Unlimited forum access has its drawbacks

Garrett Hardin's seminal essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” explains how an open forum like thegazette.com can be abused and debased. Imagine a common pasture available to a group of herdsmen. As long as social instability (war, famine, pestilence) constrains the numbers of men and cattle, the carrying capacity of the pasture will not be exceeded. Once the herdsmen and their cattle are no longer threatened, that stability destroys the commons. The “enlightened self-interest” lionized by Adam Smith will cause the herdsmen to exploit their shared resource. None of the herdsmen is responsible for maintaining the pasture, yet all derive benefit from grazing more cattle, meaning the pasture will be overgrazed.

Consider thegazette.com in this context. No one who posts has any obligation for maintaining the site. However, we all derive a benefit from almost unlimited access to this forum, and that access has led to abuses.

I strongly supported The Gazette when it abandoned pseudonymous commenting. That change led to an abuse: Some people have Googled my name, which led them to ratemyprofessor.com, a site they find almost as powerful (and magical and illusory) as Smith's invisible hand.

How degraded has discussion become? Many commenters here are ignorant of Iowa civil rights law; the commentary focused on the Des Moines woman who refused to do business with a lesbian couple displayed stunning, dismaying legal ignorance. The Gazette may need to use what Hardin called “coercion” by much more aggressively moderating the contents of our posts.

Jeff Klinzman

Coralville