[Feature] Semi-Anonymous Posting
Is there any way that you can allow semi-Anonymous posting? The purpose of this is to do away with the new for throwaway accounts.
How it would work (Basics):
- First a user can only do this, once they have a decently high reputation score.
- Anonymous posts don't effect reputation/xp through upvotes/downvotes.
- When a person creates a posts/comments they are given a unique and random identifier only for that post. This allows readers to know that replies are authentic
- Mods (and maybe Chiefs) do not have the ability to see through this. If there is an issue with someone exploiting this it is raised to an admin issue.
Other possible functionally ideas
- Maybe along with a high reputation score, posting anonymously also decreases your reputation a bit. It should probably only decrease it once per post, that way it doesn't prevent the user from answering followup questions, while still making sure that anonymous posting isn't an everyday thing.
- If you are concerned about the possibility of spam and other mischievousness, maybe have the downvotes effect the users reputation. Just not upvotes.
- Allow Chiefs to disable anonymous posting in their tribe. I'm sure there are plenty of tribes that can use it, but I can also see plenty of tribes not wanting it.
9 years ago by snakespm
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12 comments
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What would be the benefit? Right now usernames are anonymous (not publicly tied to the name of the account holder) so I don't see what this would do but essentially give people the opportunity to troll or spam without recrimination.
The point of it is so that people can post something and not have it visibly tied to their account. I can think of several great chats with people who were using throwaway accounts on reddit. Topics that people didn't want tied to there normal account like affairs, criminal history, abuse, etc. Some people have friends/relatives that know their online name, some people use the username on multiple sites.
The main reason I put a restriction of a high reputation was to make it harder for people to spam.
Okay, I can see some of the reasoning there. I'm one of moderators at the new /t/suicidewatch which would definitely be a place where something like that could be vitally important.
I'm still intensely skeptical of a way to set it up that doesn't allow for massive amounts of abuse. What's to stop someone from working an account up and then handing the login details over to /pol/ to have a field day with the anonymous posting for example. I do however see the value in having some way of posting that isn't directly tied to their account, I just don't know how it could be done effectively.
Maybe an alternative to prevent spamming would be to make a tribe anonymous if the chief wants it. Instead of usernames it would just show ANONYMOUS with a generic avatar picture. You could have mods have the option of posting anonymously or as a mod when it's official business.
Posts in anonymous tribes then would not appear in one's profile or the feed of people following them. They may or may not afflict the rep score if they're up- or downvoted. This would be a compromise because it works like throwaway accounts in tribes like /t/suicidewatch while still making spamming in other tribes who won't support it impossible.
I also like this idea as well. This should not be hard to implement.
I like this idea, you're still using your main account but all posts into the tribe would be anonymous by means of a setting on the tribe. Then you could have the comment box have a setting when anonymous posting is active to switch from anonymous to default but have anonymous on at all times. By still using 'usernames' you can still tell who OP is even when the post shows up as anonymous.
This would be amazing.
If they want to do that, why wouldn't they just make a bunch of random accounts.
Edit: Anything they can do with Anonymous posting, they can do with a random account. All it would do is prevent users from making throwaway accounts.
Because of the invite and reputation system. If someone from /pol/ wanted to come in just to fuck with things, the first barrier to entry would be getting an invite (admittedly not that hard) and the second thing would be if reputation drops too low too quickly there can be some nasty consequences (temporary bans becoming full bans etc etc).
If there were an anonymous posting system, someone with even a basic modicum of patience could come in, work on the rep for the profile until it was good enough and then hand the login over. Since there would be no way to trace the harassing/trolling/spamming content to its source it would just run rampant until an actual admin intervention.
I don't know that trolling or spamming would necessarily be an even greater issue because of it. If someone is out to troll or spam, it's not all that hard to create a new account to do so. Just like any other trolling or spam, it'd be handled the same.
Personally, I like the idea, but I think it would be hard to implement and understand. With some people being able to see through the veil of anonymity, various requirements to do it, the possibility of it being disabled entirely in tribes, etc; there's a lot of variables.
If I was ever in the situation that I needed to utilize something like this, I'd probably resort to just making a throwaway account for it. If it's serious enough to require a throw-away account, I'd want as little ties as possible. Semi-anonymous kind of defeats the purpose personally.
I agree. To stop people from making throwaways it would have to be completely anonymous. That being said, having it completely anonymous would raise much bigger issues.
I'm not totally sure that throwaways are allowed. From the Etiquette:
But yeah, I'd also prefer a throwaway that's not linked to my real account in any way, instead of semi-anonymity..