How could SEIU's Unite to Win blog be improved?

Last November, SEIU launched the "Unite to Win" web site featuring a blog by its President, Andy Stern, making them the first American international union to dialogue with the public on the Internet. Stern's decision to start a blog was a great public relations strategy for his cause and it demonstrates that he has a much better grasp of the Internet's communicative powers than most other union leaders. However, SEIU's technical implementation and the administrative policies (or lack thereof) that govern the blog have problems that should be addressed if it is to become a model for other unions to follow.

First, there is the problem of anonymity. The vast majority of the comments on Stern's blog come from anonymous individuals. As Communicate or Die member Bill Bumpus points out, the anonymous comments "make the discussions difficult to follow, and the credibility of their authors hard to judge." It also leads to crank comments and uncivil behavior. See the first two comments of this thread for a good example. Requiring users to log in would go a long way to lifting the quality of debate and weeding out trolls.

Requiring users to log in would also make it more likely that their comment moderation system would see use. For those unfamiliar with comment moderation, it is a feature that allows users to vote, or "mod up," the posts they like and "mod down" those they don't. Giving users the power to give a thumbs up or down helps other users find the more insightful comments. On the UtW blog, comment moderation gives you the interesting ability to see who voted for which posts. Unfortunately, the UtW blog's particular comment moderation system is somewhat limited. You can assign a score to a post on a scale of 1 to 5. They score you give a post gets added to the scores other users assigned. Theoretically, larger scores mean "great post" and scores with zero points mean it's a troll. The problem, however, is that when everyone gets to vote an unlimited number of times (which appears to be the case), votes lose their meaning. If one posts has a score of 30 and another has a score of 25, what does that really tell you? Not much. I guess it is better than nothing. For a superior implementation of a comment moderation system, see Slashdot.org

SEIU could also make the blog more interesting and credible by having Stern post replies to some of the comments. Currently, Stern's entries are thown out like chum upon which the commentors feed upon. What's the point? Where's the ongoing dialogue? Granted Stern doesn't have all day to sit and respond to each and every comment. However, if he spent a little time answering some of the more challenging and thought-provoking comments (yes, I have seen some on UtW blog), the blog would become a much more interesting place to visit and a more useful resource. The danger, of course, is that everyone will be expecting and demanding an answer to their questions. But that's nothing good handling my a Stern staffer couldn't take care of.

My final suggestion is to have someone from SEIU monitor some of the posts for quality. For example, I see posts that are nothing more than reprints of 5,000 word articles from other publications. Here's one of the worst offenses I've seen recently. Also, blatant trolls should be removed. What is the purpose of keeping a post like this around? All a comment like that does is discourage thoughtful debate. Most individuals who want to engage in serious dialogue and offer credible ideas aren't going to do it on a blog that allows such boorish behavior. SEIU needs to lay some basic groundrules for acceptable behavior and post quality and delete those that don't comply.

What do you think? Do you like the free-for-all nature of the SEIU blog or would you prefer to see the quality of debate and discussion there improved? How do you think it could be done?