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 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.
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.
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.
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.