We quietly unveiled a change Thursday afternoon in how people can comment about stories on www.dailybulletin.com. You now have to have a Facebook account. This means most people will be using their real name, rather than spewing racist and scurrilous comments under a pseudonym. Read the FAQ about the change here.

Besides cleaning up what one wag dubbed “the devil’s chalkboard,” this will be good for our online traffic, as the previous commenting system was under the control of an outside vendor and none of the visits counted as page views for us. But clearly not everyone is going to be happy, and not just scurrilous racists. Not everyone is part of Facebook or, even if they are, wants to have to use Facebook to comment.

Meg at M-M-M-My Pomona has already made a strong argument against the system for reasons of open access.

You can send an e-mail to online (at) inlandnewspapers.com to praise or pan the change. Or you can comment here. I’ll leave this post up top of my blog through Monday for visibility.

What do you think of the change?

* Gary Scott’s media blog has also rounded up opinion on the change.