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Vintage threads from the first ten years

On anonymity

3/16/2004 8:51 PM
Mark Hammer	On anonymity I heard a rebroadcast last night of a fascinating interview with Stewart Brand (http://www.well.com/user/sbb/). Brand is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Well on-line community in the Frisco area, http://www.longbets.org/, and a bunch of other innovative things over the last 40 years. We should all be as productive, innovative and thoughtful as this guy. An amazing life and series of contributions. When the interviewer was speaking to him about the Well, Brand made an interesting point which I was pleased to hear. His comment was that he insisted that people on the Well had to use their names because he found that when they didn't flaming would be the inevitable result. Things that people would never dream of saying to each other face to face would show up in postings when they lacked any discernible personna. On the longbets site, people HAVE to post with their name so that they can be held accountable for their predictions. I've always felt this and expressed it here. It was nice to hear it and have it corroborated from someone who was there at the start of things like this forum and other on-line communities. Do what you want, I suppose, but once in a while it's smart to listen to those who have seen it all and know the future.

3/16/2004 8:51 PM

Mark Hammer

On anonymity

I heard a rebroadcast last night of a fascinating interview with Stewart Brand (http://www.well.com/user/sbb/). Brand is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Well on-line community in the Frisco area, http://www.longbets.org/, and a bunch of other innovative things over the last 40 years. We should all be as productive, innovative and thoughtful as this guy. An amazing life and series of contributions.

When the interviewer was speaking to him about the Well, Brand made an interesting point which I was pleased to hear. His comment was that he insisted that people on the Well *had* to use their names because he found that when they didn't flaming would be the inevitable result. Things that people would never dream of saying to each other face to face would show up in postings when they lacked any discernible personna. On the longbets site, people HAVE to post with their name so that they can be held accountable for their predictions.

I've always felt this and expressed it here. It was nice to hear it and have it corroborated from someone who was there at the start of things like this forum and other on-line communities.

Do what you want, I suppose, but once in a while it's smart to listen to those who have seen it all and know the future.

3/17/2004 6:17 AM
Mark Lavelle	Suck my bytes, geek bastard! Love, Ann Nonny Moose

3/17/2004 3:58 PM
Doug H	I think any time you are typing on a computer and not physically "face to face" with someone, it is much easier to be rude and insincere. So I suppose it follows that anonymous posting makes that even more easy. Doug

3/17/2004 6:23 PM
bob p	i always try to behave myself when i'm online. when i have an opinion that isn't favorable to someone, i try to expres myself in as gentlemanly a manner as possible. that goes in along with the idea of catching more bees with honey. fwiw, i never post anonymously here. i always use my name, because i feel that its somewhat cowardly to do anything less. interestingly, i've heard some people say that they won't participate here because of the ability for someone to post anonymously. i was quite surprised when i heard that. here at Ampage, i've always thought of the decreased level of security that's required to post as a breath of fresh air. it allows people to occasionally make a joke by posting as an alias, and i can't remember anything bad ever coming from it. the community here is exceptional at policing itself -- i guess that's testament to the quality of the people who spend their time here.

3/17/2004 6:23 PM

bob p

i always try to behave myself when i'm online. when i have an opinion that isn't favorable to someone, i try to expres myself in as gentlemanly a manner as possible. that goes in along with the idea of catching more bees with honey.

fwiw, i never post anonymously here. i always use my name, because i feel that its somewhat cowardly to do anything less.

interestingly, i've heard some people say that they won't participate here because of the ability for someone to post anonymously. i was quite surprised when i heard that. here at Ampage, i've always thought of the decreased level of security that's required to post as a breath of fresh air. it allows people to occasionally make a joke by posting as an alias, and i can't remember anything bad ever coming from it. the community here is exceptional at policing itself -- i guess that's testament to the quality of the people who spend their time here.

3/17/2004 6:56 PM
Mark Hammer	Irony, anonymity, and civility The irony that Brand would probably point out is that people are probably more likely to engage in the kind of on-line behaviour that they would need to defend themselves against simply be virtue of remaining anonymous. Onlookers would infer that the behaviour stems from something in the anonymous poster's character. The anonymous poster would infer that there is something about the context that requires anonymity. Brand would suggest that the anonymity creates both the context and behaviour. As for civility, it is partly due to the pleasantness of the people here and their desire to remain pleasant to each other, but also a function of the subject matter. One of the reasons why the OT/BS forum was hived off from this one was partly because of the tedium involved in scrolling and scrolling down just to get to something music related, but also because there would sometimes be some screaming matches that infected this forum by being situated in it. The kind of interaction, in turn, is a product of the content and focus. I imagine even the most aggregious behaviour seen is something you'd never get from the same people in person or on another more concretely-focussed forum. Here's two scenarios. Tell me which one you see as more plausible: Number 1 "Yngvie Satriani is the best f*ing guitarist in the whole world man" "Are you fing nuts? He couldn't play to save his life. Dimebag Johnson is way better" "Johnson is an ahole. He's just fast and people make a big deal of it." "You fing moron, You wouldn't know music if it blew you!!" Number 2 "I stuck in a 47pf cap in the feedback loop and I liked the sound better" "47pf? You fing moron. 47pf sounds like st. 33pf is the only way to go." "Yeah, right. Aren't you the same c*****er that recommended using 12v instead of 9v to power an op-amp? Pinko builders like you really rub me the wrong way." "Yeah, like your sister rubbed me the other day" One obviously looks a little more familiar than the other simply because the content of the second is like a key that just won't fit in that particular door. It just seems cmpletely antithetical to what you're supposed to DO with that content-area.

3/17/2004 6:56 PM

Mark Hammer

Irony, anonymity, and civility

The irony that Brand would probably point out is that people are probably more likely to engage in the kind of on-line behaviour that they would need to defend themselves against simply be virtue of *remaining* anonymous. Onlookers would infer that the behaviour stems from something in the anonymous poster's character. The anonymous poster would infer that there is something about the context that requires anonymity. Brand would suggest that the anonymity *creates* both the context and behaviour.

As for civility, it is partly due to the pleasantness of the people here and their desire to remain pleasant to each other, but also a function of the subject matter. One of the reasons why the OT/BS forum was hived off from this one was partly because of the tedium involved in scrolling and scrolling down just to get to something music related, but also because there would sometimes be some screaming matches that infected this forum by being situated in it. The kind of interaction, in turn, is a product of the content and focus. I imagine even the most aggregious behaviour seen is something you'd never get from the same people in person or on another more concretely-focussed forum.

Here's two scenarios. Tell me which one you see as more plausible:

Number 1
"Yngvie Satriani is the best f***ing guitarist in the whole world man"
"Are you f***ing nuts? He couldn't play to save his life. Dimebag Johnson is way better"
"Johnson is an a**hole. He's just fast and people make a big deal of it."
"You f***ing moron, You wouldn't know music if it blew you!!"

Number 2
"I stuck in a 47pf cap in the feedback loop and I liked the sound better"
"47pf? You f***ing moron. 47pf sounds like s**t. 33pf is the only way to go."
"Yeah, right. Aren't you the same c******er that recommended using 12v instead of 9v to power an op-amp? Pinko builders like you really rub me the wrong way."
"Yeah, like your sister rubbed me the other day"

One obviously looks a little more familiar than the other simply because the content of the second is like a key that just won't fit in that particular door. It just seems cmpletely antithetical to what you're supposed to DO with that content-area.

3/17/2004 7:45 PM
anonymous	I thought f***ing was Drummer's first name ...

3/17/2004 8:03 PM
Mark Hammer	No, no, that's his middle name. "Our" is his first name.

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