Anonymised posting to communities

[damned_colonial]

Title:
Anonymised posting to communities

Area:
communities

Summary:
Community admins should be able to set an option allowing people to post "anonymously" to communities. Under the hood, the site would track who really posted, but the appearance in the community itself, and on people's reading pages, would be as if it were anonymous.

Description:
Let me say, up-front, that this is *not* fully anonymous posting. You still need a DW account to do it: the poster's underlying identity is still known in the depths of the system, but is obfuscated when it's presented via the website.

So, here's how it could work...

Community admins would have the following options available to them in their community settings:

* no anonymised posting
* anonymised posting allowed
* anonymised posting only

The moderation options for communities (currently a simple checkbox) would be extended to:

* no moderation
* moderate anonymous posts
* moderate all posts

When posting to a community, if the community allows anonymised posting, there would be a checkbox saying:

[ ] post anonymously?

If anonymous posting is required (i.e. only anon posts are allowed), the box would be checked by default and greyed out, so it can't be changed.

Note that you must still have a DW account, and (generally) would need to be a member of a community to post to it. (A community admin can set the community to allow postings by non-members, but this is not the default.)

When the post is made (and, if necessary, approved by a moderator) it appears in the community. Instead of saying:

<user name="damned_colonial"> posting in <user name="some_community">

it would say:

Anonymous Person posting in <user name="some_community">

This would appear on the community's journal page, on people's reading pages, on the entry page, etc.

Email replies to an anonymised community post would be sent to the poster, as if sie had posted under hir ordinary username.

Here are some use cases where anonymised community posting might be useful:

1) a "post secret" type community, like <user name="fandom_secrets" site="livejournal.com"> on LJ; this anonymising feature would allow people to run these sorts of comms with less moderation overhead.

2) a "personal ads" community, where people could post anonymised personal ads, setting responses to screened and/or allowing anonymous replies, to achieve two-way privacy/anonymity.

3) an advice community, eg. for people to ask for sex tips or personal advice, without disclosing who they are.

4) any of a number of styles of community that currently have top level posts saying "here is a new top-level post for you to post anon comments on", where top-level comments are, effectively, posts; these might work better, in some cases, as communities where you can make anon top-level posts.

The biggest problem I foresee is how to let community admins remove posting access from problematic anon posters. The "members" part of the "manage communities" page is where you currently do this. However, it is based on the identities of community members. Ways I see of handling this include:

1) admins can see the real identities of anonymised posters, and use the "members" page as usual

2) admins can remove posting access from anonymised posters without directly seeing their identities; this would need new admin tools, and might still expose people's identities because if you have only removed posting access from one poster, and you look at that "members" page, it's going to be pretty clear who it was.

3) admins have no ability to remove posting access from anon posters; moderation and/or deletion after the fact are the only means available to them for managing anon posts.

Of these, option 3 appeals to me most.

Poll #3744 Anonymised posting to communities

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 66

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
36 (54.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
8 (12.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (10.6%)

(I have no opinion)
12 (18.2%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (4.5%)

Comments

[damned_colonial]

I realised after posting my suggestion that I missed something:

The original poster would be able to edit the post. That is, the "edit" links/buttons would appear when the logged-in user who made the post was looking at it.

[matgb]

I have ticked 'no opinion' as a placeholder for 'don't know', I can see strong merits in the suggestion, but it'd also be open to abuse. But given it's a comm setting to allow or not...

Not sure, veering on yes but need to think about this.

[cesy]

I'd vote for either 1 or 3, and either way, it should be made clear in FAQs and with warnings and so on.

[aedifica]

I'm leery of the idea, but might be able to be convinced. I like the way the menstrual cups community on LJ handles it: community mods have a standing offer that anything a person wants posted "anonymously" can be emailed to a mod who will review it and post it herself.

[foxfirefey]

I think there is an option 4 for banning, where an admin can ban the person making a particular anonymous post to no longer be able to post anonymously. However, that member would still appear to have posting access to the admin, and could indeed still post, just not anonymously anymore. The admin wouldn't know, the backend would keep track of it.

[damned_colonial]

Huh, yeah, that could work!

[turlough]

This is the sort of thing I just can't make up my mind about. On the one hand I can see the advantages of it for certain communities but on the other I can only see it as a wank fest waiting to happen. That's why I chose "Other". It's not that I don't have an opinion, it's that I have too many of them :-)

[charmian]

I think the problem with people abusing the anonymity option to make inappropriate posts, and the mods having fewer options to deal with them is a huge one. Also, the mods would have no way of privately contacting the poster, should they have some problem with the moderation of the comments, which only the poster could do.

For this reason, I think it would make more sense to do option 1) (mods can see the identity of the poster).

Alternatively, I think a system like Tumblr's 'submit post' might work, where people may submit posts to the mods, and the mods can instead post it for the poster. (I guess it would appear as a draft or something?) That way, the mod would be the author of the post, and could then moderate comments and see whether the posts were appropriate or not.

[zvi]

+1

[zvi]

If the mod has the power to either prevent someone from making more anonymous posts (per Foxfirefey's suggestion) or to ban them from the community altogether, per options 1 and 2, I don't actually see the way in which this suggestion gives the mod fewer abilities to control an entry than they have now. (Mods are not now guaranteed the ability to privately contact a poster; one may disallow PMs from people who don't have acces to you.)

Mods can now freeze, screen, and delete comments on entries they didn't make, and disallow comments altogether. They can also delete entries. I don't see anything about this suggestion that would change those abilities.

[zvi]

It seems to me as if a lot of the discomfort that people have with this suggestion is that it would allow people to say rude things without social repercussion, but fandom already has that mechanism in place and our social order has not dissolved into chaos, even if people do use them to say quite rude things about others without social repercussion.

[charmian]

Oh, they can? I didn't know that. I knew they could delete entries, but I didn't realize they had those enhanced commenting moderation powers now.

In that case, I think Foxfirefey's suggestion is the best way, as banning them from the comm altogether would reveal who it was anyway.

[damned_colonial]

For those not in fandom, that link gives a pretty biased (negative) view of anonymemes, without the context that fandom_wank exists more or less to celebrate drama/wank in the fannish community. While anon memes can cause drama, they often run quite smoothly and lots of good stuff comes out of them.

For instance, we had an anonymous fic meme in age_of_sail a while back that worked really well, and a while ago katieastrophe ran the Dreamwidth darkroom orgy which has 900+ comments, sga_kinkmeme is a new community on DW for anonymous commentfic, and recently I started firstpersonporn for writing about sexual experiences anonymously. So, anon communities/activities already exist on DW, and seem to operate reasonably well, with *less* accountability (and fewer features, eg. no editing of anon comments) than the anon-posting-to-communities proposal.

[charmian]

Eh? I don't really see what relevance the anonymeme situation is. It's less a question of 'social order' in general than what degree of moderation a community needs. It must be pretty hard to moderate those anonymemes, and not all comms which might use this feature might be as freewheeling as an anonymeme; for example, a comm where people are posting for advice on sensitive topics.

[damned_colonial]

I think the relevance is that the *mechanism* for doing anonymity exists already -- have moderators post a top level post, allowing anon comments. This is already used by anon memes, and, although some anon memes on LJ/DW have been abused, most aren't. Allowing anon community posting would just make official/supported what was previous a bit of a hacky workaround, and probably wouldn't be any more drama prone than what's already out there.

[cheyinka]

I like this option.

[azurelunatic]

Yeah, maintainers have been able to freeze/screen/delete comments since pretty much forever.

[kyrielle]

+1. If not this, then 1 or 3, but I like this best.

[zvi]

It's less a question of 'social order' in general than what degree of moderation a community needs.

I still do not understand the way in which you think this proposal reduces modly powers.

The problems people have with the proposal that I do understand appear to be reactions to the idea that this sort of posting can have negative social repercussions. My point about anonymemes is that anonymous posting, with people behaving unpleasantly even!, already exists in the journaling context, but it seems to be what the people who are actively anonymously commenting to one another want from the activity, and that the larger subculture in which this anonymity is contextualized has learned to deal with it when the nastiness spills out of the nasty anonymemes.

[zvi]

Yes, that link does portray anonymemes negatively, but, my point was that fears that anonymity can lead to unpleasant behavior are not wrong, anonymity can and does lead to unpleasant behavior, but to point out that that unpleasant behavior does not make it impossible, or even difficult, to have pleasant interactions in related social circles which are pseudonymous.

[charmian]

I guess what I was trying to say has nothing to do with the larger culture in general, and I was only addressing the issue from the perspective of the moderators? What I was saying didn't come from a concern over a comm where people could post anonymously in a nasty manner nasty and somehow pollute 'the larger subculture,' but over whether this would be a useful way to go about it, considering the challenges moderators already face with people who break the rules in posts.

In any case, beyond the boundaries of a comm, the only rules which matter are DW's, and the DW staff is able to find out who is posting anyway, so I don't see that as a problem anyhow.

[damned_colonial]

DW staff is able to find out who is posting anyway

Which is not currently true of anon commenting. This proposal improves the situation, to some degree.

[zvi]

I don't see how the mods would have any less control than in the current situation, since if it turns out that anonymity is regularly producing undesired behavior, they can…turn anonymous posting off.

I guess what I'm not understanding is the additional challenge you think anonymity would introduce to moderating, or what sorts of tools they don't already have that mods would need to deal with the challenge of moderating anonymous entries.

It seems to me that the mod can a) delete the entry or b) make a comment on the entry asking the anonymous poster to modify it to comply with the rules, and … I don't see how that's substantially different from their options if they know the poster's dreamwidth account? (If they know the poster's dreamwidth account, they may be able to pm/e-mail directly, but … that's only if the poster has pm enabled or a viewable e-mail address and actually pays attention to their messages or that e-mail address. So, it's not a guaranteed method of communication, and, if they do have those contact methods open to them, it's not a function of their status as mods.)

[azurelunatic]

If it might trivially expose identities, then I would prefer something where the identities are explicitly exposed to admins -- that way there will be no wondering. A person who has a need to not allow community admins to see their primary identity should be encouraged to make a separate journal.

[azurelunatic]

I like that.

[glittertine]

If that can be done, it'd be awesome!

[noxie]

+1

[ninetydegrees]

If this is implemented then it should follow the rules for comments otherwise it doesn't make much sense to me. I then vote for true anonymizing:

3) admins have no ability to remove posting access from anon posters; moderation and/or deletion after the fact are the only means available to them for managing anon posts.

and am against this (unless there are plans to change that for comments; I can't remember):

The original poster would be able to edit the post. That is, the "edit" links/buttons would appear when the logged-in user who made the post was looking at it.

[archangelbeth]

Oh, very nice, yes!

[thedivinegoat]

+1

[pauamma]

Hmm. In the "admins can't see the poster's identity" variant, would admins be able to tell whether two anonymous entries to the same community were posted by the same user? What about anonymous entries to different communities, if you're an admin for both?

[fizzyblogic]

Yeah, me too.

[boosette]

I'd like an, "anonymous [community members only]" option.

[happydork]

+1

[damned_colonial]

You could do that by combining the anonymous options with the existing "who can post?" options.

[havocthecat]

+1

[azurelunatic]

Have submitted a similar suggestion for comments. Would pair nicely with this.