Cre8tive Flow

The recent hubbub (and yes, I am aware I use that word too much and need a synonym… how about brouhahahahahaha?). As I was saying, the recent brouhahahaha over anonymous comments has centred around the supposed damage that comes with anonymous commenting. This sentiment is summed up nicely in the following quote from a recent Washington Post Editorial:

Imagine going to a meeting about school overcrowding in your community. Everybody at the meeting is wearing nametags. You approach a cluster of people where one man is loudly complaining about waste in school spending. “Get rid of the bureaucrats, and then you’ll have money to expand the school,” he says, shaking his finger at the surrounding faces.

You notice his nametag — “anticrat424.”

…In any community in America, if Mr. anticrat424 refused to identify himself, he would be ignored and frozen out of the civic problem-solving process

I object to this analogy for several reasons, which I am going to rant on at length below:

1. The Analogy Is Not Accurate

Comparing blog comments or online discussions to a formal meeting, and arguing that commenting on a blog is like a “civic problem-solving process” is giving blogs far too much credit. Far from a formal meeting where important stuff happens, thus requiring the naming of names, blogs and forums are more like a pub.

IMHO, no one in their right mind would ever demand that someone standing up and making stupid comments in a pub reveal their identity. Far from it. All people are likely to do is tell the clown to shut up, and let the rest of us get back to the job at hand.

This exact scenario happened to me once when an Irishman (whose name I appropriately never knew) stood up in a Sydney pub and started ranting about the IRA. I can assure you, no one wanted to know his name that night, and I don’t think he could remember in any case.

My point is that far from being a serious, important, decision making body politic, the blogosphere (or whatever Web 2.0 buzzword we are bandying about today for the groups that congregate online) is just a bunch of random conversations in a pub like environment and, as a mate of mine is fond of saying, the only reason you need to know someone’s name at a pub is if you want to “get into their pants”

2. There Is No Definition of “Not Anonymous”

Many people know me by my stupid online handle (projectphp). I foolishly signed up to a forum using this one day, thinking I wouldn’t get involved for long, and I am stuck with it now.

So am I anonymous? I often don’t reveal much about myself when I post online, and yet I would argue I am far from anonymous.

Which leads inevitably to the question: where does anonymity end? With a name? An address? A DOB? Knowing which side I dress on? Where?

Without a clearly defined argument for what “not anonymous” actually is, I find it a rather spurious argument to make that anonymous is not the ideal solution. If you want change, the burden of proof is on you to convince me why a change to something defined and tangible is preferable. Rarely, if ever, is such a definition supplied.

3. Who Watches The Watchers?

If we start being identifiable online, who watches the gate keepers of this data? Orwell was, no doubt, a genius, and the central themes of 1984, the control of data and too much “openness”, are things we need to be constantly concerned with. Solving the anonymous threats problem, which lets be honest is pretty isolated, by taking away my right to privacy, and collating the sort of details about me that are ideal for a stalker, doesn’t seem to me to be a terribly good solution.

4. The Argument Presupposes That People Are Right, Not Ideas

Why is knowing someone’s name important at all, even in the example given in the Washington post? If the man stood up and said “spending $240 million to build a bridge to an island with 50 people is a waste of tax payers money” (what was that Alaskan Senators name?), would his anonymity make the argument false?

We live in worrying times, in which people are trusted more than the ideas they speak. Justice is supposed to be blind, and so really should every decision be. A well structured argument should, independent of the person making it, either stand or fall on its own merits, not on the reputation of the person making the argument.

This ideal, in my opinion, makes anonymity irrelevant in the vast majority of discussions.

5. The Argument Is Just Plain Wrong - And I Am Living, Breathing Proof

Anonymity, far from encouraging nastiness, overwhelmingly encourages participation. As I said previously, I have a stupid handle. I have it because I signed up anonymously to ask a question. Would I have got involved online if the place I posted at (long since forgotten) had required my shoe size to sign up? Probably not, and if I had never sipped the “forum drug”, I would most probably not be where I am now (that might be a good thing, but is really a separate argument altogether).

6. The Disclaimer Effect

I should probably disclaimer this post with “the views of this article are solely those of the poster and not representative blah blah blah”, but such disclaimers exist not to protect or help people, but to cover one’s arse. Apparently, US mattresses have a label that can not be removed “under punishment of law”, and such things only exist because of some long forgotten, arcane ruling.

It would be sad if the Internet, like the real world, was forced into a babying of people in a failed attempt to “protect” them from themselves. If you can’t factor in anonymity when assessing an online comment, I think you have bigger issues to deal with

Rather than disclaimers, codes of ethics and all that bogus nonsense, what we need is common sense. You know, the kind that knows when a comment is rude, insulting and nasty and ignores it.

7. It Is being Made By Vested Interests

Old media is dying. Slowly. Painfully. Inevitably.

The Old Media model, an autocratic, top down lecturing style, is something that people are moving away from. People today want to be freed to interact with information on a more personal, conversational level, and this threatens the old world model.
And the barriers to entry are falling. With just an internet connection, you to can have a Blog. Monthly magazines, heck, even daily newspapers, are no longer the best we can hope for. Nowadays, with an RSS reader, I can read hundreds of articles a day on all manner of topics, and Old Media is scared.

So they do what all bested interested do: they increase the FUD, and point to the problems of anonymity. I am sure they will, eventually, raise national security as concern.

I am not much for conspiracy theories, but this one makes too much sense.

So I vote that we all continue to allow anonymous comments, and resist any attempt by Old Media to tell us how we should do what we do.