Welcome to the BMG community. I am seeing newer names with strong one-candidate posts recently and expect that this may increase as the campaigns ramp-up. It is customary to disclose affiliations with a campaign or organization that one is promoting as well as disclose affiliations if one is posting in opposition to a candidate or position. Any disclosures forthcoming for newer posters?
I do not believe that disclosures are necessary when one is not officially working for a campaign or organization. In other words, if I am supporting a candidate including volunteering and contribute to the campaign, I don’t think a disclosure is needed. If one is compensated or channeling for the campaign, then a disclosure would be appreciated. Just my thoughts….
On BMG, we seem to see a lot of unofficial supporters of candidates who are rather intemperate in their style of support. So official supporters might well want to emphasize the campaigns they are representing if only to counter the bad taste some amateur might have left behind.
n/t
So I just posted Is Anybody watching what’s going on with Dem Convention delegates? I certainly disclosed my partisan preference for Kayyem. I use my own name in full—- I’m not employed by the campaign. So does this fit the standards most folks like to see? I am reflecting a point of view shared by lots of folks— that the polling and the constant repetition of how well Coakley is doing doesn’t make sense to us when we talk to our friends, neighbors, and like minded Dems and hear what they think.
We’re mostly concerned about paid operatives, I think.
If people can’t get themselves to sign posts and comments with their real name, maybe they should not post in the first place.
If that’s your real name …
He had to resign as the CEO of Mozilla b/c he donated $1000 supporting traditional marriage in 2008. His belief mirrored that of then candidate Obama, but let that go. When it became public of his belief on marriage and donation supporting the CA ballot question, he was forced out due to public uproar. Bill Maher said it best, “there is a gay mafia and you will be whacked”.
So I don’t see conservative/libertarian people using their real names when posting. Imagine if I owned a store and word got out I supported Keystone XL or questioned man-made global warming, boycotts galore from the extremists, harassment if you will.
What really bothers me is nobody, nada, zilch, wrote about what happened to Mr. Eich on BMG. I teach my kids, when you see an injustice and you do or say nothing, you are complicit in what is going on. Unless I missed it, nobody on BMG spoke up at this injustice. Great job everyone, we best remain anonymous…..
I think it’s telling that you think a CEO’s dismissal, at the hands of his company’s Board of Directors, is “injustice.”
I suppose it’s also injustice that the current CEO of GM makes half what the last one did? As if her absurd salary is unjust in light of his even-more-absurd salary?
His views did *not* match Obama’s. That is clearly a lie. Par for the course for Dan. Obama never gave money for or actively campaigned against marriage equality. Furthermore, it seems pretty clear in retrospect that Obama never really was against marriage equality in the first place.
I don’t find it at all bothersome that a leader is asked to step down when his personal views are so clearly at odds with the public policy and image of the company. You can’t lead a company if your employees and board of directors don’t respect you. You can’t be an effective leader if you have publicly made a statement that you think that your gay employees don’t deserve the same rights as yourself; not in an industry that embraces tolerance. Like it or not his continued presence would have harmed the company.
Finally, Eich is a rich man. None of us needs to lose any sleep over his losing his job. If you want to whine about someone getting fired unfairly, why don’t you focus on people who actually need their jobs to pay their bills.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=nnU_CegVDPw
The use of a pseudonym is different from “anonymous”. This topic has been discussed here many times. The experience of sites that have attempted this has not been a success.
By the standard you suggest, we would not have Caravaggio, El Greco, Picasso, Raphael, Tintoretto, Titian, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Voltaire, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, George Eliot, and a great many others.
Some of us know just how easy it is to connect a “real name” with a whole LOT of other information available online — and just how devastating the consequences can be. I’ll resist the temptation to share with BMG the very long list of details I just obtained about “Andrei Radulescubanu” — bearing in mind that there are several people who share this name. Some of us know that unless BMG were to adopt truly draconian authentication standards, the “real names” that result are no more “real” than the pseudonyms we already have.
Not all of us have careers that even attempt to assure job security. Like it or not, the frank, candid, and passionate exchanges that make BMG unique are sadly not always appreciated or even tolerated by some outside our community. Some of us have children, spouses, siblings, and family members who might be endangered.
The current policy is working just fine. If you are uncomfortable with the culture here — a culture that predates your arrival by a very long time — maybe YOU should not post in the first place.
Politics is about power, and unlike many other message boards, a political blog needs some anonymity. Our most well-known pseudonymous poster has absolutely ruffled some feathers over the years, and that is a good thing.
Two words: Google searches. I don’t necessarily want BMG coming up when a potential employer is looking to hire me. You should be extremely careful with where you use your real name on the internet: NOTHING can be deleted EVER.
Andrei, we know each other real life. To clue you into my identity, I was the student representative to the School Committee in Lexington 2 years ago.
I served in that capacity in Cambridge and was just regalling my fiancee with tales of my fight’s with Superintendent Fowler-Finn during my tenure there. It’s a great way to learn about government, and I will always be grateful for Glenn Koocher teaching us Roberts Rules and also how to be brave public advocates.
I think a more important disclosure is disclosing which campaigns you are working on, and I would say that includes paid or as a volunteer.
For instance, I wrote a single post endorsing Lake and I’ve said repeatedly I am backing Tolman, but I don’t feel the need to disclose I am volunteering for either campaign since I am not. Beyond what I say on BMG I am not doing anything for either candidate.
For Guardia I felt the need to disclose since I specifically reached out to Fred and Anthony offline and got the campaigns permission to post on their behalf, and also to help them out offline as well as much as I could from Chicago. So to me it was a sufficiently higher level of involvement that it merited a disclosure. I think Kate views her volunteering for Coakley in a similar vein and discloses that upfront in all her Coakley posts. I also appreciate that Lewis’ supporters did likewise during that particular primary.
I believe Christopher is a delegate and he has disclosed his Grossman allegiance repeatedly. And I think we always see a spate of new posters who seem to exclusively post against certain candidates or for other candidates. We had a Spilka worker exclusively bash Brownsberger throughout the CD-5 race and we haven’t heard from him since, we also have methuenprogressive who has been a longtime poster but also seems to be focusing exclusively on Coakley defense and attacking her opponents. New names came out of the woodwork on the Healey casino thread.
I initially regretted using my actual last name in my handle, and I do know several people here offline, and as someone actively seeking a policy job in Massachusetts it might not be the best thing to semi-publicly bash politicians I dislike, but frankly I’d rather not work for Bill Galvin, Coakley, or any of the MA Republicans anyway. Not sure who else I really offend these days.
…though I am further identified a bit in my profile, plus like you I know who some are offline. I don’t think I’ve said anything here I could not or would not defend if I had to, and this from someone who may seek election some day.
I think that having at least a handful of other regulars knowing who we are keeps us honest (at least it does with me). When I decided to start posting after reading BMG for quite a while, I chose a pseudonym only because it followed what most of the other folks here were doing (“observe and follow custom” is my normal procedure when joining an online group). I doubt that revealing my full name would make me operate any differently, and, besides, the reaction of most of you would be, “Who?” 🙂