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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Should Anonymous Postings be Allowed on use Perl?

Displaying poll results.
Absolutely
  18% 49 votes
Probably
  15% 40 votes
I Don't Care
  10% 28 votes
Probably Not
  23% 62 votes
No Way
  32% 86 votes
265 total votes.
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
  • Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
  • Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
  • This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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'Should Anonymous Postings be Allowed on use Perl?' 25 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • I think you'll get a higher level of discussion quality by requiring people to identify themselves.
  • I agree. All those who think we should absolutely allow anonymous postings, feel free to explain your opinions.
  • Absolutely. If you want participation by all and sundry, look at comp.lang.perl.misc. Most days its difficult to separate the rubbish from the good stuff. It's not so much the identification that's necessary, IMHO, but the need to register so as to not be able to just fire away, especially with a topic such as Perl which many people seem unhealthily emotionally attached to (in either way).
  • I think that on /. [slashdot.org], allowing anonymous posting is necessary, because some of the topics covered are of a controversial nature or could otherwise benefit from anonymous posting.

    Besides, it'd be pretty trivial to post anonymously -- create an email account at hushmail.com [hushmail.com] (or hotmail or yahoo or any of hundreds of others), register with that email address and then post with that.

    When you start getting topics where anonymous posting might be useful, maybe turn it on then...

  • Yup, definitely trivial...
    --
    I'm just a nony mouse.
  • It would be more interesting if there were some
    way to allow posters with good karma the ability
    to post anonymously a few times a month/week/day.

    chris
  • Interesting in what way?
  • ...without ACs people will be more afraid to talk about the hot grits that Natalie Portman has down her pants right now! And, who would know that I petrified her? No one! NO ONE! No one would know about the petrified hot grits down my pants right now, no one would know about the hot grits stephen segal ate for breakfast! PUT HOT GRITS DOWN YOUR PANTS NOW AND THINK LONG AND HARD ABOUT THIS
  • I voted for 'probably should not allow anonymous postings', but I /am/ concerned about repercussions. We've done this before on Slashdot: anonymous postings ensure a certain level of privacy, and allow people the liberty to say possibly unpleasant things that really should be said, without possible retaliation.

    (the flip side of the coin is the obvious spamage and flamage, of course.)

  • But I am not sure I care about what you say that may be unpleasant and need to be said if you aren't going to put your name on it. What kind of retaliation could there be? People may be mad at you? Well, if you don't have the guts to say it with your name and nick attached, I'd rather you didn't say it at all.

    And as someone said, if you really feel you have to say it anonymously, then you can make an "anonymous" account with a hotmail account or something.

    Can anyone give me a specific example of a wa
  • But I am not sure I care about what you say that may be unpleasant and need to be said if you aren't going to put your name on it. What kind of retaliation could there be? People may be mad at you? Well, if you don't have the guts to say it with your name and nick attached, I'd rather you didn't say it at all.

    A valid point. And why I voted for 'probably shouldn't allow anonymous postings.' However, you remember that series of postings on Slashdot about anonynimity in general, and the supreme court rulin
  • Personally, I dislike the notion of killing anonymous postings entirely, but I dread having the discussions devolve into "first posts" and long threads about natalie portman and grits.

    Without adopting a more complicated trust model, like the one used on Advogato [advogato.com], it seems like the only way to prevent abuse of the anonymous posting ability would be to ration it out to people that have already proven that they are valuable community members. You could use their karma rating, perhaps, to allow them a limited

  • Experience shows that many more people read these sites than use them.

    use Perl; is most likely going to be less conversational in nature than Slashdot and much more fact based. (Thats a wild conversational opinion, not a fact).

    So we're having a debate about one thing or another and a use Perl user comes along who really knows something about this topic. He can either sign up, check his mail, come back, login in and post. Or he can consider it too much bother and move along, he doesn't lose very much and
  • This is about community. If someone doesn't want to be bothered to sign up to join the community, then I don't care if their comments are posted or not. I am not sure there is such a thing as a good post from a passer-by.

  • It seems to be that you can put up with a lot of junk in a forum if you get a few good posts from lurkers and passers-by

    I wouldnt say so - a lot of junk would make this just as useless as nearly every other web based discussion forum IMHO of course

  • If there are smart/shy folks, I'd rather have their anon contributions. With moderation, I can live with the immature morons cluttering up comments. If forcing a login limits a few good contributions, that is overall bad EVEN IF it also eliminates some idiotic posts.
  • Why is it bad? I don't understand. Like I said, this is a community. I am not sure there is such a thing as a good anonymous post. If you are anonymous, why should I care what you have to say about anything?
  • Exactly!

    It would be much better if, instead of posting anonymously, people would learn to write politely even about controversial topics.

    It would be a pity to see here the kind of useless drivel and trolling that takes up a lot of comp.lang.perl.misc.

    Remember:

  • Re:Smart/Shy Folks (Score:1, Interesting)

    by jns (40)

    If there are smart/shy folks, I'd rather have their anon contributions

    Who are these people - do they exist ?

    If someone is too shy to take part in a community that I am a member of then I dont want to know anything about them anyway.

  • If someone is too shy to take part in a community that I am a member of then I dont want to know anything about them anyway.

    I wouldn't go THAT far. I just don't think I care what they have to say about or to the community if they aren't a part of it. There are always extenuating circumstances; and we do have a place for people to submit articles [perl.org], and my email address is posted, and we will soon have a real FAQ and about page going, so people can tell us what they think if they really want to avoid regis

  • Hey, Chris! You forgot to disable the slashdot grits/portman AI. (Emacs has Eliza and Zippy the Pinhead, we have hot grits and Natalie Portman. Doesn't seem quite right...)
  • We've done this before on Slashdot

    But Slashdot has a lot more to do with social issues and whatnot. I can't see that sort of thing coming up here... I doubt even Jon Katz could tie Columbine into a Perl discussion adequately.

  • If anyone could ... it wouldn't be him. But hey, I could give it a shot! :D
  • I'm in favor of anonymous posting on general principle ... however, think about all the flaming and general crap that has invaded CLPM (along with the rest of Usenet). Much of that is due to the semi-anonymous nature of the forum. If people can be identified, they may be somewhat less quick to flame/troll/. YMMV, of course. - darkuncle

  • But if people want to flame and troll here and they want to remain anonymous then it is relatively trivial for them to create a bogus identity for themselves thus evading the bar on anonymous postings.

    Of course the management could take a hand and remove the account or delete the postings

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