Slashdot Mirror
The Internet's Age of Rage
RackNine sends this excerpt from an editorial at the Guardian:
"The worldwide web has made critics of us all. But with commenters able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, the blog and chatroom have become forums for hatred and bile. ... The psychologists call it 'deindividuation.' It's what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed. The classic deindividuation experiment concerned American children at Halloween. Trick-or-treaters were invited to take sweets left in the hall of a house on a table on which there was also a sum of money. When children arrived singly, and not wearing masks, only 8% of them stole any of the money. When they were in larger groups, with their identities concealed by fancy dress, that number rose to 80%. The combination of a faceless crowd and personal anonymity provoked individuals into breaking rules that under 'normal' circumstances they would not have considered. ... One simple antidote to this seems to rest in the very old-fashioned idea of standing by your good name. Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line. Put your name to something and your words are freighted with responsibility."
I believe the technical term is Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/
This story sucks. Your all idiots.
FOAD, assholes.
I am amazed that 20% of the people who had no risk of being caught did NOT steal... Perhaps humanity is not as corrupt as I thought.
Or they just didn't know they could not get caught.
I believe this was first noticed in 1993.
Palm trees and 8
Whilst deindividuation is a recognised problem, I also believe the absence of non-verbal cues is a huge issue as well.
When we queue for a teller at the bank, there is a natural interaction between us that is completely non-verbal. We can see the woman who is stressed by an obnoxious child. We can see the fragile old man who needs extra time. On the Internet (and in traffic), these signals are not present. We often gauge each other's behaviour and responses in the context of our own lives and emotional state.
And this all occurs in the overarching context of our progressively deteriorating grasp on the English language. Smileys, and more recently Lol-speak, are an attempt to flesh out our inability to express our emotions in the written word. Lol-speak, or meme-speak is starting to help, but its had the whole of about 10 years to evolve - compared to a few hundred thousand years of the evolution of our non-verbal communication.
Is it any wonder that tolerance is lacking?
Thankfully, we're not completely stupid, and we're starting to adapt to the problem. Hence my personal favourite phrase on the Internet: Don't feed the trolls.
John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Internet Rage is so last decade. In my view internet use in general has matured a great deal, where unlike a kid who's suddenly learnt a new swear word and must say it to everyone everywhere, people show remarkable restraint considering the relative (kinda) anonymity of the internet. Yes, the internet has become an extension of society itself, rather than a novelty activity for scruffy foul-mouthed juveniles. Even teenagers seem to consider it bad form to flame, rage or troll (slashdottersyou are a special case.. because you are SO damn witty when you do it). As such this article is over 10 years too late.
If it takes anonymity for people to say what they really think, then we need more anonymity. Many injustices happen because people in power can count on people being trapped in responsibilities and dependencies. If nobody can say what they think, then nobody can know that they're not alone with their rage. The internet is not a place where you can expect to be treated nicely. It's very honest, and that can be frightening at times, but it's necessary. You shouldn't equate rage to criminal behavior (stealing money).
Have an anonymous internet, with a web of trust laid over it. People can speak anonymously, in which case they might be filtered out, or their opinion given less weight. If people want to up their chances of being heard or taken seriously, they need to use their trusted identity, into which they have invested part of their personal reputation. Sound a bit like slashdot?
With an anonymous Internet, we can have both. Without an anonymous Internet, we lose the option.
This article like many others before it continues to miss the blatantly obvious - that once anonymous, people are finally saying what they actually think
Can the Slashdot editors see IP addresses?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Perhaps anonymity just helps people act according to their true nature.
Its a bit out of my depth, but there are theories of "moral development", children learn what they can do, then if its safe to do it, lastly if its _right_ to do it.
I guess these kids morality wouldnt be as evolved as adults, so perhaps the experiment is just measuring moral development of the sample, rather then reflecting the moral position of the greater human society.
Anonymity can make it easier to get away with being irresponsible, but a responsible person wouldnt want to get away with being irresponsible (bad way of saying it i know).
If Anonymity allows people to show their true self, and we dont like what we see, its not anonymity thats the problem.
Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line
Apparently they determined that a pseudonym is enough to make one behave in an uncouth manner. I would posit, however, that this depends largely on the persistence of the pseudonym. If you use throw away pseudonyms, like our good troll commodore64_love and all of his little sockpuppets, then you have less of a reason to behave in a civilised manner than if you have one that you are using consistently for a long time.
After all, your real name is just the pseudonym that the government knows - and in some cases, not even the one that most of your acquaintances, let alone friends, know.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is a carefully orchestrated war on anonymity. It started with facebook, now Google, and now we have a "paper" saying that "anonymity is killing the internet" and "making your hair curl."
Make no mistake about it. I'm waiting for my g+ account to be nuked.
--
BMO
Yes. They can see farther into the infrared and ultraviolet than humans can.
There is a rather simple way to see that it is not.
Young people, brought up on the Internet: currently less likely to vote, yes, but not generally given to being mired in the standard polarizing bullshit that boomers ruin the world over, are they?
Given that it is well-known that the American political system currently runs on spite, it should be wonderful news that our nations' youth have found a much less destructive place to vent their spleen.
This^ is not my meatspace name, but after decades of use, more people know me by this name than by my birth name. So now I have an on-line reputation to uphold, such as it is. Ivan has evolved from troll into Mr. Nice Guy. Occassionally, I log on using my real name and act like a complete ass. It's liberating.
So, Anonymous wouldn't be as active if their masks were removed?
Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line. Put your name to something and your words are freighted with responsibility."
not about responsibliity. more like fear of retribution.. whether that retribution is righteous or not is based on subjective view points. I have a problem with this article because it suggests that anonymity is inherently a bad thing. It's not. Anonymity allows people to take positions that need taking, social 'conventions' be damned.
The psychologists call it 'deindividuation.' It's what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed.
Ironic, considering that the author is basically saying that anonymity shields individuals from whatever collective groupthink is in play. I'd call it 'REindividualization.'
Phil Bronstein of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a retort to the reader comments regarding several deaths over the past few weeks
That doesn't mean we should build that police state this author obviously wants by eliminating anonymity. It is needed, especially when what needs to be said falls outside the social 'acceptability' arena.
But can they see to plaid?
Yes, anonymity could be a cloak for someone who fears reprisal (social, physical, legal).
People can and do build reputations around their pseudonyms online, where they reinstall the social norms. You see it on forums every now and then (for example, heavy posters who fear losing their reputations making apologies for bad behavior). Like any society, the internet has it's own behavioral controls - whether they're remnants from offline controls or new ones like 'troll' flags. We're just developing them - some of us are still kids in costumes again really.
Only works if you chose a pseudonym and then stick to it. In which case it just becomes another "real name" over time. But many people don't want to have a "real name" they can be recognized by. They want to be truly anonymous, just a bodyless voice spitting bile and hate without having to stand up for it. They change their pseudonymes more often than their fucking passwords.
I totally agree that this is becoming a problem. The right to be anonymous is in many cases very important, but these situations are exceptions, not the rule.
And we make people use their real names. When we didn't we got too many nut-cases and almost-real bots. As a result, discussion is polite and stays more on topic. The rest of the web can have the lusers with weird handles, suits me fine. Flame wars don't.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
and then there are the ones who don't give a crap who sees them because they only think about themselves to start with... hard to feel guilty about anything when your core belief is that you are the only person in the world that matters.
As an example we grow several flowers in our unfenced front yard and also have a bench out at the edge of the side-walk so people can sit and rest a minute and enjoy the view. Twice in the last two weeks I've seen people just stop and grab a handful of the Lilies for themselves. The last time I got to the front door before they left and asked them WTF she was doing... this woman replies "well I was just going to sit on your lovely bench and admire the view." - a complete non sequitur. I said "So you are rewarding us for putting out the bench by stealing our flowers?" She just repeated the same lame statement and sat on the bench for a minute then left.
The entire patch of lilies has been stripped over the last month. Since we don't get to enjoy them and the neighbours and passers-by don't get to enjoy looking at them we will just stop growing them. The other result is that we now feel like we have to spend time and money to put up a significant fence around our vegetable garden because hearing "Hey I was going to sit on your bench and I was hungry" can't be far off.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I agree completely. I think most of the Internet's commenting problems don't require legal names to be revealed at all and that they can effectively be solved with pseudonymity and reputation systems. Essentially, reputation is being conflated with legal identity in most of the reports on these problems. I hope it's just accidental and short-sighted thinking and writing, but it sounds increasingly like a war drum against being able to have a voice on the Internet without revealing your legal name and having it permanently attached, in one way or another, to every comment you ever make.
Why is there so little talk of building systems where creating a pseudonym and establishing a reputation are important? Perhaps a real identity could be divulged to gain reputation outside of the normal system, but what benefit could it have beyond that? Such a requirement will just kill the discussion of many worthwhile (though perhaps embarrassing or taboo) subjects on the Internet.
Another interesting analysis with anonymity in the Internet age could be done with the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots from a couple of months ago. People were openly destroying vehicles and commercial property while knowingly surrounded by cell phones and professional photographers recording every move they made. Video and photos were uploaded in real time to the Internet, eventually assisting the police and the public to identify a large number of locals.
It was a bizarre case of cognitive dissonance where these criminals would pose in front of their crimes without a thought to the fact that they would be easily identified and charged with the said photo.
Where does that leave the startup culture (which is all about funding lots of short lived companies)?
"People hold online anonymity up as a virtue and necessity. I say it is the root cause of a social disease, and should be greatly limited." — Matt Greenfield
That is the root of this "holier than thou", aka koolaid, disease. When somebody thinks freedom of speech is evil and needs limitation. Yes, anonymity equals freedom of speech. Otherwise, every post should be 100% public to stamp out hidden grumbling disease; it also begs the question of why does Google Circles, or Facebook FriendLists even exist? It also assumes you can trust a "real name" more than any pseudonym. Where's the CV and double-verified references first?
There's a great amount of historical, anonymous authorship, besides old and new revolutions, that back this.
Draconian, Stalinist policies have no place in continued history.
I'm not so sure the "war on anonymity" is carefully being orchestrated, though I certainly hear the loudening beat of its drums. And there are certainly forces that are very much behind the cause.
What worries me most is the support for it I hear from those who aren't very interested in the topic. I think many people see horrible comments on websites or blogs, hear something like the "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory", and just assume that's the problem, with the obvious solution being banning anonymity without thinking about the negative consequences for true expression of the unpopular, embarrassing, and taboo.
Systems using pseudonyms and reputation systems are up to the challenge--while not obvious at first, a little thought into the problem shows this. You could even have adding your legal name give you a reputation boost (doesn't Amazon do something like this?). But with all the blaring bile about how humans are not capable of having the power of anonymity without reverting to sub-human pseudo-demons, too little attention is being paid to the real solution that doesn't stifle discourse.
I hope that the problem is that the pseudonym+reputation solution isn't obvious to the person who is first confronted with this problem, and that over time it will become clear and a consensus will build that anonymity doesn't need to be removed--we just need to add a reputation element. There are certainly forces that will push against this and favor getting rid of anonymity as soon as possible, but I'm far from convinced they will succeed. [Perhaps this is too hopeful?]
There's another important issue here: Anonymity can be a worthy tool for social reaction and revolution when the individual expresses a minority or otherwise unpopular opinion; some of the other nasty habits of society include ostracization; limiting availability of jobs; sabotaging retirement; false accusations, false imprisonment, inappropriate listing on the no-fly, no-buy, and the sexual/violent offender (AKA as the you're-fucked) lists; singling out for "attention" from the local (or not local) cops; vandalism; burning crosses on the lawn; DOS, etc.
While true free speech cloaked in anonymity definitely opens the door for the proverbial "Internet Superturd", suppressing it isn't something that uniformly does good. For instance, Google+'s recent insistence on "real id" effectively eliminates any viewpoint that is sufficiently off-center to present a personal risk at a level unacceptable to the speaker. This in turn means that as the speaker's social load and dependencies increase - family, depending upon keeping one's job, political position, etc. - the more effectively they are muzzled in a "real id" environment.
Another example is Facebook's TOS where they forbid anyone on the s/v offender's list from joining; anyone put on that list is now locked out and locked to the bottom level of society; doesn't matter that they've paid their debt to society by serving time, paying fines, whatever the judge decided: they're permanently locked out, not to mention often having to live under a bridge or in a camp. That kind of ostracism is way too powerful a tool to use against someone who is supposedly free to walk around; they'll never re-integrate, they can't. If you're going to treat someone that badly, you'd better have the sense to put them in jail and keep them there or else you're just grooming a very, very angry person whom someone will unhappily meet on a dark and stormy night. Unfortunately, this only treats the unfairly listed -- kids having sex across age lines, polygamists, pee-ers in bushes, etc. -- even worse. By far the best solution is to treat payment of sentencing debt as 100% presumed rehabilitation unless shown otherwise. The government shows no sign of being responsible here either, nor forcing corporations like facebook to be responsible, which again brings us back to the need for pushback. And given the lynch mob mentality associated with these matters, anonymity is definitely called for.
In general right now, our government is doing a lot of things it shouldn't be doing, and these activities are currently pushing hard against individual rights of free speech, free travel and privacy. IMHO, anything that does away with anonymity under these circumstances is extremely unwise.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No. They are not capable of faster-than-ludicrous-communication.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I'm confused. Is BadAnalogyGuy making an on-topic joke that GP wooshed on? Was GP furthering the joke and TheRaven64 wooshed? Did "TheRaven64" just hint that he was a sockpuppet for commodore_64? Did TheRaven64 just call GP a stupid ho?
I'm just going to woosh myself just to be safe. WOOSH!!
For example, putting a geo location after every post by the board would give a great deal of perspective. For example, a great deal of posts on the Internet treat Zionism as some boogie word. This has become a meme that is subscribed even by the people who are not in any way antisemitic. But what if it was known that most of these posts originated in Arab countries? Wouldn't that perspective have changed the view on weight and validity of this meme. As another example, so many foreigners were fond of America for electing Obama. If one looked on the Internet, he'd see it as some pinnacle of wisdom on part of the Americans. But what if it was clear that most of these posts didn't actually come from the US? Regardless of the actual agreement or disagreement with the opinion, wouldn't the geo location of the poster give a great deal of perspective on the poster's bias? Identifying a geolocation (or at least the country of origin) of the post wouldn't even come close to revealing the identity of the poster. And, in fact, it would make the conversations more civil. I think most people willing to engage in some discourse with strangers on the Internet (once they get past the boobz stage), would respect more opinions which they see as rooted in cultural context.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I've been biking to work for over 4 years now. About 3 months ago I attached a GoPro HD camera to my helmet to record my bike ride. It is very obvious on my helmet, impossible to miss if you see me on the bike.
Almost instantly I noticed a drop in car aggression towards me. And so far I've not had anymore "drivers get out of the car and threaten violence" situations. I decided on a camera for legal reasons. Police always told me whenever I reported something that it was my word against theirs. So I expected the camera to help with that. I was a bit surprised when a lot of the problems just stopped.
So anonymous behaviors extend into the real-world and are combatted in the same way. De-anonymousization...
--kev
One of the best reads I've seen on the Internet in a long time is the Wikipedia style-guide. If more people tried to comply with their guidelines, we would have a lot more open-and-frank discourses
I fully agree with you about assuming good faith. But other Wikipedia policies and guidelines are more gameable and could result in things like "I don't care about what you have to say because neither the scholarly press nor the mainstream media has published enough articles about it. I don't care; I don't have to; it's non-notable."
There must be some kind of filtering, either for selecting the nice people who are allowed to be anonymous, or a default negative reputation modifier for all anonymous posts.
The latter is why Anonymous Coward starts at 0, logged in users start at 1, and users who have been around for a few weeks start at 2.
Funny how we have an article on how anonymity online is bad just after a certain group of people who happen to be all about anonymity attack goverments and certain news paper... After all we don't want people being anonymous then we can't go after them when they say things we don't like!
The problem with anonymity is that I don't know who I want to listen to. If I know that a certain individual has made polite conversation before, or can be trusted with my data, I am happy to talk with them. But if they're a stranger, how do I know they're not going to lie to me, spam me, troll, etc? Slashdot is on to the right system. People who interact well with others should gain social capital (karma in this case), which makes it more likely for them to communicate with others. Acting wrongly earns the scorn of the community, and diminishes social capital.
We should have features like this on our social network. If someone is a jerk online, their friends shouldn't have to individual remove them. Instead, they should lose capital within their circles, and eventually nobody hears from them. That's how it works in the real world, when someone acts poorly everyone avoids conversations with them, stops inviting them to parties, etc. They don't each individually sit down with the person and declare "you are no longer my friend!"
I find it amusing that people talk constantly about the increase of a-hole'ish behavior online. No, there aren't more a-hole's online, there are just more people. Combined that with more people who are dicks in general... and, well, you get the picture.
Seriously, the current generation seems to be stuck somewhere between who gives a F*** and F*** you....
I don't need my information to pass through a series of societal filters before it gets to me.
It's true, and it unfortunately spreads to Slashdot as well. I made a rather unfortunate error due to my own ignorance yesterday, and was set upon by a few dozen people (mostly anonymous) spewing hatred and telling me that I'm an idiot, can't handle intelligent work, need to stay off of Slashdot, attempting to troll me into getting angry, et cetera. I'm only observing the effect of one person being wrong on the Internet, specifically on Slashdot, and I don't need any pity for the hole I dug myself.
The mob mentality seems to be stronger when anonymity is in the picture. Really, you're anonymous if you just have a handle that hasn't been popularized somehow.
Kinda makes one wonder, how are we raising so many maladjusted kids??? What are we doing wrong and how can we fix it?
That sounds kind of like Nietzsche to me.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
A first warning sign would be that you are making assessments about all society about a holiday.
A second warning sign is, when you are on facebook, or whatever commercial social networking site you are on an start saying bad things about chatrooms, webboards, (and email) that really do the heavy lifting of the internet communication.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
You're touching on a lot of things I agree with, and topics I'm sure I've covered in many previous comments, not that I could find such a post among all the chaff I generate on a regular basis.
Rehabilitation is way out of fashion, right beside "more taxes" in the Tea Room of partitioned prosperity. The modern fashion is to vote people off the island. America was founded on the ideal (so I believe) of being less class-bound than the UK and more fiscally mobile than the rest of Europe. Just like Quebec, where French changes less than in France, America has returned to what they once rejected and becomes ever more desperate to establish a permanent scarlet-letter underclass; the housing boom in the penal system continues unabated by the financial crisis.
It's funny this topic comes up on the same day as the "do dumb things" admonition from a Google exec. I post under pseudonyms precisely for this reason: it encourages me to push the envelope in what I express. Sometimes I'm rude, but usually briefly, and typically in response to people posting way under their intellectual punching weight (because that takes work and it might impair erectile function to divert the blood flow to Woody's second favorite organ).
Also, I have no desire to see a response on another forum "but you made a stupid post on Slashdot saying exactly the opposite!" Yeah, maybe I did, and maybe you had to be there.
If I were a complete turd, I suppose I would someday run out of karma, and my posts would begin life among the rabble on 'B' Ark. This hasn't happened anywhere I post so far as I've noticed.
Vonnegut, as usual, was prophetic in this matter. From Cat's Cradle as cribbed by Back Words Indexing which perhaps quoted more than they should have, though I concur with the temptation.
I think I'll pass on immolating myself into the great index in the public Google+ planetarium of everything I've ever been.
Definitely agree. My pseudonym may as well be my real name. It has a great degree of history behind it that is publicly available, and can, in fact, lead directly to my real name relatively easily. Then again, I prefer not to act like an unmitigated asshat even when I could easily disguise myself anonymously to do so. Unfortunately, there are a great number of people who engage in exactly the opposite sort of behavior.
Not short-lived companies necessarily, but fly-by-night companies that reorganize under a new name at the drop of a hat.
The first would be a pseudonym that someone abandoned for something other than using it as a burn name. The second would be using a new pseudonym to engage in the same behavior that lead to the burning of the last pseudonym. That's the one people have a problem with.
The startup culture is not really about funding short-lived companies. Most companies, regardless of how the are funded, turn belly-up. That's just the nature of doing business, because even well-laid business plans frequently depend on interactions not under the control of the person running the business. There's a lot of guesswork involved, and more often than not the start-up makes an incorrect guess (or usually multiple incorrect guesses) that prove fatal to the business. The start-up culture is actually about funding a lot of companies knowing that most go belly-up, but trying to get a couple hits that will actually survive long-term in the process. Yes, there are vultures, but stable businesses are better for gains over the long term.
Perhaps this explains why corporations, with their meaningless three letter names, seem to be much more amoral than old-fashion companies that were named after their owners.
What a load of pop(sic)le psychology. Tim Adams is a beagle for those who want to ban anonymity for all of us. Seriously, comparing kids stealing candy with valid democratic discourse on the internet - Pleeeese! Sign the petition today: http://www.change.org/petitions/google-inc-google-needs-to-allow-pseudonyms-on-services-like-google-for-anonymity Thank you.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
I was member of the debate forum at a newspaper website here in Denmark and I was using my real name as you were required to do.
Now, some debates - especially those concerning religion (Islam in particular) - quite often turned very aggressive. Then it happened - someone started posting addresses of some of the participants and issuing threats against them. As my name is pretty unique, I changed the name in my profile to protect myself and I was kicked off the forum. The person issuing the threats wasn't by the way. A few days later someone was assaulted and beaten severely. The victim was active on another similar forum and was tracked down from his name and attacked physically. Then 'my' forum changed the rules and allowed aliases - as long as the private section of the profile still held real info.
This is the way to go. You're still accountable in full but only to the site owner (and his moderators). Other readers cannot access your information and thus take the discussions to a physical level. That way you're both protected against other regular participants that are unable to keep the arguments on a verbal level and yet accountable with respect to the relevant laws (libel, racism etc.).
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Well, I guess the Comments below the article are the best proof, once they think they're anonymous, they post the crappiest stuff... Actually I kinda don't know why people in the web suddenly loose their manners, i guess that would be a reason to make you give your real name everwhere...
I recently tried to obtain a theatre like pdf file (looked like it). The 'social media' like site wanted me to login to facebook to do anything with the file. I declined the opportunity to do that. No doubt i must be mad.
It's a question of intent. Startups are rarely created with the aim of only existing for a short amount of time. They are usually created to become wildly successful - they just fail. In contrast, disposable shell companies are generally less civilised...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
>>The single challenge of this decade (in a slew of forms) is to figure out how to beat our own Prisoner's Dilemma to find something that can overrule authoritarian corruption.
Hmm, I'd say political organizing on Facebook might provide that medium, but that has scary issues in and of itself. (Facebook controlling politics? Ew.)
The problem with studies like this is, people look at the results and conclude, "So, if everyone used their real name in the Internet, it wouldn't be a problem." Try again. The same deindividualization would still occur. John Andersen is just as effectively anonymous whether he posts as John Andersen or TrollFace23. Uniquia McRarename may have a problem, but the remaining 98% of the forum users won't.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
The currency in the web is attention.
If you have a system where a "good name" e.g. you pseudonym guarantees attention, especially if you have to work to be visible at all and attention to you is lost if you behave like an idiot, then the problem is quickly solved (i think slashdots moderation system works very well in that respect).
The point is that deindividualization works because doing things in an anonymous crowd lowers the fear of negative consequences.
Just look at riots, group mentality and perceived anonymity makes people flip cars over, loot and set fire to stuff.
~Syberz
This is because you are born with two things, your word, and your name. Without one the other is worthless.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Depends on how you define value. The funniest posts tend to be ACs. Ignoring anonymous posts also means you miss the ones that do have value.
I'm not sure that the ratio is massively different anyway, after all 90% of everything is crap (so we are only at a 10% difference at best anyway). I do agree that the worst posts are almost invariably anonymous, but I'm not sure that losing those makes up for losing the valuable anonymous posts.
This has gotten me thinking about when I click the anonymous checkbox. Usually when I want to tell an off-color joke. And I'm tremendously tempted to do it now just for the effect, but I won't.
Is this article really about anonymity, or the abuse of anonymity? It's another tool like any other. The reason people might act differently, sometimes becoming monsters under anonymity is because there is an inherent personality flaw of some kind. The people are the root of the problem, not the tool. I see it on this board everyday, someone disagrees with your opinion and immediately out come the insults and immature name-calling: "moron", "idiot", "fucktard".. yeah, that'll really get me to see your point of view. (It's why I changed my sig) ;-p
Anonymity is a bit like alcohol I suppose: I hate when someone makes an excuse for their poor drunken behavior the night before by saying, "It was the alcohol talking"; alcohol doesn't talk, it only lowers inhibitions that allow the *real* you to come forth unencumbered by a social facade. If you are one of those people who become an asshole when you're drunk, (and most certainly not everyone does) it only means that deep down you're probably really an asshole who most of the time manages to hide it from everyone. The same goes for anonymity. If you can remain civil and respectful behind a pseudonym, then good for you.. all eight of you know who you are.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
...no shit?
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!