Douglas Barnes wrote:
Actually, I think you're missing Loyd's point here. Basically, we really wanted to set up an anonymous remailer here at Illuminati Online. We encountered opposition from a certain individual on the grounds that "anonymous posts can destroy civil conversation" and individuals, groups and lists "should have the right to easily filter out posts from anonymous remailers."
Hey Doug, Well, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm one who doesn't favor labelling anonymous mail - I'd rather work on positive reputation schemes, cash accepting remailers, etc. An anonymous remailer that charges will discourage people from using it for frivolous purposes; digital signature combined with positive filters will let people filter out posters they consider stupid. After all, you are more interested in who sent the mail than where it originated from. (I've been working on a script that checks elm mail folders for pgp signed messages and reports the signature instead of From: address; and a cash accepting remailer). The attitude expressed by the individual on io.com shows a problem we will have in educating others - "anonymous posts CAN destroy a civil conversation". Yes, maybe so, but in my experience on mailing lists, bbses, etc. I've noticed that "flame wars" and "anonymous posts" have NO correlation, and are quite independent of one another. Since I've seen "flame wars" on systems with absolutely no anonymous posting facilities (or none that were used), I conclude that civil conversation is destroyed by strongly held differences in opinions (or some other factor I can't pin down). However, I would be interested in hearing if filtering anonymous mail/posts does significantly cut down on or eliminate the destruction of civil conversation. -- Karl L. Barrus: klbarrus@owlnet.rice.edu keyID: 5AD633 hash: D1 59 9D 48 72 E9 19 D5 3D F3 93 7E 81 B5 CC 32 "One man's mnemonic is another man's cryptography" - my compilers prof discussing file naming in public directories