No I don't, because these posts may just be coming from different AM's. I can't tell, because I can only evaluate the post based on its content, I don't know where it came from. If the IP address is displayed I can tell, thus my decision-making capability is improved.

Wait a moment. First you say that posting with content like

1. "Perl is dead and all you people are stupid idiots"
2. "I heard Perl is dead at conference X from IT celebrity Y, help, will I become unemployed"
3. "I've talked to the experienced programmers at my company and they told me Perl is an inferior language and I should use XYZ instead"

are clearly trolls. And now you are saying you can't be sure, because all you have is the content? What is it? Is someone saying that Perl is dead and all of are stupid idiots a troll, or is he only a troll if you know his IP address?

Look, it's very simple. If you aren't sure whether someone is a troll, don't reply. Problem solved.

Some random DSL/company/university IP is not going to tell the average PM user anything about the person behind it.

I disagree with that. I may know where certain people work (in fact, I know where quite a lot of Perl people work). Or I can gather the IP address(es) of the boxes they most often use from their IRC presense, mailing list postings or Usenet contributions. If, for whatever reason, they decide to post here anonymously, I know who did it. Or, worse, I may be convinced who posted here but be wrong. And even if I haven't gathered data, if a reverse DNS query links WWW.XXX.YYY.ZZZ to <well-known-name>.com it would strongly suggest who is behind the anonymous monk, wouldn't it?

And that for a scheme that may not even work. Perhaps the troll you are chasing dials up to a large ISP with a gazillion different proxies. Perhaps he's mobile. Or, more likely, it just stops one person from responding: you, but not all the others.

If you're trying to be anonymous against a government agency or your employer (and in certain jurisdictions powerful copyright holders), then you're right, that anonymity is not there. But that is already the case now.

Really? If I'm a company, I know who each AM is?

No, it's more like saying "Let's stick a unique and identifiable number on the front and back of every car, so if one breaks the speed limit we know where to send the ticket."

Oh, and here I am, thinking you only wanted to add the IP address of anonymous monks. But your proposal is to list every ones IP address.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.