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624. Angel-Five - 2/7/2000 10:16:43 AM Let me tell you what I DO think your position is, Indiana. After all, you're accusing me of putting words in your mouth instead of taking what you've said and asking for clarification, so I might as well do it, no?
I think that for you the cloak of anonymity is valuable because it allows you to be deliberately provocative. It allowed you to do that bullshine one-man Amos and Andy act you used to favor, and it allows you now to say things as Indiana Jones that are at once much more reasonable, yet still provocative enough that you wouldn't want to stand on your front porch, or the NY subway, and shout them. Am I somewhere close to truth with that guess? Because if so, then I'd say that that ability is something I also value. I just don't value it so much that I'm not willing to try something new. And I guess I'm just sick of all the personal info crap that goes on here and would like to see a reasonable productive end to it. 625. Angel-Five - 2/7/2000 10:30:03 AM "I don't have a real problem with limiting logins to one
per person, although it can't be done in reality."
Square this statement with your position that the mote
should require "real" IDs. I wasn't going to bother answering this, because I've little time for debates where an opponent ducks my questions and refuses to acknowledge my arguments but keeps asking that I answer and acknowledge theirs. But there's no reason not to, really. You can't limit in reality everyone to one login -- at least, not without resorting to prohibitively expensive measures. And even if you were to use a credit card system, or a background check, or indeed anything short of sending people to scope out every Motier to make sure they're legitimate, 'real' people, there would still be a way for someone determined enough (and imbalanced enough to want to expend the necessary energy to do so) to beat the system and post under a false identity. We aren't the US Government, with billions to spend against computer fraud, we're a bunch of geeks who like to argue and flirt with each other and our central command structure is a few part time volunteers -- so if people can fool the Fed, they sure as fuck can fool us. But that doesn't mean that we can't make it hard enough to do that very few people would ever bother, without expending too much energy in our effort. And if enough people after hearing the arguments for some form of transparency wanted to try it out, I don't see why we shouldn't try it out. Let me be plain. If anything less than a healthy majority of Motiers wanted to be transparent, there'd be little point, in my mind, in trying to be transparent. 626. Indiana Jones - 2/7/2000 11:58:07 AM A5: You specialize in lengthy posts to camouflage a paucity of ideas. It's absurd to say the Mote can't prevent multiple log-ins while arguing the Mote should require a single "real" log-in. If you can't see the inherent contradiction in that argument, there's no helping you. 627. Angel-Five - 2/7/2000 12:17:57 PM And you, my friend, are blowing smoke. If you can't recognize the difference between 'impossible to fully prohibit' and 'possible to prohibit with a reasonable degree of success' then you're being dumb. But you aren't being dumb, are you, Indiana? You're just trying to evade the issue by pretending you don't get what I'm saying, so you don't have to address it. If you don't want to, then don't. But let's not bullshit about how I haven't made good arguments for my case, a good argument against the logic of yours, and suggested means of implementing a solution ... just so you don't have to stand up and debate what is in plain sight in my posts. 628. Angel-Five - 2/7/2000 12:19:59 PM I take it you aren't going to argue with the words I DID put in your mouth? 629. Angel-Five - 2/7/2000 1:59:39 PM Ah, forget about it. If you don't want to step up, don't step up. You don't like the idea of going transparent for your own reasons, and that's fine -- it's also fine that you don't want to discuss my reasons for liking transparency and why I feel they're adequate. We can drop it, if you like. 630. Indiana Jones - 2/7/2000 9:50:15 PM A5 (628): Last night I was reluctant to indulge you in your desire for self-abuse and inordinate bandwidth consumption, so I was content in pointing out the largest hole in your argument. As you seem to be a glutton for punishment, however, let us continue. I responded to your first attempt to put words in my mouth with at least two corrections. You ignored them. Ergo, when you start out saying you're going to put words in my mouth, I see little point in observing what comes after.
Now as to your act of cyber-ventriloquism, if you'd like to post those words in the Inferno, couched something like this: "Indy likes anonymity so he can do an Amos and Andy act," do so. I may respond. In the context of a policies debate on whether everyone should be required to reveal his or her true indentity, they are a red herring ad hominem undeserving of response. 631. Indiana Jones - 2/7/2000 9:50:22 PM "If you can't recognize the difference between 'impossible to fully prohibit' and 'possible to prohibit with a reasonable degree of success' then you're being dumb."
Return for a moment to your original premise. Something like, the current system requires too much hassle and is turning people off. Correct?
You've described one way in which your idea would work: members give their credit card numbers, incur a $5 charge, the charge is subsequently reimbursed. Hmm...which is more of a hassle? Which has a greater chance of turning people off?
Current system: need to have a real email and you receive a good faith effort to protect your privacy. New system: Mote gets your credit card number, everyone knows who you are, Mote staff has to maintain an accounting/reimbursement system.
Tough choice.
The new system requires much more work from the staff (who you describe as over-worked) and intimidates some people from posting. If adopted, instead of having the rare complaint about someone outing personal information, it will happen all the time. I think you are very aware of a couple of instances of that happening on TT. For example, people threatened with having their cable modems pulled, employers notified, etc.?
Further, requiring actual IDs will lead to complaints. "I looked up so-and-so, and I can't find that name anywhere." Instead of the rare complaint now when personal info is outed, you'll have that occurring more often and the veracity of IDs being questioned.
If you'd like, I can beat some of your ancillary arguments about the head just as thoroughly. 632. Indiana Jones - 2/7/2000 9:50:27 PM Finally, an analogy: You live in a frontier town in which Indian raids are frequent and outlaws numerous. The sheriff says he can't protect you, but he'd like all law-abiding citizens to turn in their guns and start leaving their doors unlocked (the latter to facilitate "making sure you're alright"). Do you do it? 633. Angel-Five - 2/8/2000 2:57:14 AM Indiana, your argument would make more sense if you could prove that the sort of witch-hunting you describe would actually take place. In the only real-name community I've been a part of, it never did. Your assertion that the Mote staff would have to handle the data is nonsensical, as tha majority of people who accept credit card traffic online hire an established, trustworthy third party to handle that data, in exchange for a small percentage of the receipts. That's the way it would work for us -- an infinitesimal charge paid out to a third party who would relay us a list of members, we would give a password, and someone would be in under their real name. Bingo. A far cry from the sort of ridiclouous slippery slope crap you just churned out. I would add that most of the people here have already paid once if not twice to remain a part of this community. 634. Angel-Five - 2/8/2000 3:02:00 AM BTW: I logged onto TT for the first time in months last night, and I'd go there a few times a week before to visit a handful of old threads. I haven't updated my subscription list since the late fall. What are you talking about there? And your frontier town analogy becomes silly the moment you acknowledge that there are people who very visibly make a point of unlocking their front door and turning in their guns... and nothing happens to you. Have you noticed that, Indiana? Strange, isn't it? 635. Indiana Jones - 2/8/2000 5:51:35 AM "In the only real-name community I've been a part of, it never did."
What? The Well again? Isn't that also a password-protected community, without lurkers? Hard for anyone from outside to judge what goes on there. Look at TableTalk. Haven't you seen the ribbing that RS has received? Did you see what happened to Audrey Regan? Read the threads in which posters lament again and again that they started out posting with their real names. More than one person on TableTalk has lost a job or been threatened with job loss because people tracked down such information.
"Your assertion that the Mote staff would have to handle the data is nonsensical, as tha majority of people who accept credit card traffic online hire an established, trustworthy third party to handle that data."
No, your original plan stated that the nominal charge would be refunded. So of course I assumed our volunteer staff would have to handle it--hardly "nonsensical," given the parameters you described. Is being a free site now another way the Mote "turns posters off"?
"And your frontier town analogy becomes silly the moment you acknowledge that there are people who very visibly make a point of unlocking their front door and turning in their guns."
Have you ever heard of the Quakers? Pacifists, they existed in the Old West, too, but even Grace Kelly learned you need a gunman once in a while. As Jack Crabbe said in Little Big Man, "The lambs will lie down with the lions--as long as you keep adding a few fresh lambs every now and then."
You want to be a lamb, go right ahead. Just don't ask me to lie down with you. 636. Indiana Jones - 2/8/2000 5:51:54 AM "BTW: I logged onto TT for the first time in months last night, and I'd go there a few times a week before to visit a handful of old threads. I haven't updated my subscription list since the late fall. What are you talking about there?"
Oh, there's a poster there goes by the handle of D H100 who makes threatening other people with real-life consequences a hobby. Fancies himself a real Torquemada.
BTW, it's bizarre you revisit both TableTalk and the Mote after a lengthy "absence," and the first thing you do is start saying we need to change policies: that the current way of doing things is turning people off.
Settle in a bit. Maybe you need to appreciate how the place is doing before deciding you know best how to "fix" it. 637. Angel-Five - 2/8/2000 6:08:32 AM Bizarre? I don't know, Indiana. When I left people were bitching about the way privacy rules were being treated. When I returned one of the first things I saw was a privacy debate. It gets old after a while. I don't know why you put absence in quotes, but that combined with your inference that I know what's been going on in TT leads me to believe you think I haven't been gone at all. Is that the case, mon ami? Anyway, I don't know why you bring up TT as an example of why real identity communities won't work, as TT isn't a real identity community. I'll have to take your word about people in TT lamenting that they used their real names and that this DH1000 (I think I do remember that name, but none of the threat stuff you're talking about) is trying to target them. But you might as well quote the problems encountered in an AOL chat room and try to relate them to what might happen here should we try transparency. It is, as you said, an apples and oranges debate because all the examples you mention of things that can go wrong are based in a non-transparent community. So your objection to transparency is no longer about the wonderful benefits of anonymity but rather centering upon two things -- you don't think transparency is feasible to implement, and you're worried about some Internet 'lion' eating you up? IS that a fair characterization of what you've said? 638. Angel-Five - 2/8/2000 6:43:28 AM I guess part of my thinking is this: if everyone's real name is attached to what they say within the Mote, some people might think a little more about what they say, and we'd have a lot less stuff going on that would ever inspire someone to retaliate against a poster personally. Think about it. If you, Indiana Jones are aware that people will be able to connect your words to your IRL identity, are you going to make a practice of wandering around pissing in everyone's Wheaties? No. Is it people that wander around pissing in everyone's cereal that makes the Mote an attractive place? No, I'd guess the opposite. Are you saying that you'd have nothing worthwhile to say if you had to worry about people knowing it was You who said it? I don't think so. I hope not. What do you think that sort of community would be like, Indiana, honestly? 639. Indiana Jones - 2/8/2000 10:55:26 AM "I don't know why you bring up TT as an example of why real identity communities won't work."
Because those who chose to use real identities at TT have for the most part regretted it. As for a totally "real" community, you've already conceded that such a community is impossible. (By the way, I checked the Well's rules and even it allows fake IDs with the sysop's approval. In any case, if the Well is your ideal community, you should help build it up by posting there, rather than its competition. I like the Mote and have discovered it takes a lot of time and effort to do a good job as citizen of one online community.)
"So your objection to transparency is no longer about the wonderful benefits of anonymity but rather centering upon two things."
No, I still maintain that anonymity has its advantages for the kind of debate we have here. There is one kind of conversation that occurs when friends get together among themselves in a living room; there's another that occurs when people write signed letters to the editor in their local newspapers. This situation isn't totally analogous to either...more a group of friends discussing but unaware of who may be listening in. Anonymity allows openness that might not otherwise occur.
I noticed you participated in the debate with RustlerPike in International. Do you think it would be wise for Rustler to say those things with his real name attached? I think not. Does that invalidate them? No--it's helpful from time to time to see what people really think when they aren't constrained by the normal "correctness" of the masses.
Before you continue your assault on the "worthiness" of ideas expressed anonymously you might check into the history of the Federalist Papers. 640. Indiana Jones - 2/8/2000 10:55:33 AM As a community policy, of course, anonymity is either good or bad regardless of one person's individual prejudice, but since you continue to ascribe hidden motives to me, I would like to point out the following: You originally said you wanted the policy changed because it was too much of a hassle and turned people off. It has become clear, however, that the system you envision would, in fact, be much more of a hassle and far likelier to turn people off.
So instead your new reason (and I think your true reason) you state thusly, "If everyone's real name is attached to what they say within the Mote, some people might think a little more about what they say, and we'd have a lot less stuff going on that would ever inspire someone to retaliate against a poster personally."
Which is in fact, what I've argued all along: You desire to intimidate speech through the threat of real-world consequences.
And with that, I think you have achieved your magical state of "transparency." 641. Angel-Five - 2/8/2000 11:47:56 AM If that's what you think, I won't dissuade you by reiterating my position, I imagine. You say You desire
to intimidate speech through the threat of real-world
consequences. like some demogogue thumping a table, like it's a brand new thing, and your choice of words is telling. I don't want to intimidate anything. It's just that so much crap gets slung here and in other communities simply because no one's name is associated with it. I'm not talking about people getting beat with a baseball bat because they say bigoted things, I'm just talking about people here who I know would never be as subversive and needlessly antagonistic if there was a chance that people who knew them would be able to see their name next to the crap they say anonymously. And, really, it's not as though we'd be depriving people of the only chance they had to express their views anonymously by going transparent. Search on discussion forums and get back to me when you get tired of clicking on 'Next 10', Indiana. And don't start about the Federalist Papers. It wasn't exactly as though no one had any idea who was writing them at the time. Bring up Primary Colors next, why don't you? Yes, I do imagine that it would take some work to reach a transparent community level, which is why I made it a point several times that it would not be worthwhile unless a good majority of Motiers wanted to try it, yes? This is a very bright community, and it would be interesting to see what all we could do with it if the community were willing. 642. Angel-Five - 2/8/2000 11:50:25 AM And you didn't answer my question, Indiana. The one about 'absence'. These bullshit games have little interest to me; if you have something to ask, ask it, don't backpedal away from it. 643. CalGal - 2/13/2000 2:11:02 PM The problem is that a lot of people also seem to highly prize our ability to come in here and do and say things that they don't want anyone to ever be able to link to their IRL identities, and by definition free speech and the sort of censorship necessary to maintain this anonymity aren't compatible.
There is nothing to indicate that a preference for online privacy means that people don't want anyone to be able to link to their IRL identies. What it does mean is that they don't want everyone having that link, especially since everyone can be passers by, lurking psychopaths, sickos, angry violent folks, and so on. To me, putting my name online is akin to putting my name and phone number on a flyer and sticking it in mailboxes. Bleah.
Some people do have a desire to keep their opinions secure from their RL employment, and I see nothing inherently wrong with that.
Online has risks that aren't part of everyday RL interaction. One is that you haven't the same control over who you express your words to--once you post it, it is there forever. You have no control over your audience. It makes sense, therefore, to want extra control over your identity. IRL, it's reversed. You have greater control over your audience and less control over who knows your identity.
THe second risk is that you don't have the identification touchstones that you have IRL. You can't see who you're responding to, can't hear their voice. Allowing multiple ids gives people the ability to hide their online identity from people who know them online, and that just strikes me as an entirely different thing. In fact, the use of multiples allows people to do exactly what Angel thinks is done by the use of monikers--it enables people to escape the normal baggage that comes with regular communication in a way that violates normal expectations. Not everyone who uses multiples has this motive, of course.
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