The Next Phase of Commenting at CBC

In March, the CBC announced itwould phase out the use of pseudonyms in comments on our various websitesacross English and French services. As we noted at the time, we have beenactively reviewing our commenting policies and audience engagement strategiesfor many months. 

While the vast majority ofcomments submitted to our site fall within our guidelines, we want to do moreto elevate and promote civil conversation.

Since then, we have made somesignificant changes: we brought back the 'down-vote' to give our onlinecommunity more say on the comments they read, and have added email verificationto all new accounts.

There's another important changecoming June 13th: we will reset our online communities across CBC.ca, includingthe CBC News site. Moving forward, all community members will beasked to use real names when commenting on our pages.

What's more, all members who usean email address to sign into our platform will be asked to re-register andcreate a new account. Community members who sign into our site using Facebookor Google+ will not be required to create a new account, but we will no longerpublish comments from anyone using an obvious pseudonym, regardless of howpeople sign in.

We have a comprehensive Q & Aon the real names policy posted here.

As the public broadcaster, CBC hasa distinct role to play in surfacing and nurturing Canada's conversations. Muchof the conversation has shifted in recent years to the digital space, includingsocial media and CBCNews.ca, where we see several thousand visitors a daylogging in to comment. 

At a time when others are shuttingdown comments or struggling to maintain civility in their digital forums, westill believe it's possible to promote a respectful exchange of ideas.

We are not stopping here, either.We will soon introduce new functionality that allows people to 'mute' trolls.

We will continue to invest inevolving our community, our relationship with our online audiences, and theirconnection with each other.

We have heard from many of youalready about the new policy: some of you see the benefits, others have dwelledon the potential drawbacks. We're aware of them all, and we welcomeconstructive thoughts, ideas and feedback in the comments section below

Jennifer McGuire