Not-Publicly-Identified Commenting

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Not-Publicly-Identified Commenting

Area:
comments, anonymous comments

Summary:
Comments where the username of the commenter is visible to the journal owner and/or community admins, but no one else. Journal owners/admins would be able to control this like any other commenting option, but would not be able to make the comment publicly display the username after the fact.

Description:
Assuming the journal owner has allowed it, a commenter would be able to select "Do not identify me publicly" (or some much smoother phrase) as an option when commenting, so that their comment is displayed as anonymous to everyone but the journal owner (or the community's admins).

This would allow many of the benefits of an anonymous discussion taking place in the public sphere (people who cannot for whatever reason allow their opinions or experiences to be traced to their Dreamwidth identity as far as the public is concerned) but would also allow the people moderating the discussion to confirm at least relative identity. (In a recent high-profile discussion, one person in the publishing industry was accepting comments by email to post anonymously with a description of that person's authority to be saying what they said.) It would also allow people to correct typographical errors or delete things that they had second thoughts about.

The commenter would have to trust that the journal owner/admin would not "out" them, which could be done deliberately (think screenshot), accidentally (referring to a person by name in a reply), or inadvertently (using information that they didn't think would be identifying, but was known to a third party witnessing the discussion). The commenter would also have to be careful of not sharing sufficient information to out themselves, and not anon-failing (posting fully identified in a forum where they had previously been posting anonymously).

This would be a possible workable way of allowing anonymity into locked entries. The usual problems with allowing anonymous comments on locked entries are mostly social - the journal owner would know that it's a small pool of potential commenters and can play matching games; the entry might be restricted to a very specific security group, such that someone might think themselves anonymous and comment, but could be the only person in the security group and therefore identifiable. However, with knowledge that their identity is visible only to the journal owner/admin(s), someone could comment "anonymously" with a more informed mindset (though fellows in the pool of people given access might still figure them out based on the fact that access is listed in the profile).

This would be great for anonymous games (anonymemes, kink memes, darkrooms, the pride thread). It would preserve accountability while retaining at least some part of the anything-goes spirit.

This was inspired by a locked discussion about drug use and abuse, which could possibly have used a feature like this. We're all there because we know the journal owner, not because we trust each other necessarily.

Poll #8393 Not-Publicly-Identified Commenting

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 84

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
44 (52.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
20 (23.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (8.3%)

(I have no opinion)
13 (15.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Another benefit: emailing replies automatically without having to subscribe to the whole thread, which saves a subscription for people who are limited on those.

[zaluzianskya]

Yes!

I love this suggestion.

[elf]

Or who don't have them--I don't know if free accounts get thread tracking, as opposed to entry tracking. (Free accounts at LJ can't track individual threads.)

[fyreharper]

This would be AWESOME.

[kyrielle]

The commenter would have to trust that the journal owner/admin would not "out" them, which could be done...accidentally (referring to a person by name in a reply)....

For this reason, I went with "with changes" - only that the comment should display to the journal owner/community admins in such a way that it is immediately clear it is anonymous to everyone else, for example "Anonymous (kyrielle)" - rather than just with the user id.

[gingicat]

Oh, good idea!

[azurelunatic]

Or perhaps even in a way that forces the owner/admin to do something in order to see the names, so they're not shown by default?

*changes vote to "with changes"*

[ckd]

With changes.

I'm fine with kyrielle's, but I like azurelunatic's idea as well; I'm not sure which one I prefer. (In my use of it, curiosity would probably just make me click through them all anyway.)

[azurelunatic]

I envision a link-with-URL-argument that would unwrap all of them at once and would be persistent across actions on comments until removed/clicked out of the entry, if obfuscated.

[arethinn]

It would be very cool if it were a per-comment thing. If I were using this, I could see how I might go "oooh, I just have to find out who said this one, but I don't want to see the rest" or vice versa, "I want to look at most of these but that one I want to leave alone and not know".

[montuos]

+1

[kyrielle]

This solves even more of the problems and I like it, but it might be something to leave up to a journal setting. If the journal owner always wants to know, having to trigger it each time would be annoying.

[montuos]

+1

[syderia]

+1

[deborah]

+1

[fizzyblogic]

Yes, this would be excellent.

[cesy]

+1

[aedifica]

Ooh. Yes! But with kyrielle's amendment.

[andrewducker]

It would be handy if this allowed you to also claim the comment later, so that I could be anonymous when I commented, but later on convert it so that the comment appeared as mine.

[green_knight]

That would need an additional dialogue 'warning: by uncloaking this comment you will reveal your identity to all posters in this thread'), but it sounds useful.

[montuos]

+1

[eftychia]

I agree that some feature similar to what kyrielle suggested should be added to this, and I also wonder: would these comments be displayed (to everyone else) as "anonymous" indistinguishable from a completely anonymous comment, or as some variation on "name withheld" to indicate that the poster of the comment was willing to show her nym to the journal owner / community maintainers? (I'm honestly not sure which approach makes the most sense, having not yet worked out all the ramifications of each.)

[azurelunatic]

If the owner/admin has anonymous commenting turned off in the journal/comm for the full duration of the entry's existence, you can tell that whoever it is has an account or an OpenID.

In a locked entry, unless the entry was public at some point, not only do they have a nym, but they're on the access list as of the time they left the comment.

I'm not sure what the implications are for being able to tell the true-anons from the name-withheld anons in a public entry.

[elf]

One might not bother replying to a true anon, whereas a name-withheld anon could get reply notifications. Also, with the cooperation of the mod/journal owner, a person could be told "that's the same anon who replied to you earlier," which info often won't be available for true anons. (Possibly with IP tracking, but that's not always going to work.)

[azurelunatic]

IP tracking in particular breaking down for IP pool modem restarts (new IP, same person), and roommates/houseguests (same IP, different person, even if they are talking about it in person)

[fay_e]

At minimum what kyrielle suggested, but azurelunatic's suggestion sounds good too, even though I think mods should be allowed some leeway on this.

[pauamma]

Hmm. If I were to post several anonymous comments, would they be marked as from the same user?

[azurelunatic]

There would be no distinguishing between one unidentified user and another as far as the external viewer is concerned. It could be one or a hundred.

[matgb]

This would be a major stumbling block with me, one of the things I hate about mostly anon conversations isn't that I have no clue who someone is, but that I have no way of knowing who said what earlier in that discussion, I'd find it a major annoyance, especially if some of those involved know exactly who it is and others don't.

[pauamma]

Yeah - I'd like it to be linked somehow, perhaps as a variant/option.

[azurelunatic]

Per-entry numbered anonymization like anonymous polls sounds like it makes sense for that sort of thing.

[montuos]

+1

[azurelunatic]

On the other hand, in some anonymous discussions, part of the point is that no one knows exactly who said what, and I wouldn't want to take that away for people who wanted to do that with this.

[zvi]

Journal owners would need a way to prevent this commenting level in one's journal.

[azurelunatic]

Agreed.

I think I would personally like a per-entry setting on it, because I don't think I'd like it on everything in my own journal.

[montuos]

Yes; I think it should be opt-in, not default, with settings in the same places as allowing anonymous comments in a journal and having screened comments on a post.

[konsectatrix]

+1