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Restrictions of the Anonymous Monk

by toolic (Bishop)
on Jan 31, 2011 at 17:57 UTC ( [id://885322]=monkdiscuss: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Here is a summary of actions the Anonymous Monk can not do which a user with an account can do. As an Anonymous Monk, you can not:
  • update your own post (to fix mistakes, add info, etc.)
  • up-vote or down-vote nodes
  • customize your settings (display settings, nodelet settings, etc.), which are far too numerous to list here.
  • "Check for newer nodes" in Recently Active Threads or Newest Nodes
  • post to the ChatterBox
  • post to the Q&A section (either a Question or an Answer)
  • post to the Tutorials section
  • post to the Book or Module Reviews section
  • be eligible to join groups
  • be notified of new changes to PerlMonks via Tidings
  • send and receive private messages (exception)
  • edit your home node
  • edit your scratchpad
  • moderate or consider nodes
  • search for your old nodes (as distinguished from all other Anonymous Monk posts)
  • view the reputation (and vote spread) of your own nodes
  • view Worst Nodes
  • view the contents of reaped nodes
  • view the scratchpads of new monks (Level 3 and below)
  • read/edit some of the wikis on the site (see jdporter's reply for details)

(Some of the above require a registered user to first attain certain privileges.)

I plan to refer to this list to remind myself of an Anonymous Monk's limitations.


Update: refined due to jdporter's 1st and 3rd replies, and ambrus's reply.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Restrictions of the Anonymous Monk
by Old_Gray_Bear (Bishop) on Jan 31, 2011 at 19:04 UTC
    The Monastery needs some way to set up the diamond-inheritance pattern for commentary -- this is a comment responding to several nodes that have appeared in the past few days....

    First of all -- Thanks toolic, for posting this reminder of what the Anonymous Monk can/can't do.

    Secondly -- Thanks to jim and The Nameless One for bringing up various "oddities" about the behavior of the Anonymous Monk. (RFC: Purpose of Robes in Monasteries and Anonymous Monk?)

    Thirdly -- Thanks to ww who started the most recent discussion about the Voting System. (Thoughtless voting?)

    Sometimes in the discussions about XP and Anonymity and such, an important point about how the Monastery uses the roles and 'scoring' gets over-looked. The actual purpose of the various Classes of Monks and the Rating System is to hook in to one of the most deeply rooted of Human emotional drives -- The Urge For Competition.

    This is not competition between myself and my Brethren and Sistren, it is a competition me and the Monastery, to improve the quality of life for all Monks.

    I want to read good posts. I use my daily votes to encourage well written nodes. A well written, cogent, argument will get my approval every time, even if I disagree with the point being made. I also up-vote nodes that may in themselves be not that good, but generated an informative discussion thread. I try encourage the overall general information level in the Monastery. I want Perl Monks to continue to be the place people go to talk/learn/practice Perl in all of its various manifestations. (I am just waiting up up-vote a good discussion about the benefits of Perl 3.0 vis-a-vis Perl 2.x, by the way....)

    I do not post often. When I do post, it is because I care about the topic. I review my postings from time to time to see which ones 'struck a nerve' with other Monks. Which postings generated the most interest (as measured by the XP rating). Often I find that there are other people who are passionate about the same things I am (or at least, they are willing to (anonymously) click a check-box). Just as often I find out that I an full of soup -- I am the only person in this milieu who is really bugged by the use of 'data' in the singular ('this data shows ...'), for example.

    This is how I compete with myself inside the Monastery. I ask myself: am I writing more and better nodes as I grow older? Does it seem that there are more Monks that think what I write is useful? Have I been generating the kinds of discussion threads that I would like to read?

    There is a saying popular in one of my other interest groups --

    "We are all Students here".
    As a Student Monk, I continually strive to improve myself and the House I live in.

    ----
    I Go Back to Sleep, Now.

    OGB

      As are most higher mammals, it seems Perl monks are social creatures by nature. It is, then, suitable to say that the social group competes for resources, including members, against other social groups in similar niches. I see node reputation as one of the traits evolved that has survival benefits for this group. I think the Anonymous Monk helps in some ways, too. Thankfully, social evolutions don't necessarily happen purely by random.

Re: Restrictions of the Anonymous Monk
by jdporter (Paladin) on Feb 01, 2011 at 03:20 UTC

    Awesome work, toolic+++++++++!!!

    One interesting little exception worth noting, however...

    • send and receive private messages

    Anonymous Monks can in fact send private messages to the gods via the facility in Retrieving a forgotten username or password. (It's for getting help resolving login issues.)

    Also, I think this is not quite right:

    • search for your old nodes

    Non-logged-in users (that is, Anonymous Monk) can indeed search for posts by Anonymous Monk. In the other items, "you" refers specifically to the collective Anonymous Monk, so it would here as well.

    What is the sound of Windows? Is it not the sound of a wall upon which people have smashed their heads... all the way through?
      I was hoping experienced monks, like you, would help me more clearly define these actions. I had no idea about the private message capability.

      Regarding searching for old nodes, what you said is what I meant to say. If I don't login and then post something, and you don't login and then post something, there is no way to distiguish the author of your post from the author of my post. Both posts are from the same author, namely Anonymous Monk.

      I will update the OP (somehow) using the information you provided.

      Thanks.

Re: Restrictions of the Anonymous Monk
by ambrus (Abbot) on Feb 01, 2011 at 08:25 UTC

    Anonymous Monk also cannot

    • Gain or lose XP.
    • View the contents of reaped nodes.
    • View the contents of an older revision of a sitefaqlet or sitedoclet (though he still can list the dates of older revisions with ;displaytype=edithistory).
    • Automatically see their own unapproved posts in section pages (I think).
    • (Update) be here, as in update the Last Here time on their homenode or appear in the Other Users list.
    • (Update) View the reputation (and vote spread) of their own nodes.
    • (Update) Show up on Monks by Writeup Count.
      Thanks. I updated the OP.
      View the contents of an older revision of a sitefaqlet or sitedoclet (though he still can list the dates of older revisions with ;displayty +pe=edithistory).
      I'm not sure what that means. I looks like it's related to settings, which AM can not change. If not, please show me how to navigate to it.
      as in update the Last Here time on their homenode
      Doesn't that fall into the "edit your home node" category?
        as in update the Last Here time on their homenode
        Doesn't that fall into the "edit your home node" category?

        No, it doesn't. The "Last Here" time is automatically updated whenever you load any page, and it's what makes you show up in the Other Users list. You don't edit it directly.

        View the contents of an older revision of a sitefaqlet or sitedoclet (though he still can list the dates of older revisions with ;displaytype=edithistory).
        I'm not sure what that means. I looks like it's related to settings, which AM can not change. If not, please show me how to navigate to it.

        Let me explain.

        We have nodes documenting the Perlmonks site, most of which are linked from the PerlMonks FAQ (which is where the "Need Help??" link goes), but they're often linked from other places too. These nodes are of type sitedoclet (most of them at least), are searchable by Super Search under the codename "Monk Help", and maintained by the SiteDocClan.

        When such a node is edited, the date and full content of older revision is saved. It is these older revisions I'm talking about.

        Let's see an example. Take a sitedoclet, such as What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information?. If you view this node with the "edithistory" displaytype, such as ?node=43037;displaytype=edithistory, you'll see a table, in which each row represents an older state of this documentation. In each row there is listed a unique identifier for this edit (which is not a node id btw), the editor, and the time of that edit. For example, one row says

        40329 jdporter doctext 2009-05-19 18:22

        If you follow the link on the number 40329 there, you get to see the HTML source (with some perlmonks specific markup like brackets and code tags) of sitedoclet just after that edit, which is an older state of this document. This view also shows the differences between this edit and the previous one shown in colors.

        Now Anonymous Monk can load the page that lists the id numbers and authors and dates of the edits, but he can't view the contents of the individual edits.

Re: Restrictions of the Anonymous Monk
by jdporter (Paladin) on Feb 01, 2011 at 15:37 UTC
      o read/edit some of the wikis on the site.* o post or update a book review or module review. o see node reps in the results of Perl Monks User Search.
      I updated the OP and added these 3 items (linking to your node for the wikis). I used ambrus' wording for the node rep.
      o change the interval of Recently Updated Home Nodes from the default +30 days. o appear in Monks Last Here.
      I had never seen those before (or the wikis either). How would I navigate to those? Are they buried in non-default settings?
      o use keywords. Both the Keyword Nodelet and Keyword Search are disabl +ed for Anonymous Monk.
      I didn't include that because it is in my "too many settings to mention for a summary" clause :)

      Thanks again.

        How would I navigate to those?

        The usual way is to scroll to the very bottom of Newest Nodes, where you see:
        "Or maybe you want to see Recently Updated Home Nodes".

        Monks Last Here appears to be an "orphan", so I probably shouldn't have mentioned it. ;-)

        use keywords. Both the Keyword Nodelet and Keyword Search are disabled for Anonymous Monk.
        I didn't include that because it is in my "too many settings to mention for a summary" clause :)

        Well, it's true that AnonyMonk can't ever see the Keyword Nodelet because he can't enable it in Nodelet Settings; but access to Keyword Search is not controlled by settings, so I don't think it falls under that clause. (Also, fwiw, it's possible — for sufficiently savvy AnonyMonks — to POST just like the form found in the Keyword Nodelet even without the nodelet itself; so to protect against this potential avenue for abuse, Anonymous Monk is also forbidden in the form handler code. This also falls outside Settings control, strictly speaking. In a nutshell: There's more to Keywords than just enabling the nodelet.)

        What is the sound of Windows? Is it not the sound of a wall upon which people have smashed their heads... all the way through?
Re: Restrictions of the Anonymous Monk
by jdporter (Paladin) on Feb 01, 2011 at 13:51 UTC

    I'm a little confused by this one:

    • be notified of new changes to PerlMonks via Tidings

    How is the situation different for Anonymous Monk vs. logged-in monks?

    What is the sound of Windows? Is it not the sound of a wall upon which people have smashed their heads... all the way through?
      When I login (as toolic), if there has been a posting to Tidings since my last login, I will see an asterisk in the "Information" nodelet. It looks something like this...
      What's New at PerlMonks (*)
      If I am not logged in, I will not see that asterisk.

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