Anon posting Poll Question

[Anonymous]

But anonymous users aren't all abusive or malicious.
Anonymous keeps me protected from the fear of being attacked. If it is taken away, I'll be to afraid to post. I need to be anonymous, it's my protection. Please don't take it away. When a registered user is attacted, it's personal, and that person is exposed to everyone. It hurts them alot more than if they had posted anonymously. With anonymous it remains only an opinion. Not personal.
I vote FOR anonymous.

[Anonymous]

On 2003-04-05 23:18:00, FaceKhan wrote: " Of course malicious anonymous users will be able to steal other people's anonymous names but that problem will be less than what we have now."

 That would make things much worse.

[Anonymous]

On 2003-04-05 16:30:00, Majiktrvls wrote: "Somehow my point in asking for less "anonymous" postings was missed. We had folks slinging mud at the wrong "anonymous" left and right. I was looking for a solution, not more problems. Nor was it meant to attempt to take away personal liberties, just simply to find a way to clarify which anonymous was enraged at any given time. "

If they wanted you to know, they would have registered.

[Antigen]

Alex, np, this is public info and I think it can only help if more people understand how this all works.

If someone is using a local dialup and not going through a proxy, I could make an educated guess as to where they're located geographically. If they post anon and then under a username on the same connection (w/o proxy) then it's kind of a dead givaway. It has to be either the same person or two people using the same machine.

I do not divulge this info, even if I give in to temptation and peek at it! As a matter of fact, once I think I've figured out who an anon is, I generally will drop out of posting to the thread because my views would be skewed by knowing something (or assuming something) that other people don't.

The only circumstances under which I could find out for sure the identity of any poster, and this is theorhetical because I've never had to do it, is if the posts were actually illegal, like credible death threats or other kinds of harassment and the offended party insisted on taking it up with the user's ISP or with the law.

One time, I've provided the IP address, ISP contact info and timestamp to an offended user. I don't believe that user ever took it any further than to let the asshole know that they'd crossed the line of legal and legitimate use of anonymous posting.

Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common everyday beauty.
-- John Muir

[kpickle39]

I posted anon the other day as kind of a joke.  I posted about being "thirsty"  and used anon, 'cause every one seemed to be posting about it.  I like that folks can post anon.  I did my first couple of posts when I found this site cause the darn thing freaked me out so much.

[Antigen]

Thanks to everyone for all of your thoughts and insights on this topic. But I don't think there's an argument compelling enough to overcome this one:

http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... m=1&Sort=D

So... can we all just get along?

"Never attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by ignorance." -- Anonymous

Preacher man don't tell me heaven is under the earth; you don't know what life is worth;.......If you know what life is worth, you will look for your's on earth.

--Bob Marley

[ehm]

Amen! :nworthy:

[ClayL]

You get the IP Addresses contact the ISP with the addresses and the times. The ISP checks their logs and POOF! You now need another ISP because you old one cancelled your account. The ISP's will easily cooperate in this as it reduces their liability. Considering most of this is interstate the investigating athority in the FBI. I track a child pornographer once this way and he in now enjoying life in club fed.

CL

[ This Message was edited by: ClayL on 2003-04-07 07:13 ]

[Antigen]

Yeah, exactly. Easy as pi. However, my stock solution to almost anything is return (undef) if /coercion/i; Unless that gets me into a time munching endless loop or it's one of those rare cases when there's just no other peaceful means of redress, I stick with that.

So far, in something like 4 years of hosting and admining web forums, I haven't had to resort to this kind of coercion. We did conjure up some logic to try and prevent certain types of DOS attacks. That's about it.

The people's right to change what does not work is one of the greatest
principles in our system of government

--Richard M. Nixon

[Anonymous]

On 2003-04-05 19:20:00, AlexL wrote: "But...I wonder how could you really track someone if they use a dial-up connection?

You could track them as clay has mentioned, you could also "Hack :eek: " them in real time. There is the ability for anyone to obtain the IP address for those who read here. I will never tell how, but I will say it has nothing to do with the internal workings of the BBS itself.

On 2003-04-05 23:18:00, FaceKhan wrote: "How about making it so that people have to pick a name when posting (ones that are already registered by other people will not be available) but not require them to register.

The problem with this is we would be unable to enforce what name an anonymous can pick, So you could easily use any anonymous name you wanted in order to "Cause Trouble"

Also, I would like to make one other point. There is a lot of venom that has been spread upon this board in the past several months, and it is not all coming from or started by anonymous posters. And while I am sure that some of the things said here would never be said in a face to face conversation, forums provide a way for people to be hostile and or abusive to one another without repercussion, regardless of the login status.

And this brings me to the point that, it would seem that people are more engrossed in making sure who they are yelling at, in some of the most destructive conversations. This board was never created with the intention of it being a verbal boxing arena. Sure there are going to be disagreements, but hey, the personal attacks are just way too much.

When we setup this board, it was to provide a community for those who were loosing such on another hosting provider. We did not want to see the old posts lost ( I spent several hours writing script to mirror the old site, including login names that could be "re-claimed"), and the forum recreated on yet another Endless pop up Ad's, overly Java scrip enhanced, crash you browser every other click when you use it forum. I would hate to see our effort destroyed over such heated and petty arguments that serve no real purpose other then to slander one another like we were all in group. Opposing points of view while we may disagree, are an important piece of life, which we all need in order to broaden our horizons and possibly see things from angles we may not have though of before.

One other point. We here at Fornits are not supporting or advocating one group or another within these confines, rather we are merely providing an area where we can all talk, share our experiences, and our thoughts. It is not the intention of this BBS to further the goals of any single individual, group, or organization.