If people haven't noticed, when the identity of a commenter is unknown to readers, I've started putting their names inside quotes to make it clear that readers don't actually know who they are. (This is not true of names like "Fr. Bill" and "Kamilla" for obvious reasons.)
I'm not doing this to be obnoxious, but to make a point of the anonymity of most of what goes down on the web.
This is not to say anonymity is not sometimes required. We had a case recently where someone identified with Baylyblog was threatened with termination at his annual evaluation because his identity could be traced to this blog. Please pray for our brother's protection. Still, we are convinced we should each do our best not to try to avoid shame over our idenitification with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
One further matter: we have men who consistently lie about their identities, and almost always they are the ones whose comments are viciously personal and lie about God and His Word...
Yesterday, for instance, one such comment was made by a man using a false name. Almost certainly this is a man well-known to David and me who has for years been banned from Baylyblog for his many deceptions on the web. Seeing his location (using his IP address to do so), I wrote and asked him to identify himself. Of course he didn't do so but instead accused us of deleting his comment because he disagreed with us.
I wrote back and said we'd post his comment if he would identify himself. We had not deleted, but unpublished it. We don't remove comments because they disagree with us. We remove comments and certain commenters' commenting privileges to keep Baylyblog a safe house for truth.
It's worth noting such lying commenters often have R2K content in their comments.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
Want to get in touch? Send Tim an email!
