16
votes
Suggestion: Special anonymous group
I think it would be fun to have an ~anon group, with the feature that all topics and replies are shown as being posted by 'anonymous'. It might need more active moderation than other ~groups though, and it would need to develop its own identity so it isn't just an anonymous replica of the rest of ~s.
@deimos has already talked about a potential “throwaway” comment/submission feature and allowing people to “disassociate” themselves from previously made comments/submissions, removing their username but leaving the substance of them intact, instead of only a full deletion option like on reddit.
However in order to prevent abuse these wouldn’t be entirely anonymous and likely still tied to your account through a pseudorandomly generated ID#, for accountability’s sake. So if you said something against ~ site/group policy (e.g. hate speech/asshole behavior) and people reported it, an admin (or other high trust users in that group) could investigate and take action against the ID# which would then be applied to your account (temp/perm ban from group/site, temp/perm loss of trust/rep, etc). But at least with these mechanics as an option, users could feel more free to discuss sensitive topics and/or deeply personal issues that they don’t want the users at large or any friends/family who know their account name to associate with them directly.
IMO, it’s a nice compromise between full privacy/anonymity, which is an unmitigated disaster in terms of its effects on the culture of every social site that allows it, and trust+accountability which ~ is trying to foster.
I like this idea very much.
My personal use case for it, is that I've been working on being more authentic and sharing even personal things more freely. I was just thinking about sharing my personal story here on ~s but unfortunately there are bits that need to not be so easily connected to my username. (It's about protecting other people, not so much about protecting myself.)
So it would be great to have very personal discussions but there needs to be a way to make sure the wrong person doesn't stumble upon them. If the text is not linked to any account (from a visitor's point of view, it's fine if admins can see the link), then fudging the details of the story a bit would be enough to protect the innocent so to speak.
Interesting idea. What sort of topics and discussions do you envision there? Would it serve as a possible helpline/support sort of?
Personally I'm in favor of anonymity generally, since I think it can improve internet discussion. But specifically for ~s, it could be used for /r/relationships or /r/confessions type posts where the topic creator might not want whatever they say to be tied back to their main ~s identity. It could also be used for /r/gonewild type posting, if @deimos decides to allow that. And honestly I would enjoy just having a ~anon.memes group because, well, I'm trash :P
I think @Deimos is leaning against having porn ~s, although user OC porn might be a different story.
I like the idea of OC porn because I've seen great communities brought together by it
I have to disagree but I appreciate your reply :)
The issue with porn seems to be that the content in an of itself can be low quality that doesn't foster discussion. Although good communities and discussions can happen around that content in general. If tildes wants to improve discussions I think it needs to find a way for people to post, vote on, and generally consume low-value content while encouraging and creating spaces for that content to be talked about. Basically separating content from discussion, but with the idea that discussion relies on discovering the content.
I think this kind of thing applies to porn, memes, and aww-like content.
I'd like to voice my initial support for an anonymous section of tildes. I'll be the first to admit that anonymity comes with significant drawbacks, but it also enables honesty. There's a certain rawness to anonymity and I think most readers appreciate what I'm talking about. It means different things to different people, but almost everyone has experienced a need to become anonymous but couldn't. In some ways anonymity can bring us closer and ultimately I think it has merit on its own.
Great idea!