hunterbishop.com

One of this blog's regular anonymous contributors, "nativeroots," has noted that someone else has posted comments using his or her pseudonym.

A thoughtful and regular contributor to this site, nativeroots was way too nice about it in a disclaimer to the misattributed comments, which is a credit to his or her character (I don't know who any of the anonymous contributors are on this blog and have made no effort to find out). But I think nativeroots should be as outraged as I am about getting his or her persona ripped off on this blog.

Stealing another's online identification to make comments in that person's name is an affront to decency and maybe even illegal, and  it will stop. It's one thing for some writers to take advantage of anonymity to be obnoxious or offensive. I can live with some of that, though barely, and I can understand some people's desire to remain anonymous for a variety of reasons. I also can work with that. But assigning comments to someone else's name is not only deceitful, it is fraudulent, unethical and immoral, and a step way beyond putting objectional stuff over your own name or even your own pseudonym. It severely degrades the overall level of discourse for everyone. It is reprehensible and despicable, amounting to no less than an abuse of the freedoms guaranteed to citizens in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

Whoever would stoop to this kind of behavior should be thoroughly shamed, and I would ask that they do the honorable thing and stop posting under another's name now on my request. That way we keep the dialog as open and maintenance-free as possible, allowing for more discussion. It will be unfortunate if the only way to stop this is for me to play moderator with the comments, but I will if I must. I suppose there's a way I can cybersleuth the miscreants, find out who they are and confront them directly, but that's not the way I want to spend my time.

So if it happens again to anyone, please let me know because everyone involved suffers as a result. There are ways to keep these discussions going on the up-and-up while policing the abusers but it will just involve more of my time and vigilance, which I suppose is the going rate for insuring honesty and freedom, and I will definitely make that investment if necessary.