Hal, yeah, every time I talk about things like this, I think back to how much fun that time was.

I do use Facebook, but have very few “friends” on there… almost none of them big comic book fans in general.

Jer, you’re right. Letter columns are a sales venue for issues and titles. They’re curated to create a particular perception. They were never an open venue.

Bleedingcool still runs forums. I expect they fall under your “insufficiently moderated” category.

@Augie: Realname enforcement is one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but is completely worthless in real life. It just means that anonymous trolls call themselves John Smith instead of dcrules87, while creating headaches for people who actually have a good reason to post pseudonymously. I use my real name, but I’m a straight, middle-class American white boy; about the only way I could be a bigger poster-child for privilege would be if I were Christian and just a little more middle-of-the-road politically. (The most serious repercussions I’ve ever had for posting things on the Internet under my real name: somebody once asked me in a job interview about a post I made about DRM on the FTC website, and a few years ago I picked up an Internet stalker who, after I banned him from my messageboard, checked whois for my address and posted Google Earth photos of it. Luckily I registered my website under my hosting company’s address, but it was still pretty creepy.)

A few good posts on the Nymwars:

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html , “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power, by danah boyd (no relation)

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ , Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, by Patrick McKenzie

http://gewalker.blogspot.com/2011/08/firsthand-examination-of-google-profile.html — A Firsthand Examination of the Google+ Profile Reporting Process, by Gary Walker — this one REALLY takes a wrecking ball to the idea that realname policies have any teeth; among other things, he “proves his identity” to Google+’s admins by Photoshopping a picture of Tucson shooter Jared Loughner onto the McLovin ID from Superbad.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/why-im-not-on-google-plus.html — Why I’m not on Google Plus, by Charlie Stross. References the above links pretty extensively but still worth reading for his additional comments.

In short: yes, forcing people to post under their real names might, hypothetically, make them behave better. But it’s a moot point since you can’t actually DO that. The best you can do is force people to post under things that sound, to some random wage-slave in a cubicle somewhere, like they are real names. Which is a lot less of a deterrant to a troll than to, well, here’s one more link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/04/AR2009030404159.html — Offbeat Name? Then Facebook’s No Friend, by Monica Hesse.

Augie, didn’t the Comics Journal message boards try that real-name posting thing?

Letter columns aren’t about receiving input from fans. Letter columns are about building an illusion of community among the fans. When the editors of the books are fans as well, they’re part of the fan community (as happened with some of the “best” letter columns starting roughly in the 1970s), but they definitely are NOT about the corporation receiving input directly from fans.

If it were about receiving feedback from customers, they wouldn’t be public. You don’t see McDonald’s posting all of their correspondence from their customers on the web. You can still send a letter to DC comics, and it will receive the same consideration any other letter they have ever gotten will receive. They just are no longer holding a public forum for their readers and fans to talk to each other.

On the other hand, integrated Twitter feeds provide the exact opposite — anonymous flame baiting.

I guess mbs are going sort of the same way chat rooms have gone. In a way it is a shame as without the DC chats & mbs on AOL way back when. I’d never have gotten exposed to the online Comics community.

Having been someone who hadnt had a lot of comic retading friends, those were a wonderful thing to discover way back when These days you of have to work harder to find that.

Guess different from Marvel, which still has (or brought back) letter columns (at least in the Spider-Man book I’m reading)?