A London reader calls my attention to a recent article in the September 22 Times Higher Education Supplement (subscription access only, I'm afraid)
"If you want a quiet life, don't talk online about the Middle East," says Jon Pike [a philosopher at the Open University], chairman of the editorial board of Engage, a web-based journal set up in response to the Association of University Teachers' decision to institute an academic and cultural boycott of Israel but now a much broader political website and journal.
Pike, a lecturer in political philosophy at the Open University, has been repeatedly abused for his views published online in Engage and on the Guardian Unlimited website. He once received a letter calling him "a Zionist Nazi".
"In many ways, the web is an appalling forum for debate, particularly blogs, as they tend to foreground anonymous commentators. The anonymity means people are abusive, there are accusations of bad faith and a tendency for nasty rhetoric...."
[O]nline sites such as the Leiter Reports and Crooked Timber - run by professional American philosophers - get around the problem of "nasty rhetoric" by refusing to post anonymous comments....
I'm not sure who "runs" Crooked Timber, but it includes British as well as American philosophers, as well as an Australian economist, an Irish sociologist etc.
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