John Gunyou: Three steps to a more civil discourse in cyberspace

Commentary

For all the egalitarian promise of the Internet as an open forum for public discourse, I'm finding it difficult to understand how the online social interchange now taking place helps advance the civic good.

Witness Charlie Sheen's recent public implosion, which gained him 1 million Twitter followers in 25 hours -- a world record.

Rather than inform the debate, most social networking seems a higher tech version of London's Hyde Park Speakers' Corner, where anyone with a penchant for exhibitionism and a good pair of lungs can hold forth, often within shouting distance of one another.

Version 2.0 for orators, hecklers and voyeurs.

In many ways, social media has become the anti-social media, with blogs, comment sections, tweets and texts more often channeling juvenile rants and taunts rather than a respectful exchange of ideas.

While schools are launching zero-tolerance policies against bullying, the cyberworld is tacitly encouraging this basest form of behavior in a civilized society.

1. Eliminate the anonymity.Except for the truly unbalanced, the sermons of street-corner preachers have always been tempered in part by the need to take off their bathrobes and appear in public. Not so the faceless avengers who prowl the new media 24/7 under their nom-de-Internet cloaks.

In the city I manage, we do not investigate anonymous complaints, with the sole exception of public-safety issues. Although we maintain the confidentiality of those who file a complaint, we do not think the public interest is well-served by a climate that fosters vindictive grudges among the disgruntled.

There's a reason letters to the editor always identify the name and city, and often associations, of the contributors. It's a lot harder to trash someone with half-truths and innuendo if you have to crawl out from under the rock and sign your commentary.

2. Separate commentaries into two categories.One would be a completely open forum for anyone to continue to say whatever they wanted, even without the benefit of spellchecking, and the other would be for those willing to document any shred of experience in the subject at hand. The commonweal would be better served by more fact-based opinions than by the current predominance of indiscriminate belief-sharing.

I blame the plague of reality shows for the now-common misconception that anyone and everyone deserves to be heard. In today's world of instant celebrities, we tend to deify the most entertaining voices -- often at the expense of those who have earned legitimacy through actual achievements.

In one episode of "The West Wing," the staff was livid that a retiring general planned to criticize his commander in chief. President Jed Bartlet admonished them that after a distinguished military career, the general had earned the right to say what he wanted.

After all, the insights from those who have actually been there, like an actual athlete or coach, just might be a little more germane than those of an armchair critic.

I'm not suggesting that the voices of so-called citizen journalists and wannabe pundits should be stifled by elitist editorial boards, simply that public forums provide for self-reported disclosures of competency. Posting credentials would at least allow readers the option of sorting though the uninformed chaff.

3. Have a wired-free day each month -- say, every first Wednesday.It's more than a little unsettling to ponder the future of social mores when you witness people texting each other while sitting at the same table.

When e-mail was still in its infancy, I once received a resignation message from an employee after a particularly frustrating day -- sent from his adjacent office.

I do not take lightly the dangers of withdrawal for those of us who would suffer the bends from such a rapid technological decompression, but we need to consider the greater good.

A dozen days of unwired discourse spread over the course of a year seems a reasonable sacrifice to remind us all about the benefits of human interaction.

So there it is, my modest three-part proposal for online civility. Unleash the dogs of social discourse, and let the commentary begin. But first, one confession -- I wrote this online, while in my bathrobe.