devices like Google and Yahoo. There, however, you need to really work at it.
No matter how you research something (i.e., someone’s existence), you don’t get to mail it in with regard to the info you are developing on other people, and their lives. Lots of them might in fact be real. You need to be fair.
The point isn’t me. It’s fairness and doing your homework. If you attack
someone, hurl innuendos at someone, or imply that someone is a “phantom” because they may have views or even a personality you just don’t like–even if you intend it as a very well-written, artful and Jonathan Swift-caliber joke–just do some work first. A lot of work. Tons of work. Mountains of work. Be really sure. Suggesting even in jest that a person does not exist–or that his or her identity is fleeting or ephemeral–is advanced subject matter, my friend. Maybe don’t try that one at home, you know? And maybe not with me. Wrong guy.
If you are going to take a swipe at someone, Mark, even a little one, and publish it, do some actual work first. That’s all I and most of us ask. Fair, balanced, and with context, At least put some facts together. Again, on and off the Net, some identities, careers and reputations are real, and often very hard-won. People work on them in good faith for years and years.
The Internet is live, and world-wide. You have all this power. Human reputations are fragile–and easily screwed with. Please be careful with them. The Internet is supposed to be enlightening and fun–but it comes with a few responsibilities.
I hope you and everyone who reads this takes this the right way. The neighborhood is clearly getting trashier, not better. And it’s not just you, Mark. Thanks.
Dan, your comment puzzles me. I think we have a misunderstanding. My intent was not to make a joke at your expense or accuse you of being some kind of internet fake. I’m sorry if my post came across that way. Rather, my point was that on the internet it’s a little hard to prove your identity, even for a prominent blogger such as yourself.
For example, your comment here is not authenticated in any way. Anybody in the world could have written it and left your name, email address, and web URL in the form. The Dan Hull who commented here proves very little about the Dan Hull who posts at What About Clients. (On the other hand, by entering the URL of http://www.whataboutclients.com/, the Dan Hull who commented here explicitly avows the content of What About Clients.)
I’ll probably have more to say about your comment in a post later, but I want to clear up one more thing. My use of the word “claim” wasn’t meant to imply you were being disingenuous. The word “claim” is a piece of jargon in the computer security world that I was (mis-)using by way of analogy. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that.
Basically, in the digital world, everything I know about other people (their identity) comes to me as pieces of information (claims) about them which I receive from a variety of sources. Some of the sources are more trustworthy than others, and the sources themselves require identification (more claims). It can be a complex task to assemble the claims into a coherent identity that can be relied upon.
Mark: Nothing should “puzzle” you because your writing, obviously, was not very clear. I think you could have gone about making your point differently or perhaps better. If there is a “misunderstanding”, the post needed to be better. It’s that simple. It didn’t come across well. Wasn’t clear. And now you can’t change it. No harm done, likely.
I know what point you were trying to make–not an easy one. But do other people know? It’s out there. People should not have to guess about what you are really saying. That was my point. Maybe take more time with your writing? I write serious posts slowly, and almost always just on Saturdays. Seems to work.
Moreover, I am hardly a creature of the “digital world” for you or anyone. Either is Bennett or Greenfield. We are not good examples of that at all. And, no, people won’t know “what you mean” if you try to use lawyers (with verifiable records of their work which you omit) in your examples. And lawyers when they write on the internet have built-in reasons not to lie about their identities or lie in their content; and people also have incentives not to impersonate lawyers,
We all need to be careful about what we say and insinuate–and especially if we are saying it about people your readers/my readers may know little or nothing about. How your post “comes across” once it is out there–even to one person–is very very important. You can’t change it. At the very least, if you flail around a lot with your words, you make enemies, and seem, to others, that neither the truth or the reputations of others is very important to you. All just to be cool and try to make a cute point that really does not come over very well. That’s some mighty expensive “trying to be cool”.
Thanks for the response–really appreciated. But you need not be puzzled. Just write better and clearer content perhaps?
Dan
So you understood what I was saying, but you think other people might not get it? Maybe my intent isn’t as clear as it could be, but it would be crazy to go about trying to write my blog so that no one ever misunderstands it.