Until last year, this odd negative/neon image was the only public image you could find of me on the web. In fact currently, many of my online sites still have this image. I like the photo, people who know me recognize me in it, and it was taken on a hot air balloon trip with my wife, so it has fond memories attached. But I decided that since I have been very public with my thoughts and ideas, (as seen on this blog), I would share a bit more of who I am, while on the web. Slowly but surely I have been putting photos on the web with a greater likeness to me. Now I wonder if I should go back to this image? I wonder if I should make my family photos private again? Also, I am keenly aware that at some point in the future I may need to moderate comments on this blog, and I find that sad.

Today I read a horribly upsetting Kathy Sierra post on the Creating Passionate Users blog. Kathy has been the victim of some anonymous, vulgar, sexist vandals... that have gone so far as to issue death threats. I am not linking to the actual post since, although I truly empathize with how difficult this has been for her, I don't like the approach of the post. Kathy shares, in detail, all of the words, images and internet pseudonyms of the people that have put her in considerable distress. Personally, I think that gives the vandals too much credit/recognition that they certainly don't deserve (I said this in one of the 1,000+ comments currently on this post).

This comes after reading Kelly Christopherson's post Masked Commentors just over a week ago. As he states about the first comment on his school blog, "it wasn’t necessarily positive and it used a bit of profanity... I know that even these comments have nuggets that I need to mine and use to become a better leader and person."

I must admit to having difficulty seeing the nuggets sometimes. Instead, I see the miner covered in soot.

I got hit with this kind of abuse a couple years ago. I have a website that I go to for drawing faces in art. I used to sign my work with a pseudonym rather than my real name when I saved portraits that I created into the public gallery, (I expected the same from my students). I would use these saved images in the following years as examples of what students could do. Two years ago when I did a search for my pseudonym in the gallery there were derogatory sketches and comments that came up in the search that were directly aimed at 'Mr. Truss'.

Neither of these last two situations compare with the anguish that Kathy is experiencing... in fact she may very well depart from the blogosphere as a result of this... (which would be horrible, and I am saddened by the potential loss). However, these situations do make me think of the potential perils of teachers and administrators having a public face on the internet. It only takes one malicious person to be hurtful, one 'bad apple' to spoil the pie.

This is fairly easy to do with an angry person... simply choose not to engage in their dirty approach.

However these kind of hurtful, hateful on-line vandals bring the mud to the fight. They hurl it at you and get you dirty whether or not you choose to engage. Combating this is not easy: It takes courage, it takes thick skin, it takes effort to choose a moral stance; to avoid slinging mud. As a result, it leaves me wondering... How do you stop these malicious people from getting the best of you? Beyond not giving the offenders any credit or notoriety, and beyond 'turning the other cheek', what else can be done?

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Anti-Cyberbullying Day - Friday, March 30th, 2007