Anonymous: What's your thoughts?
 

So I know some people use the anonymous poster feature, some don't.

Why would you use it? Why wouldn't you?

Under the guise of Anonymity

myself, I've started a few topics anonymously fearing retribution or prejudice based on my previous posts on a subject to try and keep the thread completely sterile and free of the taint of previous topics of that nature with my mark on it.

I've started a few out of personal embarrassment, avoiding a friend or family member possibly realizing who it was if they came across it under my name.

I've started a few for no other reason than... well, why not?

I've seen some people turn their nose up at the concept of Anonymous posts, feeling it tears away at the thread of community, but I find it enables people to post topics that they wouldn't have otherwise, thus bringing even more to the menu than before.


I for one, approve.

The anonymous poster function exists to allow people to make posts that they might not otherwise feel comfortable making. In that role, it serves a purpose.

Whether or not a thread or post is worthy of being posted anonymously is something that can and should only be decided by the poster. Comfort levels vary.

I'm going to try hard to leave this topic alone lol.

post it anonymously!

lmfao!!!

Dammit! Why didn't I think of that???

if the option is there, all members have the option of clicking the anon post option if they so wish.

I haven't used the anonymous function. I have nothing to hide from TFP. In fact, the point of this place for me is I DON'T have to hide anything about myself here.

I'm an open book everywhere, much to my mother's chagrin :) I can see it would be useful for someone else, but not for me

I don't, and probably wouldn't, use it. The only reason being is that my bf is also on here and knows my typing style, wording, and I pretty much tell him everything anyway. No point in me using it. I'm not against it being available to use though.

In reading what I said above, I realized that part of my thought process might be a bit unclear. I will therefore elaborate.

TFP is a discussion forum. We all gather here to share ideas and thoughts. If there's nothing to discuss, the community is effectively dead.

Anonymous posting allows members to bring up topics that, for various reasons, they may be uncomfortable having tied to their username. It might be out of embarrassment or it could be to avoid stigma or preconceptions. Regardless, it gives members freedom to share thoughts, ideas or problems that they might not otherwise be able to.

Some members seem to think that anonymous posting detracts from the community. I think it's a bit alarmist to jump to that conclusion, but I can see their point; if the feature is abused, it will lessen the overall TFP community. If you want an example of what a fully anonymized forum looks like, /b/ is a good place to start.

However, there is a key point being missed there. The anonymous function was implemented by the forum staff, and continues to be available so long as they choose to make it so. Furthermore, certain members of the forum staff (may be all of them, or just admins -- I'm not certain) are quickly and easily able to determine who is actually making the anonymous posts. They generally choose not to do so as long as the feature is used as intended, but if it's abused for trolling or other nefarious purposes, it will not protect you.

As of right now, the anonymous posting feature enriches the community, by giving us a wider variety of topics to discuss. This includes some of the more risque topics, but the feature isn't tied exclusively to that. If it's abused to the point where it instead detracts from the community, it'll be removed.

I don't know that I've ever posted anonymously, aside from when we were testing it out. My dull and verbose writing style would most likely give me away regardless. Even still, I like knowing that I have the option available to me, if ever there's something I'm not comfortable sharing in my usual way.

Sue??? Is that YOU????

Riiiiiight. Some people.

I don't mind anonymous posting in Sexuality, but anywhere else it deepens the anonymity factor on an already anonymous medium to an absurd degree. I find it hard to reply to anonymous topics due to that.

There it is. lol

I've been a part of other forums' staff before. Staff members talk. They have their own forum so they can communicate with one another. For this reason, I feel the anonymous option is pointless. I would never feel completely protected.

I am NOT, by any means, claiming TFP staff does this. I have no idea what happens behind closed doors (forums,) nor is it my business. But my personal decision is to post what I want to say, feeling 'wooÐs' is anonymous enough, or don't post it at all.

---------- Post added at 02:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:42 PM ----------

Staff: plz don't hate me any more than you already do ty. Martian said it first!

For the record: only admins have the ability to remove someone's anonymity when they use this feature. It is not "quick" or "easy" (at least compared to many of the other features on the admin panel), but it can be done. It's also something that the four of us that are active in the board at large take very seriously and something that we don't really mess with unless we have to. I've looked a total of 3 times, once where something illegal was alleged, once where a pretty important rule was allegedly being broken and once when I was asked to fix a post and had to confirm that the person making the request was the anonymous poster. I have a fairly good idea about my fellow admins, and I'll venture to say that their numbers are about the same for the year and a half-ish we've had this feature.

You could probably have a log of people who access the feature which reveals the identity of anon posters. Some way of watching the watchers, you could say.

an idea, but hardly one I would demand.

---------- Post added at 12:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:04 PM ----------

You qualify as "Some people" yes, but you're not the only one, it wouldn't have been prudent of me to derail a topic in which I saw you voice your concern with my response, I started this topic instead :)

I'm not picking on you though, I respect everyone's opinion.

So do I. I just don't agree with many.

I am an admin on another board, and can confirm that it is possible but not convenient to look up anon posters. I don't believe in security through obscurity, so I will just ask...are you just correlating known IP addresses via a quick lookup on the ACP? That's all I do. Also, if vbulletin is anything like Invision Power Board, there is a list of every action performed by every mod and admin.

How anonymous is this place, again?

To who? Admins see your real email address and every IP you've ever logged in with. In the right hands, that's enough to show up at your door or call you at work, in most cases.

That's odd.

There are people on this forum who regularly have dinner together. I can personally say that I've visited and dined with several who I would consider now to be friends outside the normal forum interaction. One of them has even (briefly) met my sister.

And of course, that says nothing of the large numbers of real life friends or couples who just happen to share this space.

Interactions on TFP are far less anonymous than on the internet as a whole.

Regarding the ease of identifying an anonymous poster, you'll have to forgive me if I've overstated things. As a somewhat technically-oriented person, it's a fairly trivial matter for me to identify someone based on IP address and a small amount of correlating information -- I know that not all of our admins are so tech savvy as I am, and perhaps I simply made an assumption that is unwarranted. I also know from past experience with bulletin board software that generally IP's are logged on all posts, although I suppose anonymous posting might somehow circumvent that. So really I don't know with any certainty what the level of complexity is, though I did know prior to this that it is quite possible.

I trust our administrators to keep confidential information to themselves, but then then I haven't felt the need to use the anonymous posting feature to date anyway.

In the very right hands, it's enough to erase your very existence.

Unless movies lie.

It's not odd. Sure, seeing people on cam in the chat room puts a face to a screen name. However, they are still people I will most likely never see in real life. I find it interesting that I need to point out that I am speaking for myself and not for people such as yourself who venture out of the cyber aspect of this community and into the real world one.

As wooÐs pointed out, nothing on the internet is technically anonymous if somebody were to inquire about your true self. Therefore, I see no point in saying something anonymously that you wouldn't say otherwise.

Maybe you don't want other forum members whom you've met IRL to know that you like to watch horse porn, fine, post it anonymously, but posting about stress, visiting home, etc...I don't really get it.

We get a log similar to who's voted how in the polls every time the feature is selected. Figuring out which post, though, is the right one, especially if multiple people use the anonymous feature in the same thread, which happens more often than I think most folks appreciate.

I find it interesting that we need to point out that your experience is not the experience of all of us. Personally, I have slept with multiple people who are active on the board. There are another ten or so people who were active that I'm good friends with, and still log in from time to time. Finally, my *mother* used to log in and spy on me.

Having the ability to post delicate or embarrassing questions anonymously was the final straw for me to fully integrate TFP with the rest of my online presence. The "ask me anything" aspect of this board is very attractive, but so is developing a relationship with the people on it. Since 'telekinetic' anywhere else online is probably still me, and I've made no attempts not to tie in to my personal blogs and websites, I have no posting anonymity under that name.

I may be unique in my use of the anonymous function...when I use 'post anon' I PM the members who reply thanking them for their advice.

Folks give up their anonymity the minute they volunteer personal information to another member. I've made mistakes before. I'm sure other members have made mistakes before. And if you haven't yet, you will. It happens on forums everywhere. All it takes is one asshole to ruin the fun for everyone.

Anonymous is as anonymous does.

TFP isn't nearly as anonymous for me as it used to be. In most ways, that's good, and in some ways, I miss the anonymity. I don't use the Anonymous Posting Feature, though...I think enough people here know my writing/speaking style that there wouldn't be much of a point to not putting my name on it.

I'm pretty comfortable with talking about most things, though (and if I'm not, I just won't bring it up, online or in person.) I know some people aren't, so I think it's a nice feature to have. Anonymous posts don't bother me...I reply to them the same way I'd reply to a non-anonymous post.

I've used this feature before twice. Once was inane and once because I truly felt embarrassed/ashamed to talk about that subject in which I barely talk about to my very close friends. I got what I needed out of the post and went on with my life. It helped.

I know I'm not anonymous on this message board, but I don't really care. The only person I don't want reading posts I make on here is my boss, but in the end, I really don't care about that enough to try and cover my tracks. I don't post about illegal things or overthrowing the government, so I don't care that Big Brother is watching.

I think alot of things posted anonymously on here are not that bad, but then it's like Cyn said, people have different levels of what they consider bad/embarrassing. So to each his own and all that crap.

Also, I've used this board to meet people I consider friends and to meet someone that has made a big impact on my life in all ways. We all know who I'm talking about.

.... Crompsin.

I'm allergic to familiarity. I like people better before I know them and I get to be superficial, it's true.

I hate to keep throwing everything in comparison to being a DJ type person but basically when you move to a new city, go to a club/bar and just lose it on the dancefloor all night long because you don't care about those people, you don't know them, you'll likely never see them again, no reason to feel even remotely self conscious. You are "anonymous"

Meet a few people, get to know the social circles, who's who, what they do, why they're there, what function they serve, what motivations they have and the motives for attending those events, the promoter, the dancer, the dj, the drunk, the ladies man, etc... all of a sudden, you are surrounded by individuals, identities, not a mass of "people" that you can lose yourself in.

Personally, I think it's the dumbest thing I've ever seen on TFP from an administrative standpoint.

I've considered posting anonymously to numerous threads, but then I've thought about it and realized I've shared far more with everyone here than I would have shared in that one post.

Being able to determine who is the anonymous poster? Well, that's not something that comes with supermoderator status.

Over the past year and a half, I have posted one thread anonymously. It was on someone else's behalf. I didn't want my name associated with a problem that I was not facing.

That's what they all say ;)

For myself, I've never used it and don't really see the need for me to use it. I can see its benefits, though.

I take other steps to be anonymous, and I wish that the Internet was more anonymous. Although I have never used the Anonymous poster function here like I have on Slashdot and 4Chan.

Why?

Absolutely worthless and proven as such almost every time its used.

Do you really need to anonymously post a thread about strolling your old home town, dealing with stress, feeling ignored by a friend, being a procrastinator, etc. Are we really so worried about our precious little web personas?

Like Logan, I can understand some of the anon sexuality posts and I can even understand Shauk's concerns about biased responses but this anon nonsense does little more than undermine the sense of community established here.

I struggle with passing judgment here because I am one of the few that detest the abuse of what is a very useful tool.

But I have to remain passive and for all of you who oppose (myself included), please realize ...

The First Amendment.

I was differentiating between "stupidest thing anyone has ever written on the TFP" and "stupidest technological/administrative option". Obviously, there have been some really moronic things posted on TFP, but I think the addition of "anonymous" is silly.

This is supposed to be a community. When you don't know whose voice is speaking, it loses that community feeling and diminishes the reasons for being here in the first place.

Aside from the fact that most of us are essentially anonymous here behind our usernames, there are a million places on the net for people to go to truly post anonymously about their issues.

There are some posts I can see why one would want to be anonymous, then there are others where I wonder why the fuck would anyone give a shit what another thinks about it.

Forums do not operate on the US Constitution rules. And if they do, they don't have to. Irrelevant. Forum by definition is a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Completely irrelevant. Absolutely and totally irrelevant. And you're VERY happy that it is. I just finished stomping all over someone's free speech, and most people here are probably glad that I did. It was a spammer whose spam was actually illegal to post. And I took great pleasure in reporting the company and the relevant information of the poster to the proper authorities (it was someone selling a state-specific health insurance program and broke that state's solicitation laws - and yes, I'm aware of how much of an insurance nerd I am). If we allow TRUE free speech here, this place would be unrecognizable and would be a rejection of TFP's core values as a place of mature and reasonable discourse.

To all you folks that find this feature useless, I'm right there with you. For the vast majority of the folks with 1000+ posts, it's pointless. However, I think that it's a tool best used by someone who hasn't been around as long or is brand new. But even if you think it's useless, you can't really blame us for trying new things, can you?

^^ It's by his/her own volition the spammer chose to post whatever he wanted to post and as it so happens he went against forum decor.

If anyone wants to post how they simply just love kayaking anonymously who are you to judge? It's not irrelevant. Don't flame and don't spam are the only guidelines to posting why does it not extend to anonymity?

I could argue that many people have had the "sense of community" enhanced within them because they finally discovered somewhere they can discuss kayaking without being judged. YOU on the other hand simply want to KNOW who the hell is posting. Why are they posting. What do they look like? Does that feel like anonymity to you?

Xman - I have no idea what point you're trying to make. I can't figure out if you just don't know what freedom of speech actually involves or if you're trying to make some obscure point about me judging people or actually caring who posts anonymously. Neither seems very likely, so I have to ask you to explain what you mean.

OK then, my point is ... people can post whatever they want. Anonymously or not. As long as it's not flaming or spamming then what harm does it cause the reader or the board? The fact that it irks you simply by it's anonymous nature comes to show the amount of nit-pickyness present in the board. Exclusivity even. How is the feature any more different than an obscure user name?

So yes, if you oppose the feature you do in fact care who posts anonymously.
-how many users have been cyber investigated after making a post. Had their user name popped onto google and searched for some form of consistency? Do you really expect regular members not to be wary of this behavior?

Yes, if you oppose the feature you do judge people who post anonymously.
-it appears anonymous posting in this board has come to be associated with some form of "lack of guts" department.

So, once again, post whatever you want. Anonymously or not. TFP's rules are very few and simple to follow. The feature is there to be used.

Caveat: Xman, I am assuming that the "you" in the post above pertains directly to me and to no one else. Perhaps this is moot, but that's based on the "^^^" in the previous post and what seems like a direct response to me.

If you think I were "irked" in the slightest by the anonymous feature, you should note that it's still an option. If I were bothered by it, even as a just a minor irritant, I'd turn it off. I see it's value, as I posted in my response to you. I just don't see it's value for folks with a large body of work here. People with a lot of posts here usually aren't going to be shy about asking embarrassing questions (with a certain subset - sexual - of those questions being carved back in).

I've already disclosed how often I've felt that I've had to take away a poster's anonymity. That's now public record (I'm too lazy to look to see if it was in this thread or the other). All three times were based on complaints generated by regular members. Only once was a username googled, and that was based on some potentially criminal activity.

Unless you're talking about googling new users after a questionable post. That happens all the time as an effective spam-fighting tool. If we find the same username up to the same behavior elsewhere, we ban them before they get a chance to try to game the system to post their links.

I have no interest in judging people who use this feature. Or those who misuse it, in my own opinion. If you feel the need to use it, that's fine by me. I may not understand why you want to use it, but I don't feel the need to go find out who you are. I have much better things to do with my time, as do Halx, Cynthetic and secretmethod70. I've said it before, but I guess it needs to be said again: either you trust us or you don't. If you think that asking a particular question will result in predetermined set of responses, I'm all for you experimenting with the results - not my thing, but unless you're up to no good, I don't care.

But again, perhaps this isn't all directed at me personally and is more of an indictment of those who don't like the feature. In which case: who the fuck cares what other people think of it? Just because some jerk on the internet thinks that you're gutless because you won't sign your name to a question about the flavor of water (or whatever), that doesn't make it so.

A screen name is a symbol of an individual's persona on a message board. Like with a name, after a while, people start to identify with a user name. It is anonymous, but with a name come associations.

For example, people expect World's King's posts to contain some kind of misogynistic sex themed response. I seriously doubt the reaction would be as accepting if an Anonymous Member posted something along the lines we're used to seeing in WK's posts.

In short. A screen name, no matter how anonymous, carries with it a person's personality. Anonymous posting strips personality and leaves nothing.

it leaves a topic to be discussed, which is kind of the point. All the responses still contribute to the building of the identity since they often dont choose to answer anonymously.

If you get a call and the person on the other line whom you don't know at all starts spilling out his problems to you, how long would you last until you hung up or asked him who the hell it is? Would you feel more inclined to listen and help the person whom you actually knew?

I really like this response. People can be compared to books, in our lives' progressions, unfolding chapters, hardcovers, and whatever else (footnotes).
It'd be a cop-out for me to use it (not that many of my posts are registered worthwhile anyway; I am used to going unnoticed for some stretches, but what matters is that I keep coming strong).

I don't believe I will ever utilize the anonymous posting feature. In the past, perhaps, but only for the misguided reason of shielding my identity from a lover whose response to the truthful statements (and request for advice) would have likely been explosively negative, in light of some treacherous actions described by those statements.

People have unique writing styles, and I have been pretty sure about which long-time or prolific members posted certain anonymous threads based on that. I'll never know for sure because I don't even have access to the tool to see who it is and even if I did I wouldn't use it to find out since it's none of my business.

I have made one or two anonymous comments, but don't see myself posting anonymous threads. I also see some that I really don't think are embarrassing or incriminating enough to warrant it, but to each his own.
From some of my work back when we had porn here and actively tried to find and ban underage people, I can say that I have found names, addresses, and even cell phone numbers. I can also confidently say that if we screw up and someone on staff abuses that power, they would not be on staff for long and would most likely find themselves banned. We've had some real creeps on here in the past, and we do a good job of driving them away or just getting rid of them once we find out about their behavior.

Personally, I think the privacy concerns raised from the whole situation were the dumbest things I've ever seen on TFP from an administrative standpoint. :/

I despise the idea of anon posting, and I have not and would not use it.

I think that people should own up to what they say and feel and not hide behind something. If you can't handle the consequences of opening your mouth (figuratively), then keep it to yourself. In fact, I *almost* put it into the lying category.

I understand that some people are shy and uncomfortable with revealing parts of themselves or whatever. To that, I just respond that if you can't talk about it openly, why should we?