-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Monty Cantsin wrote:
Something that I have found irritating about the posts by non-persistent identities is that it isn't possible to support a meaningful discussion as previous statements can always be repudiated, or maybe even weren't made by the particular poster. I compared this to sound bites.
How is that fundamentally different from non-anonymous posts, though? You can always disavow (or attempt to) a previous post by claiming it was forged, that someone stole your password, hacked your account, or posted it when you accidentally left your terminal logged on while you were at lunch. In addition, there's nothing to stop someone from obtaining multiple e-mail accounts. So why should ten anonymous posts be an more irritating than ten posts from hotmail.com, juno.com, etc. accounts? They could be from ten different people, just one, or any number in between.
On second thought, however, there is an easy way to solve this. If the anonymous poster accepts the context of previous messages, the discussion can continue. There's no reason why the person behind the virtual thread has to be the same, but the context itself is important if we want to have interesting discussions.
Agreed. It's the ideas that are important, not the identity of the person[a] expressing them. The only exception I can think of is if the person expressing the ideas is asking that they be accepted because of some unique qualification or expertise he claims to possess.
So, if you don't want to sign your messages, just acknowledge the message ID of the relevant previous messages whose context you wish to use.
Unless that's coupled with a PGP signature, there's nothing to keep one anonymous person from impersonating another and agreeing to something. For example, if "A" is debating "B", there's nothing to stop "B" from posting as "C", claiming to be an anonymous KKK, NAMBLA, etc. member, then posting again, impersonating "A", and pretending to agree with "C" (by, as you say, "acknowledging C's message id"). Nor is it much better if "A", "B", and "C" are non-anonymous. "B" can open a throwaway account as "C", and then forge a follow-up from "A". Unless it's done among a group of people skilled at interpreting headers, it may well succeed, or at least arouse a lot of F.U.D. about "A". - --- Finger <comsec@nym.alias.net> for PGP public key (Key ID=19BE8B0D) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNIhcnwbp0h8ZvosNAQHsHwf9G2qBkAmpgR4+mTnsb4IHZeEDQZ8rWP7P TVQ8Z0lnfoZW6OOlXUZi2y42LRI7+j5OvCTRW4P/Yndiuiaqz0Bi7cWGt9FfLDMz gDg7g3doNMe9xDDEUsAHaAYdkPEgHub+Udd+YUKEMJMcn/o/7soPHfBQFMSK2ZqI s08+mdd0EPyM7ZN9EfIxaU7sBFpWLKhLjA6pCwqihIyBLrCVnxZd28jcOowXTCL/ +2E6eLqy4JBv8Wh00YMFjb9aw3GfXw/LImEYCVoA6OUum5uvA5eyENlGOtdDQx8/ aBmPW6cKoLAnBb2MkcxmU9rrO4lxkQNk9tHW+HBs7WfEr6u8RwWtSA== =KWVK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----