Re^3: Anonymous Monk?

[JavaFan]

But it exists, and it's a way for a poster to understand the authenticity and legitimacy of the comments.

I understand that.

And I claim that "anonymous monk" isn't your problem. It seems you only want to read comments from people who already "have made a name". First time posters, or anyone who hasn't posted enough so their names sticks in your memory have as much authenticity and legitimacy as anonymous monks.

Which actually seem to make you a newbie basher.

And guess what. *Anyone* here, even people with thousands of posts started off as someone with no track record.

If you want to improve your perl skills, judge posts by content. Because even people with well known names, and thousands of posts do from time to time post crap. (Even those who in general post sensible things). And there have been some excellent Anonymous Monk posts.

There's one thing though. There are some people who posts a lot that still manage the time to make long rambling posts. Anonymous Monk usually keeps his posts short.

Also, forcing people to slap names on their posts doesn't create authenticity or legitimacy. Only if you can force them to come back repeatedly, and keep using said name, you have a chance they make a name for themselves. But if they post anonymously because they want to be anonymous, then can use a different name each and every time.

[flexvault]

And I claim that "anonymous monk" isn't your problem . . . Which actually seem to make you a newbie basher.

I don't think my problem with "anonymous monk" has anything to do with "newbie". In fact, I have to correct myself("a newbie"), I do read the original post of a thread ( "anonymous monk" or not ). Allowing a "newbie" or "anonymous monk" or "what-ever" to ask a legitimate question is a valuable part of this forum.

My problem is with the one-liners that cause the discussion to heat up. If you doubt this, just go back and read only the "anonymous monk" posts for this thread. Do you really think that those posts would warm the hearts of a "newbie"?

[JavaFan]

If you doubt this, just go back and read only the "anonymous monk" posts for this thread.

So, you wouldn't be annoyed if the same posts had a name (which may never ever be used again, or ever used before) attached to them?

Or is it the content you don't like?

[luis.roca]

I'm starting to get confused as to where you stand on this JavaFan other than Anonymous Monk and a Guest Monk are virtually the same thing.

Actually I'll correct myself. I don't think it's you or anyone else in particular. I think it's that this thread seems to be unraveling in a number of different directions. (I'm sure I'm partly to blame) I may be the only one but I wish this could get back into focus. — Whatever that focus was in the first place.

I think the first (possibly the most important) question everyone should ask is:
  Is PerlMonks better for having Anonymous Monk?

I find that question hard to answer especially after this thread.

[tye]

Is PerlMonks better for having Anonymous Monk?

I think that is not one of the right questions.

There are plenty of well-justified explanations around as to why anonymous posting is an important feature of the site. Anonymous posting is never going completely away unless things change rather drastically here. So, your proposed question seems quite useless to me.

Whether Anonymous Monk has been a net positive or net negative influence over the history of the site so far, that doesn't actually determine what should be done. It informs whether "completely get rid of Anonymous Monk" would likely be a net improvement. And even that somewhat side-steps things. What replaces AnonyMonk? What can people read anonymously? Can they post without doing standard registration but without using Anonymous Monk?

Now, I believe that there are lots of potential changes to anonymous access that are worth considering (because there are indeed ways that Anonymous Monk contributes to problems and/or could discourage problems). Indeed, I have pushed for and/or implemented changes to anonymous access over the years.

So questions that I find worth asking are things like: Should we post the source IP of anonymous postings? To what benefit? To what detriment? Should we encourage or require attributed posting by "guests"? To what benefit? To what detriment? Should we publish the hashed first 3 octets of IPs for all postings? Why and why not?

But even better than asking such questions, it would be useful for those with the interest to seriously contemplate a set of improvements and figure out what benefits and problems would result and make and justify a very well thought-out proposal.

Trying to ask questions may help inform some future proposal put together by some careful designer. But the discussion will likely be mostly useless until there is a concrete proposal to focus it.

[luis.roca]

tye,

I appreciate your response. It helped clarify my thoughts a lot more as it's probably apparent that I'm thinking out loud a bit. I would love for the result of all this to be a rough bullet list that someone here can take and apply to improving the reasons many Monks like Anonymous Monk while sifting out what a number don't.

A few ideas:

• Only allow signed in users the option of posting as Anonymous Monk while new (non logged in visitors) are simply assigned Guest. No temporary names. It would simply be a way for us, for the most part, to visually distinguish potential new members, keeps the low barrier to entry intact while continuing to allow existing members to post without attribution (and potentially invite retribution).
  * I'm thinking of the submission form where we could have |preview| |create| |post anonymously|


• I'm sure this exists in some form but I think it would help to have some information/education on the purpose of Anonymous Monk. There have been a number of very well written answers just on this thread. Even if we simply take those answers and list them on a single node. In a similar manner that people post links when someone asks a question that's been asked, we could post a link to the node when someone abuses Anonymous Monk. I realize that may not make a difference to the specific person posting but it would be good for others (in particular newer members) IMHO.

I realize this is far from a proposal or even the beginning of one. Hopefully your post invites some well thought out ideas that eventually form something we can move forward on.

[Gavin]

"Now, I believe that there are lots of potential changes to anonymous access that are worth considering"

tye With your inside information would you care to expand on how you think it could be improved.

[FunkyMonk]

Is PerlMonks better for having Anonymous Monk?

Yes. Without a doubt.