News sites reining in nasty user comments

By Stephanie Goldberg
CNN.com
User comments on news sites, while vital to interactive storytelling in the digital age, often read like scribblings on a bathroom stall: anonymous, offensive and full of hate.
“I hate what you people, and by that I mean the blacks, are doing to this city,” wrote one Buffalo News reader last month in response to a story about a local shooting. “Each area you move too [sic] quickly becomes over run [sic] with crime, loud music [at] all hours, adults swearing and screaming at kids, children playing in the street, porches with beer and garbage thrown all around.”
Rants like this one prompted the Buffalo, New York, newspaper to discontinue anonymous user comments on its website as of August 2. Commenters will be required to register with their name, city of residence and phone number — more information that most news sites require — and staffers will attempt to verify their identities.
“It is the ability to remain anonymous that encourages people to say whatever they want [online] … when people are required to give their names, our thinking is that they’ll think twice,” said news editor Margaret Sullivan, who added that vetting commenters will be a “challenging” task. “There might be people who slip through the cracks.”
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