To be anonymous, or not to be...

That is the question. I'm having a little internal struggle with myself over allowing anonymous comments on this blog. On the one hand, this is an "official" blog, school sponsored, in an environment where we all identify ourselves. We do this for the right reasons. By using our names, we have the courage of our convictions, we are standing behind what we say. On the other hand, I don't want to stifle dialogue. I'd like to remove barriers that might make it difficult to talk about sensitive content in books. Most of all, I hate the idea of forcing people to register with blogger.com just so they can make comments on this blog. I can avoid that by installing local blogging software, so people would only be registering locally. But I'm not sure I'm ready for the technology overhead that involves.

So what I'd like to try is to ask people who aren't registered with blogger.com to comment using the anonymous posting utility that's available, but to include your name at the bottom of your comment. Not your full name, but a name that identifies you to this community. And we'll see how it goes.

P.S. I can delete offensive comments, I know. But look what happened when I deleted the FIVE extra identical comments on the cockroach posting. It looks like I'm the Mad Censor of the Universe.