From: pierre@shell.portal.com (Pierre Uszynski)

...

From: Karl Lui Barrus <klbarrus@owlnet.rice.edu> 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).

I'll second that. The main menaces against "civil conversations" have been, on Netnews, flame wars and wars between two individuals.

There is another level of *menace* which I suppose many of you are unaware. The queer newsgroups of usenet, have been experiencing waves of net-terrorism for the last couple of years. I don't mean the usual mean-spirited or dogma-driven type of uninformed posting that echoes the stereotypical stuff we are used to dealing with in daily life. Nor do I mean the occasional *ALL FAGS SHOULD DIE POSTED IN ALL CAPS FROM SOMEONES ACCT THAT THEY LEFT LOGGED IN ON A PUBLIC TERMINAL AT AN INSTITUTION OF -ahem- HIGHER LEARNING* I mean people who exploit insecure sites and networking skill to forge mail and articles as part of a concerted and ongoing campaign of harrasement. Stuff that has resulted in very serious consequences. Theres no need to go into detail here about the array of tactics and the widening scope of the phenomenon, but I think it needs to be looked at as an example of how and why systems are abused. If anti-social immaturity can easily find shelter for puerile behavior, then any socipathic agenda or ruthless competitor can do likewise.

the flamers and the opponents are clearly identified. They are usually proudly posting under their usual Name (as they are all fighting for their Reputation, and for establishing their opponent's Incompetence) (... do we recognize anybody yet :-? ) I actually can't remember such a war involving an anonymous poster (as in "using penet or similar").

soc.motss and other newsgroups have seen a long list of pseudo-persons posting from non existent sites, and yes.. penet has been used to this effect.

What destroys discussions (and forces people to leave them...) is the tendency of threads to start genuine, and to end as flame wars. Certainly, for-money systems would tend to shorten flame wars..

I think that there is no shortage of contributing factors to the shortcomings of network distributed ascii based communication. Bottom line is that when we have our full range of auditory clues, and visual context, we use all of that and more in order to convey meaning, and in network distributed ascii communication the clues and context are missing unless we *spell it out*. Most of us aren't that diligent or patient. I think it is interesting to also note that people will engage in levels of flaming that tehy would never do to another person face to face. That is also a form of non-acountability by being unreachable when your content might otherwise earn you a fist in your face. Personally, I believe that some levels and forms of anonymity are highly desireable. Reality is that some levels and forms of anonymity are too easily subverted by sociopaths who don't care about the consequences of their acts, or the restrictions that may come about due to their abuse. Not to get too far past the scope of mailers and netnews, but these issues have importance to the growth of Networked commerce in general. I think that the design of privacy systems needs to take these dark-side issues seriously and do their best to minimise the potential for abuse. If for no other reason, where there is money, there is abuse and criminally sociopathic predators who will do anything in their power to gain advantage over their competition. Perhaps a *zoning* concept is needed, in such that transactions would have qualifying conditions - or in such that *zones* exist as data-space with authentication qualifications for *entry* or transaction. LUX ./. owen