The first person to send me a note about this change — a powerful man with an expense account that is rumored to be limitless — simply said, “Amen.” The second note I got, from a newsprint-loving FrontBurnervian, said:
I won’t give up on FB, but Wick’s edict, I’m afraid, will make the conversation here less interesting for me. I think what Wick is saying is that I’m not smart enough to discern the difference between an intelligent or idiotic comment. I give the FB Nation more credit than that.
By the way, you took a kick to the crotch yesterday with your public relations post. A lot of the comments were sophomoric and stupid, but I still enjoyed reading them.
Me, I’m ambivalent. I agree with Wick: too often the comments were noise. But every so often, someone would offer something that made me laugh or made me think. If we lose those fruitful contributions because people will only make them anonymously, then I’ll be sad. But I hope we won’t. As evidenced by the comment I’ve included above, smart people don’t mind sending e-mail to editors using their real names.
Only problem now is, of course, I’m not exactly suffering from a deficit of e-mail.