In article <Pine.3.87.9310291032.A24998-0100000@crl.crl.com> arthurc@crl.crl.com writes:

I think that identification by buzzwords, habitual misspellings, etc. could be used to identify anonymous posters. Sentence structure is also revealing. Le style, c'est l'homme, said Voltaire. Of course, it all comes down to how much time and effort you want to put into proving, say, that SBoxx=LDetweiler.

I had a go at this just for fun when an8785 was doing his thing. I'm pretty sure I identified him correctly in the end. (The guy I thought it was, when I asked him, said 'If I were I wouldn't tell you', whereas all the other people I suspected but not as strongly all denied it violently, heh heh heh) I think this sort of analysis could be automated to a reasonable extent, to cut out the TypeI errors that the guys who did Shakespeare/Bacon analysis made. It's very easy to fool yourself if you don't have predefined criteria of comparison and a rigid marking scheme. I'm fairly sure that a sufficiently detailed analysis looking at enough different points of style would still catch someone's fingerprint even if they went out of their way to disguise their postings. The only approach I can think of that would be successful in hiding individual style is for person A to write something, person B reads it quickly, then attempts to write something with the same semantic content, but of course it will have B's grammar and phraseology and punctuation idiosyncracies. (And this only works if B is not a net poster, otherwise you recognise B and work out who his friends are :-) ) G -- Personal mail to gtoal@gtoal.com (I read it in the evenings) Business mail to gtoal@an-teallach.com (Be careful with the spelling!) Faxes to An Teallach Limited: +44 31 662 4678 Voice: +44 31 668 1550 x212