A letter to the editor has the writer’s name at the end or it doesn’t get printed.

It’s a rule that has stood the test of time at The Vicksburg Post, perhaps since 1883 when the newspaper was started, and for sure as long as I have been an employee.

It’s that way at most newspapers.

Why?

Because anonymity is a license for lies, speculation and, to put it mildly, incivility.

There’s abundant anonymity on the Internet. And it has taken humanity down a notch.

Thirty years ago CB radio was entering its moment of glory. Everybody had one.

After a year or two, the effect of people having “handles” instead of their real names spread throughout CB Land. Turn on your CB and all you’d hear was people cussing for the fun of it, and others cussing them out for cussing.

CB died an ignominious death.

Blogs and such are today’s CB radio.

Now the problem with making such a broad statement is there are always exceptions. In certain situations, anonymity can be a good thing.

It’s smart to use a made-up name, for instance, in a news or feature story about the victim of a crime or, say, a person who would lose his or her job for speaking out. When smaller newspapers do this, however, they tell readers the name is made up or that the source must remain anonymous. (As for larger newspapers, especially those reporting from Washington, D.C., the consistent use of anonymous sources is among many reasons their credibility has been declining.)

And it’s a misperception to say that editorials appearing in a newspaper are anonymous if the name of the writer isn’t provided. That’s not accurate. What is accurate is to recognize an editorial as a statement by the newspaper as an entity unto itself. A comparison would be an American flag flown outside a McDonald’s, Burger King or any other business. The employees didn’t get together and vote on whether to display a flag, but there’s no doubt the flag makes a statement on behalf of the company as a whole. Editorials work the same way.

There are people with good information, sound observations to make — but the “cost” of doing so is not worth the grief that may or may not follow. That’s a rationale some newspapers offer for using “name withheld” letters.

But there’s a risk associated with that. We’ve gotten letters, for example, filled with detailed information about misdeeds of people — sometimes misdeeds of people in public office. The anonymous providers of information might have a personal vendetta going. And they might be 100 percent accurate. Anonymous callers have generated solid stories. But to use their information without independent verification would be awfully risky.

This is also not a rant against technology or the Internet. There’s a lot of useful information and a lot of relevant material. The whole world of knowledge, really, is now at the fingertips of anyone with a computer, a keyboard and a Web connection. To read everything written about just one work of art, say the Mona Lisa, would take days and days.

But the aimless cussers are out there, too, reveling in their anonymity.

What gives information weight is the source. It’s one thing if a fortune cookie says you should see a heart specialist. It’s quite another when those words are spoken by your family physician.

Yet more and more, we seem to be disregarding how much it matters to know who is offering an opinion.

It’s widely assumed that people selling products or advertising their restaurants or inns on the Internet often post ravishing compliments about themselves and their services — anonymously of course — to make it appear they have lots of happy customers.

But more and more “news” organizations are not only seeking, but giving prominence to anonymous comments — calling it “feedback” — and reporting anonymous information on par with straight news. An example would be a TV station following up its report on a troubled politician with comments the politician “is a great leader and you should leave him alone.” Well, if the comment is anonymous, who’s to say it wasn’t the politician himself and his cronies who flooded the station’s Web site with similar “reaction.”

Anonymity and anonymous comments aren’t going away. They’ve been around a long, long time.

What is changing is that people are less likely to stop and think about differences between comments from known sources and unknown sources — and there is almost always a big difference in what people will say when they think no one will know their identify and what they will say if they know they might have to back it up.