Comments on: And the real anonymous trolls online are . . .

By: gcrumb

gcrumb — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:22:35 +0000

Heads Up: I just submitted a link to this column to slashdot.

Nice bit of reporting. I think people should take note.

Ta!

By: loki der quaeler

loki der quaeler — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:05:53 +0000

I grok the notion that we forever need an anonymous outlet for people, who would otherwise suffer punishment for sounding the call, to raise an alarm. This aside, it really seems that the role of ‘forum for the oppressed alarm raisers’ does not seem to be one of the design roles of Wikipedia – though perhaps it is, in action, for epsilon of the pages. Further fodder for the pointlessness of wiki-anonymity, i’m not sure what anonymity is granted through [ip-logged] anonymous Wikipedia editing that wouldn’t similarly be granted by a person setting up a shell email account at one of the innumerable free domains and using that email address with which to register one’s Wikipedia account – it seems that the level of identity exposure is equivalent.

(Plus, requiring people to spend another few minutes of their life to go through registration steps might put a slow-down on all of the murder-inspiring vandalism that goes on over there.)

((Oh ya, and what’s up with a user not being able to lock their own User: page?))

(((ps. screw flanders)))

By: annalee

annalee — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:53:18 +0000

Merci bien!

By: ilestre

ilestre — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 08:42:19 +0000

Hi ! I just wanted to say I liked your article so much, I’ve just translated it into French here.
You make a very good point, more clearly expressed than any thing I could find already written in French on wikiscanner, that the debate over Internet anonymity is really about the capacity of corporations and governments to control knowledge.