14 votes

Topic deleted by author

17 comments

  1. [5]
    cfabbro
    Link
    https://docs.tildes.net/code-of-conduct#multiple-accounts And a relevant discussion related to anonymous posting, as well:...

    Multiple accounts

    You may register and use multiple Tildes accounts, but do not:

    • Use additional accounts for the purpose of deceiving others, such as by replying to your own posts from different accounts to create the illusion of support.
    • Use additional accounts to manipulate site mechanics beyond what you could do with a single account. For example, do not vote multiple times on the same post, or vote on your own posts.

    https://docs.tildes.net/code-of-conduct#multiple-accounts

    And a relevant discussion related to anonymous posting, as well:
    https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/2x3/daily_tildes_discussion_allowing_users_to_post_anonymously

    19 votes
    1. [5]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. [4]
        Amarok
        Link Parent
        We've been discussing support for anon posting since the early days of the slack channel, and every time people are all in favor, just wanting to be careful about how it is implemented. The large...

        We've been discussing support for anon posting since the early days of the slack channel, and every time people are all in favor, just wanting to be careful about how it is implemented. The large number of benefits really make it a must-have feature. I especially love the idea of being able to earn trust as a regular user but do it through anon-only comments (maybe even with an 'always post anonymously' option in user profiles) - that's a huge win for privacy in my opinion, and it also steals one of the primary strengths of the chan boards and makes it a part of Tildes, but better and more nuanced.

        Let me share another use case that's perhaps not so obvious but hints at some tantalizing possibilities. While Tildes is invite only, we can't really do AMAs. If someone noteworthy runs one, and shares the link on twitter, and five thousand people show up to participate, they are out of luck - without accounts, they can't post. Trying to invite everyone prior to the AMA is clearly going to be a mess, it's not really practical, even if the tweet were to share an invite link capable of bringing in five thousand people with a simple click. A lot of people won't register an account just for an AMA, and if they did, and didn't stick around, we're generating tons of inactive accounts, which is just bad housekeeping. Don't saddle your guests with busywork, just let them post.

        If there's a special class of AMA thread that allows for people without accounts to tap into this anonymous posting feature, they can all show up just for that one thread which has the 'public posting' feature enabled, and participate as they like without the hassles of registration. It solves the problem, and it's a one-off special case use of this feature, but tied to the thread, rather than a user's account and reputation. There'd be some kind of pseudo-account created when someone posts, transient and probably tied to the session or a cookie (and the cookie opens the possibility of longer lived temp accounts).

        Now this is where it gets interesting.

        I like the idea of giving nearly everyone on Tildes the power to moderate these threads. The general idea is that the Tildes community itself will handle policing all of the anonymous users, almost as if they are set at a trust level of -1 below even the folks who have just been around a couple of weeks. I think we might be able to use this as a sort of sandbox for testing new/different moderation features safely, too. It'd also be useful to make the activity of moderating and curating a more prominent feature of the site - especially if this works out well, and the threads end up high quality. It'll generate a positive reputation for being a good host to whatever people and topics are worthy of an AMA.

        This could work for more than AMAs, of course - this is basically a 'open for public comment' thread feature. We're taking a risk opening threads for public comment, but if Tildes is going open reg someday, that risk is already a given, so we better learn how to handle it. What better way to do that than have these threads as an ongoing public sandbox for moderation tool development, while also inviting in the good people we find while cleaning up the comments the assholes leave behind? It's like throwing moderation tool development into public overdrive. When we hit on wins, we make them part of the main site toolset. When an experiment goes wrong, no worries, it's just affecting the specific threads where those tools were in use, not the whole site.

        It'd probably be somehow time-limited or have an off switch, so the public comment ability closes down once the thread dies down and the AMA is over. We can't really have it open for public comment eternally, since after a while, not enough curator/mod types will be looking at it to do the work, especially if it's really old and not showing up as a bumped thread in the activity sort for most users. You never know when something will get linked in a hate forum and a pack of rabid dogs will drop by and tear the place up.

        I think we could also play with the concept of upgrading these temp/anon accounts into full users. Give people the ability to somehow send an invite through the course of normal interaction with the thread. Maybe someone makes one hell of an exemplary anon comment, and enough full users give it some kind of 'invite this guy' kudos, so the site presents that person with an invite or signup button. This seems like a never-before-attempted invite mechanism - at least I've never heard of a site operating like this. I'd be curious to read about any that have and see how it went for them.

        Just because Tildes is invite only does not mean invites have to work in the traditional ways. Nobody ever stays invite only long enough to explore the space of what's possible, so advanced invite mechanics don't really get the chance to evolve. I think if we're clever about this, we can perhaps buy ourselves more time and a larger user base without having to become fully open registration. There's also the possibility of an invite system that works so well it makes open reg unnecessary, though I honestly don't know if that's possible. I think if we play with this going forward that'll become clear in time, if it's in the cards.

        That'll give us more time to get the trust system working, and take the pressure off of rushing towards open reg. I'd like open reg to come along when we know we've got a trust system that truly negates the risks of open signup.

        Just something to think about. ;)

        9 votes
        1. [2]
          Comment deleted by author
          Link Parent
          1. Amarok
            Link Parent
            Heh, that's interesting. I never made the connection there because I don't generally think about those places when contemplating forum mechanics. You're right, there's an old tradition there.

            Heh, that's interesting. I never made the connection there because I don't generally think about those places when contemplating forum mechanics. You're right, there's an old tradition there.

            2 votes
        2. [2]
          Algernon_Asimov
          Link Parent
          Surely the solution to this is to not do AMAs until Tildes is public. Why create a feature just to work around a temporary problem which will exist only while the website is in alpha testing?

          While Tildes is invite only, we can't really do AMAs. If someone noteworthy runs one, and shares the link on twitter, and five thousand people show up to participate, they are out of luck - without accounts, they can't post. Trying to invite everyone prior to the AMA is clearly going to be a mess, it's not really practical, even if the tweet were to share an invite link capable of bringing in five thousand people with a simple click. A lot of people won't register an account just for an AMA, and if they did, and didn't stick around, we're generating tons of inactive accounts, which is just bad housekeeping.

          Surely the solution to this is to not do AMAs until Tildes is public. Why create a feature just to work around a temporary problem which will exist only while the website is in alpha testing?

          2 votes
          1. Amarok
            Link Parent
            The anon commenting is coming with or without the AMAs. Adapting it to support an 'open comment' thread is not going to be hard. Building a moderation test toolbox that works on public threads...

            The anon commenting is coming with or without the AMAs. Adapting it to support an 'open comment' thread is not going to be hard. Building a moderation test toolbox that works on public threads will, though. That's far less likely to happen, and I'm not convinced of the value yet, but it does seem like an opportunity to experiment more, and safely, so it's worth mentioning.

            AMAs were reddit's strongest draw, and they are stunningly popular when done right. They are, quite literally, what put and kept reddit on the map. Reddit's new rankings killed them, culminating with the massive row over it in /r/science. I can't think of many (any?) other forums out there that are doing AMAs as a 'thing' anymore either. It's like the concept died off of the web due to a lame reddit change.

            Deimos needs a salary. Ideally, we want to get him a posse of developers too. Them's expensive pets. Tildes will never be able to pay those bills when it's small. I also doubt we're going to crack the trust system that is the solution to eternal september (the undefeated all time champion of forum heat-death) in any kind of quick and effective manner. That's a feature so hard to invent (forget code) that no one has ever done it before. I think it may well take years of study and careful testing to get there, and require a large user base, perhaps in the millions, to fully invent and vet the solution.

            So, my point is, AMAs would start paying the bills, speed up development, and get this show on the road in a big way. It might even kick off the next Digg exodus from reddit to here. That means more users, more donations, and more open source contributions, which means more and better Tildes for everyone, plus the chance to get the subgroups going. That's worth a tweak on a feature that's already being coded for other reasons in my book. I think the use case here for the public comment threads is clear as crystal and has rather strong and obvious benefits for growing the site.

            For myself, I'm not yet convinced open-reg is a good goal, either. The only reason it's a 'goal' is to pay the bills and become more inclusive, really. There may be other ways to get there, and just saying 'open reg is the way' is precluding the exploration of those possibilities. I think it's a nice to have at best, and fatal at worst, unless we find that golden ticket for the trust system. Then open-reg becomes irrelevant. That's how you know it's time to go open reg - when there are no longer any risks.

            Deimos and I have gone back and forth on this before, he knows where I'm coming from here - and it's his decision, not mine, but I will always think about and suggest and explore options like this one.

            4 votes
  2. [5]
    gpl
    (edited )
    Link
    I'm currently not very concerned, but could see it being concerning in the future. Tildes seems to be pretty privacy focused, and having more freedom with anonymity is just another layer of...

    I'm currently not very concerned, but could see it being concerning in the future. Tildes seems to be pretty privacy focused, and having more freedom with anonymity is just another layer of privacy.

    This is related to an idea I had earlier that perhaps deserves its own thread. I wanted to float the idea of user aliases, very similar to how most email services allow you to make an alias. This would have a couple of advantages: first, it provides the extra layer of anonymity that a lot of people use throwaways for and thus less people would be incentivized to actually make alts. Second, all of the user data (to the extent that it is collected) would still be in one place and you wouldn't have ghost accounts that get abandoned after a particularly juicy thread. I imagine this working as a sort of 'hidden filter' applied to posts - that is, if a user posts under one of their aliases and another clicks through to their user page, they are displayed a 'pseudo user page' that only has the posts posted under that alias. This would also allow for things like: disallowing aliased users from replying to their own comments, or voting on their own posts.

    I don't mean to derail this thread at all, I just wanted to float the above idea.

    6 votes
    1. [2]
      Algernon_Asimov
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      One idea that has been discussed before is allowing users to choose to post anonymously. For each topic and comment, you could select an option which would make that topic/comment anonymous. It...

      One idea that has been discussed before is allowing users to choose to post anonymously. For each topic and comment, you could select an option which would make that topic/comment anonymous. It would only work on a one-off basis: you would have to make this selection each time you want to post anonymously (the choice would not persist).

      Would that meet your needs?

      4 votes
      1. gpl
        Link Parent
        Personally, I have no 'needs' to be met. Regardless, I don't know if the two options solve the same problem, or at the very least solve it equivalently. If I had to choose, I think I would err on...

        Personally, I have no 'needs' to be met. Regardless, I don't know if the two options solve the same problem, or at the very least solve it equivalently. If I had to choose, I think I would err on the side of having aliases over completely anonymous posts. The prospect of having some post history available to other users is appealing to me. I personally prefer sites with pseudo-anonymity over truly anonymous (to other users). This is just personal preference. Ultimately, I don't have a dog in this fight.

        2 votes
    2. [2]
      alyaza
      Link Parent
      i think the problem with this is that if you implemented it, it'd probably be easy to accidentally post something under an alias that you didn't intend to (people do this all the time...

      i think the problem with this is that if you implemented it, it'd probably be easy to accidentally post something under an alias that you didn't intend to (people do this all the time multi-accounting on reddit), which can pretty much irrevocably connect you with that alias and render it worthless in one stroke. one of the "benefits" of just making a throwaway is that there's essentially no chance of that unless you explicitly out yourself as such--or at least, the connection is infinitely harder to decisively prove.

      3 votes
      1. gpl
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        This is true, but on Reddit many people use RES to quickly switch between throwaways which in principle is not very different. Similarly with emails - it is 'easy' to accidentally send from the...

        This is true, but on Reddit many people use RES to quickly switch between throwaways which in principle is not very different. Similarly with emails - it is 'easy' to accidentally send from the wrong account if you have them linked in gmail for example. A bit more care on the user's part would certainly be needed, but you should probably be thinking/thoughtful anyway if you're posting something that you wouldn't want associated with 'you'.

        2 votes
  3. Silbern
    Link
    I asked /u/Deimos about this ages ago and his response at the time was essentially "I'm not looking for it, but I'd really prefer if people didn't do it" iirc. As far as I know, nothing's changed...

    I asked /u/Deimos about this ages ago and his response at the time was essentially "I'm not looking for it, but I'd really prefer if people didn't do it" iirc. As far as I know, nothing's changed on that front, although I don't follow development all that closely. If you're looking to change your name or something though, I think he did that on a few occasions for special requests.

    3 votes
  4. [6]
    DevNull
    Link
    I'm very much against it, and having seen the question asked many times over the years have yet to hear a decent reason why they should be allowed to do it. Deleting an account, and creating a new...

    I'm very much against it, and having seen the question asked many times over the years have yet to hear a decent reason why they should be allowed to do it.
    Deleting an account, and creating a new one, is a different story and I have a different opinion on it.

    1 vote
    1. [5]
      lionirdeadman
      Link Parent
      Could we know your reasoning for both of those statements? I'm curious.

      Could we know your reasoning for both of those statements? I'm curious.

      3 votes
      1. [3]
        Deimos
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        This is from the comment they made in the ~tildes.official thread: I think you're focusing on a subset of the reasons, @DevNull (but one that can be a problem). Just as a simple example of why...

        This is from the comment they made in the ~tildes.official thread:

        It all comes down to the reason anyone would want to say something that even they don't consider valuable enough to own up to saying. And it's usually because it's something they know is offensive or just factually wrong.

        I think you're focusing on a subset of the reasons, @DevNull (but one that can be a problem). Just as a simple example of why being able to post anonymously can be valuable, there have been multiple times where I've considered posting a comment about something and decided not to because there would be some sort of impact on someone else that would be identifiable through me.

        As a specific example, in posts related to relationships, I can never say anything about my relationship with my wife unless it's a story I'd be happy to tell our family and friends. Yes, to most people, "Deimos's wife" is just an amorphous concept of "some guy on the internet's wife", but there are a decent number of people that use/read Tildes that know my wife very well.

        To some extent, if there's anyone that knows who a particular user is in real life, that user is in this situation too. Sometimes the user doesn't even realize they need to be careful about what they post, or sometimes someone suddenly figures out who they are after they've already spent years posting.

        If we could guarantee that everyone's real-life identity would always stay totally disconnected from their online one, it probably wouldn't be necessary. But that's not how it is, and being able to post anonymously lets us avoid that connection sometimes.

        8 votes
        1. [2]
          DevNull
          Link Parent
          Oh wow - YES absolutely NOW I'm seeing what folks are talking about! (I feel a little closed-minded and kinda stupid for not realizing this - been a hard week for my brain LOL) I absolutely agree...

          Oh wow - YES absolutely NOW I'm seeing what folks are talking about! (I feel a little closed-minded and kinda stupid for not realizing this - been a hard week for my brain LOL)

          I absolutely agree - sounds like a great idea.
          My only concern is to keep Tildes as awesome as it is now - and not allow anonymous comments of the type seen on many other web-sites.
          Regardless of the decision made - I'll support it absolutely.

          5 votes
          1. Amarok
            Link Parent
            As long as Deimos is BDFL here, that's never a fear. Right now he is the solution to the eternal september problem. (Also see this.) The trick is coding a replacement for him before he burns out...

            My only concern is to keep Tildes as awesome as it is now

            As long as Deimos is BDFL here, that's never a fear. Right now he is the solution to the eternal september problem. (Also see this.) The trick is coding a replacement for him before he burns out or goes broke. :D

            He may be immune to burnout. If developing automod for reddit and then running it for years as a regular user, then working for reddit, and then moving on to start Tildes hasn't burned him out on the strange world of online interactions, I don't think anything can.

            3 votes
      2. DevNull
        Link Parent
        A lack of understanding on my part, and not enough reading of the posts here. Coupled with some pretty bad experiences on Reddit, as one example. But honestly, I should have asked questions before...

        A lack of understanding on my part, and not enough reading of the posts here.
        Coupled with some pretty bad experiences on Reddit, as one example.

        But honestly, I should have asked questions before giving opinion.
        It's one of my lesser qualities, which I assure you I am working on resolving.

        4 votes