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Piece from Slate.com about anonymity on the Web

On 11 Mar 2011 at 3:06pm John McGowan wrote:

Might be of interest to some posters...
h++p://www.slate.com/id/2287739/

On 12 Mar 2011 at 9:02pm MC wrote:

Huh? What happened to my post here from yesterday? It's gone! :-(

On 13 Mar 2011 at 12:17am Newmania wrote:

I don't understand why started the thread John, what are you trying to say?

On 13 Mar 2011 at 7:59am John McGowan wrote:

Yes I was wondering about MC's post too?

It seemed an interesting article (and an entertaining one). Anonymous posting undoubtedly has a down side. I was wondering if anyone would be willing to make the case for anonymity. MC did (or started to). I wonder what happened to it.

On 13 Mar 2011 at 8:50am MC wrote:

The main advantage of anonymity is that people in positions of authority can leak information that they feel ought to be in the public domain but would jeopardise their jobs and reputation if they were seen to leak it. Such leaks have appeared here a number of times. This fact alone makes it worth putting up with people like "Beth" (no relation I assume) and the other juvenile cowards who vent their frustrated natures with obnoxious posts as soon as they think the comments cannot be attributed to them.

Anonymity also allows people to apply pressure in cases where they could not if their real identity were widely known. The Barcombe Mills fence issue was a good case in point.

Personally I like the dirty, warts-and-all, nefarious and sometimes even dangerous nature of this forum. I much prefer it to the uncontroversial, bland and anodyne comments that linking identities to Facebook profiles can so easily produce (The Daily Mail's LewesPeople could be seen as a case in point).

Of course there is almost no real anonymity and everyone who posts here can be traced.