An Anonymous Forum

Obviously some people here are never going to understand but it's quite simple really. There are spammers and activists alike that want anonymity because they feel it's their way to try and push their point, when in reality if they want to be taken seriously they are going to have to stand their ground and be quite open about who they are. (After all politicians are public, you couldn't have shadow politicians that anonymously make their thoughts known and then press them on the public. That would be the route of a Dictatorship)

The site has some simplified rules that are applied, most of them are to deal with some of the criminal problems that would arise if everything was to be left unchecked. An anonymous forum would in certain respects undermine those rules which again is the reason that it will more than likely not take place no matter what "anonymous polls" suggest.

In regards to Zap, It's already been concluded that you're a sock puppet of a member with a history of Dissidency on this forum, I guess you can say it taints any argument that you make.

 

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Imagine someone like albertchong discussing his bullshit with himself making himself look better. People would be far more likely to blindly believe him if they thought that multiple people were in agreement.

 

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And yet, voting for politicians is a private matter. I think there are advantages to having a bit of both, which, I'm sure, is why people frequently don't create user names that are identical to their real ones.

Recently I've realized that the 'no personal attacks' rule is enforced rarely, so I'm guessing that's not really a rule, but more something of moderator caprice which they can decide upon at their leisure. I'm not sure what you mean by criminal problems though.

The idea that I had for an anonymous forum would be anonymous in some ways, but with some restrictions as well- if someone were found to be breaking the forum rules, their true identity could be checked by a moderator and their registered sock and even the actual user if their offense was grave enough, could be sanctioned.

I've been booted from some forums myself, so I suppose I could be considered a dissident of sorts. However, I have never returned as a sock, as I don't really like playing cat and mouse much. It may well be that Zap intended to do the anonymous forum as a way to circumvent his banning, but I believe that creating a forum in the way I suggested wouldn't give him this opportunity.

 

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Personally, I don't care if you put up a gaggle of people who care little for actually backing up their case; they fall like a stack of dominos to someone who can discern the difference between someone who actually has evidence to back up their case and someone who doesn't. Take the other thread going on in this forum, for instance ;-).

 

I don't think that this is so much the objection, but it is a valid point.

We get enough crackpots through here, there's no need to take away the possibility of any retribution.

RE Zap and the poll results: Stryder is 100% correct on this one. The poll is anonymous, and Zap is a sock. What possible legitimacy can the results have? A member who has already registered ONE sock puppet proves a point by a popular vote at a place where registering sock puppets is easy? Elections in Zimbabwe have more credibility.

 

And you've never wondered why that was. Sure the argument could be used that to know someone's vote could mean that some people could abuse someone for voting for a person they wouldn't have choosen, however the argument was never made by a voter. It was put forwards by politicians acting as law makers, not with the public's interest at heart but their own seat in power. I mean how can you prove a votes been rigged if it's anonymous?

It's difficult to enforce a rule which is often abused. Some people are obvious abusers at name calling, while others are obvious abusers of playing the victim. When you have both going on, it truly blur's the line between who is really abused and who is just playing the victim, making it very difficult to moderate.

People are so frickin' paranoid. I can understand why people want to be anonymous if they want to share porn/warez links (incidentally not allowed on this site), or talk about what crimes they've committed under the nose of authorities, but if you are not doing any of those things and being a "law abiding citizen", why bother?

Let's just say the future of the internet is looking towards not being anonymous. It's looking towards where webmaster's could potentially be required by law to keep records on every user, which in turn such records will also be kept via government funded archiving system. (If they don't tally, or a webmaster claims the information is not available there could be legal ramifications)

Running systems that go against those ideologies is great if you happen to be an activist site, but that something sciforums has never claimed to be.

It's not so much that Zap's the problem, even if his "wingest" views surface occasionally.

It's more down to the number of ex-members that have it in for this site, We know who they are, we know which other places they frequent, sometimes we even get to see the plan's they form. (don't think that we are great detectives, it's just indexing is very extensive nowadays by the larger Search "farms") Most of them are just incited to riot, without even know what they really are rioting about.

Giving them a place to wander into would be a problem. Perhaps we could look into a method to "registering other username's on a single account". They could be blocked from posting in the same thread's or voting on the same poll. However that will require some scripting and a future site revamp to work in, unfortunately that's not my call though, that's left to those "upstairs" to make the decisions.

 

I believed I had the answer. You mention it in your next sentence....

A few things:
1- You posit an interesting theory, but do you have any evidence that it was done in the interest of the law makers instead of the public?

2- There are ways to tell if there has been voter fraud even if the vote is anonymous, but I personally believe that -both- of the elections wherein Bush supposedly 'won' were frauds. I believe that people have begun to wise up to their tactics, however.

I think the main problem is that what is and isn't abuse is too vaguely defined. Certain words should be censured if used to describe a person and those words should be known. I've already created a list that I think is relatively good- words like: moron, stupid, idiot, and ofcourse anything with the f word in it. The list can be expanded, and enforcement of new words can perhaps be done a day after its inception.

On your second point, I believe you are implying that I have been 'playing' the victim. If this is indeed the case, I would be interested in why you think it is somehow an act.

Other then not wanting to put in one's legal name for a user name (few people do), I'm not sure paranoia is such a factor here...

So you can play WhoAmI?, but don't have to wait your turn, perhaps. I certainly enjoyed my time as WhoAmI? anyway.

Under my system, you would still be able to find out what user had the registered sock puppet if required. The title "registered" says it all.

 

I probably should have put my version of 'registered sock puppet' this way. It's what I meant all along

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. I also think that one's alternate name should perhaps only be allowed in one forum, and in that forum, only the alternate name could post- because while it's true that 2 banal personalities are generally just as unpersuasive as one, I must admit that it really could get to be annoying (I guess I've given this issue a bit more thought). This isn't like an online game, where you can have a tank character for taking the damage, a damage character for delivering said damage and a healing character to heal wounds (I would actually be playing World of Warcraft right now if I hadn't had to download the update- and now it's done

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).

Nods. This is why I was saying that in the end, regardless of how many normal members would like a "WhoAmI?" type anonymous forum -must- have some support from the person or people who can actually code it

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.

 

I'm reposting this because I love myself more than anyone else.

 

I'm going to close the thread. The idea will be taken into consideration I'm sure, however without the software being edited a little, it won't be possible off the bat.