Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Mumbrella and anonymous comments

I decided to write this post after seeing the comments being made about a story on the popular marketing news site Mumbrella about the new head of digital at GPY&R.

Firstly about Mumbrella. I am very impressed with how Tim and his production team consistently deliver a high quality product daily (if not hourly). It's an excellent case study in how to build an active audience in the commercial digital space from scratch.

Now back to the appointment story. While some comments were positive and genuine well-wishers, there were numerous comments from the marketing industry that could be at best described as unprofessional. Almost all of these were anonymously posted.

In my professional view, any comments made on any social media site, forum, news site etc. should contain at least the person's correct name and additionally a link to either the organisation they work for, or a site that contains some topline profile information about them.

Those who actually think they are anonymous should pay heed to the times that Tim calls out a commenter on their IP address. They should also realise that posting a bitchy remark does nothing for themselves and adds little depth to the Mumbrella community. Which brings me to my question - should Mumbrella ban anonymous comments?

I, for one think Tim should. And I think Tip from GPY&R might agree with me.