Convincing people the value of anonymity...

I would think that many people who hang out on technical newsgroups would be very familiar with the anonymous review procedures practiced by academic journals. There is some value when a reviewer can speak their mind about a paper without worry of revenge. Of course everyone assures me that the system is never really anonymous because there are alwys only three or four people qualified to review each paper. :-) Perhaps we should go out of our way to make anonymous, technical comments about papers and ideas in the newsgroups to fascilitate the development of an anonymous commenting culture in cypberspace. -Peter Wayner