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Replies on anonymity and other topics
January 08th, 2018
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On Anonymity:
Many folks around gopherspace [0-3] have been talking about
anonymity or pseudoanonymity in their online profiles, phlogs,
blogs, etc. I walked into this one with one opinion and have made
a complete turnaround since.
I don't use an anonymous handle here on SDF. My username is my
last name. You can see my first name if you hit my about [4] page.
I prefer to associate my real identity with the activites I do
here because I feel like it helps add to the public representation
of who I am. It may help me with social networking and potentially
even employment one day.
That being said, I have a lot of activity I do online that isn't
under this identity. I tools in place for creating easy throw-away
accounts, and I have invested a great deal of time in building up
robust, persistent identities that are sufficient to provide me
anonymity against all but the strongest state-level actors. I use
them for... well, if I told you that would weaken them.
I love the idea of anonymity in principle, but I have seen how
easy it is for that freedom to become an excuse for disruptive and
poisonous behavior. The things people will say when there's no
name attached can be downright horrific. Is that worth the cost?
I really don't know how I feel to make a solid decision.
I do know that pseudo anonymity is helpful in protecting against
the anonymous actions of others, like SWATing. It can also prevent
prejudice from entering a community dynamic. The work stands for
itself, right? That's the idea at least, and I think that's
a happy medium.
If you have an identity, even a false one, and you must act and
share and communicate with that identity, then it gains value to
you over time. It also gains peer status as others get to know
you. If ZeLibertineGamer, or solderpunk, or jynx communicate with
me, I have a basis for understanding where that communication is
coming from. It has context. If they were to do something or say
something that the community found unfit, there's an identity that
would suffer the social consequences. It may not be a person with
an address, but there is a community cost nontheless. In that way,
our pseudo-identities gain some of the social value and costs that
our real identities do, but without the personal risk. I think
that's a really great middle ground.
When I walked into the first of these phlog posts I was on the
side of "just use your real identity". You are all great at making
you case.
On Gophermaps and formatting:
This is mostly in reference to pet84rik [5], but it applies to
everyone. I don't believe there's a right way or a wrong way to
gopher. You can put up whatever you like in whatever format. Ulcer
has a super intricate system of phlogging and tag cross-links.
I make heavy use of gophermaps for linking but otherwise do things
fairly manual. Cat lovingly crafts everything by hand. Some people
just drop text files in a directory and it's up to us to parse it.
That's the crux. If you put something up here, some people will go
through the effort to read it and others wont. If you don't use
gophermaps that might be a barrier for some people. If you want to
cater to them and make it easy, that's cool. Gopher readers are
pretty resourceful. We'll figure it out.
Welcomes:
A big welcome to jebug29 and gunnarfrost. Glad to see your stuff.
You're not shouting into a void; we're reading.
Cookbook:
Finally, a big shout out to jandal who has put up a really cool
Gopherspace Cookbook [6]. My recipes are included and a bunch more
from all around the place. It's been helpful in discovering new
phlogs as well. Thanks, jandal. Great work. Maybe more people will
share their recipes in the future.
[0] Solderpunk - Pseudonymity woes
[1] slugmax - reply to ...
[2] psztrnk - Re: Pseudonymity
[3] Ze Libertine Gamer - re: anonymity
[4] My Gopher About page
[5] pet84rik - Gopherspace
[6] Gopherpsace Cookbook
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