Okay, so after years of nobody seeming to ever want to comment ever people are commenting. Anonymous comments have been allowed but in light of the recent events connected to Mars Hill in the last year or so the time for anonymous comments might as well be over. When I see people making anonymous comments about specific former staff it gets to a point where you better be willing to sign your real name to a comment if you're going to comment at all.
Furthermore, in the wake of Dave Kraft, Kyle Firstenberg, and Jeff Bettger being willing to say anything on the record; in the wake of Joyful Exiles and considering the pitch of controversy surrounding Mark Driscoll's books and plagiarism, please don't make a comment here unless you're willing to go on record. I commend these men for being willing to say things on record because this has been what I've been blogging toward and hoping would happen. This blog is not a watchblog but to the extent that it is its aim is to write carefully enough about the history of Mars Hill that it in some fashion can urge people to speak up on record.
Of course people may still want to make comments here using pen names and so on. If you do make a comment in any fashion you have to be willing to be responsible for it. Now if you've by chance signed a non-disclosure agreement you may want to consider that you shouldn't even be commenting, most likely, at Wenatchee The Hatchet to begin with, right?
Now about the posts themselves, if a name comes up, your name, for instance, potential random reader, it got up there because at one point you publicly associated with Mars Hill. Date and time indications of when a name appeared at Wenatchee the Hatchet will show up in the body of a post where a name has been previously mentioned. If a name appears then generally a direct link to something that named person put up themselves is going to also show up the date of the post. And, yes, in case you're wondering, stuff gets archived so even if you took down a bunch of stuff there's no certainty Wenatchee The Hatchet can't produce a pile of what you thought you'd scrubbed forever. Wenatchee The Hatchet appreciates that people who have left Mars Hill would love to scrub every possible trace of their association with Mars Hill off the internet. And as we've seen in a number of case studies here at Wenatchee The Hatchet Mars Hill Church is happy to take the same approach.
Which is why years of anonymous comments amount to nothing. Two comments from Jeff B. under his name mean more than a mountain of anonymous comments. Not that comments haven't been appreciated but anonymity is no longer a protection. Consider what the MH PR campaign to deal with Janet Mefferds plagiarism allegations included. Mars Hill said that the Trial study guide was assembled by a team that included a research assistant. That could only have meant Justin Holcomb and when people realized that this looked like Mars Hill Church was passive aggressively trying to shift blame from Mark Driscoll to his research assistants it looks like Mars Hill Church scrubbed away any evidence of Mark Driscoll touting Justin Holcomb, Crystal Griffin and Brad House as names of people who helped assemble the study guide. Why Mars Hill Church decided to talk about how Pastor Mark worked on the book with help when Mefferd presented a case for plagiarism is unclear. Dr. James Duncan has blogged about how the plagiarism in the study guide played out.
All that to say, even if you keep your head down and decide to not say anything in public at all there is no certainty that Mars Hill Church might not end up saying something that effectively retroactively throws you under the bus over something that Mars Hill Church or Mark Driscoll may be facing in current controversy.
So, dear reader, where the subject of Mars Hill Church is concerned were probably well past the point of anonymous comments.
If you want to make anonymous comments about chamber music or cartoons or Batman, well, that'd be awesome under normal circumstances but for the time being anonymous comments are disabled.
So, to sum up comments policy at this point.
1) anonymous comments are currently not allowed
2) if you make a comment on the subject of Mars Hill be willing to say something on record with your actual name or don't bother
3) If, however, you do make a comment expect it to stay up exactly as is from this point unless
4) you actually signed a non-disclosure agreement at some point during employment with Mars Hill and your passion go the better of you and you kind of wish you hadn't commented.
Mercy on point 4 has been the behind-the-scenes policy here. But if you want to contact Wenatchee The Hatchet about point 4 you absolutely have to be willing to use your real name to request a removed comment. You have to consider before you post a comment how willing you would be to have your comment forever attached to your real name even if you're trying to post anonymously.
To sum up names in post policy at this point
1) if a name shows up in a blog post it stays there
2) MH changes so much content so quickly that when a name is documented it has to stay up for journalistic and documentary purposes.
3) If a name has shown up at this blog in association with Mars Hill Church it is because of a conspicuous self-identified or leader-identified public association and don't expect the name to disappear from this blog
4) However, per 4 of the comment policy, in exceptional cases where a career is definitely going to be jeapordized requests made by a person in their real name will get considered.
So those are the policies in place for the time being.
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