[Web4lib] Academic libs - allowing anonymous comments on your site?

[Walt Crawford]

My guess--and it's a guess based on the only body of actual research that I
know of--is that you don't need to worry about floods of comments, at least
not if you have antispam tools installed. If you're moderating, then unless
there are philosophical reasons to prevent anonymous comments, there's no
practical reason to do so.

The "chances are you're not going to have loads of comments" assertion is
particularly true for academic libraries--but even in public libraries,
unless gaming is involved, heavy commenting is the exception, not the rule.
(For any definition of "heavy" down to and including one comment per post.)

-walt crawford-

On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 8:51 AM, Brian Gray <mindspiral at gmail.com> wrote:

> I do not think it is the librarians that a thin skinned. Many are worried
> that it is their patrons that are thin skinned. At least that is my
> perception of the hang up.
>
> Brian Gray
> mindspiral at gmail.com
> bcg8 at case.edu
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 11:35 AM, C Ward Price <cprice55 at ivytech.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > I totally agree with Chester's comment.  As far as language goes, if
> > someone thinks your library all &*#%@^ up, that's how you can display it.
> >  You won't be the one who looks bad.  Based on our experience with online
> > reference (chat, email, etc.), my guess is you won't get as many comments
> as
> > you're expecting, and most of them will be positive.
> >
> > I can't understand why librarians are afraid of public comments these
> days.
> >  I can only think that they are extremely thin-skinned, or are afraid
> > (rightly so?) that they have something to hide.
> >
> > Ward Price, Librarian
> > Ivy Tech Community College, Northeast
> > 3800 N. Anthony Blvd
> > Fort Wayne IN 46805
> > (260) 480-2033
> > cprice55 at ivytech.edu
> >
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