I admit that I am a little shocked, after all this time and whatever under the bridge, to see yet another tired old Defense Of Anonymity (DOA) popping up in the Forum. Especially the one that Xidaf repeats below.

I used to call this the Chinese Dissident Anime Aficionado DOA, but it's not fair to favour one Evil Empire with the eponymous title when there are so many contenders just as Evil and just as Emperious to choose from.

So I'm changing the name to the Horton Hears A Who (H²AW) DOA.

Xidaf states the defense in this form:


That's the grain of poupon seed on which Wikipedia has built its own Evil Empire and, once again, it's the sort of thing that might have sounded like a good idea 7 or 8 years ago, but really, Folks, we have seen in the mean time, the very mean time, what sprouts from that seed when it's cast on Wikiputian steppes.

The notion that Wikipedia affords the Downtrodden Dissident (D²) trapped within the confines of your favourite Evil Empire (E²) a chance to make his or her voice heard above the bull-roar-horn of Gubermint Propaganda — well, that's got to be one of the most endearing if not enduring myths of Wikipedious Mythology.

But we're wise to it now — well, some of us are …

The sad fact is that your D² in the E² would be far better off slipping an IRC note to a Junior Hi Newspaper, where it could be printed out in hard copy and archived indelibly than he or she would be to post an anonymous or pseudonymous edit to a Wikipedia article.

Why? Because it has become rather obvious by now that Wikpedia makes a far better Bully Amplifying Device (BAD) than it will ever make a Whoville Gazette.

Jonny

Replikating Kato's post here for later response — I have to go do a bit of Real Life™ work for a while — and I think I already wrote a response to Somey's Op-Ed piece.

Jonny

My post had nothing to do with anonymity. It was an answer to your original question. Why is it here?

Hafta run. Will read it again later.

My original post had nothing specifically to do with anonymity, but asked a general question about features of Soc-Tech Architecture that might be causes of a specific cognitive effect. Moulton mentioned anonymity as one of the suspects, so I listed it for consideration. Xidaf proceeded to dispute its relevance or its significance and I read you as supporting that. I have never said that anonymity was the the Sole Foundering Factor, and my experience with Citizendium certainly clinched my opinion on that, so I don't know what the current fuss is about.

Anyway, your post is now copied in two places, so we can always take up different facets of it in different contexts.

Jonny

Yes. This is interesting. Insofar as I think you're suggesting temporary anonymity during discussion of options, followed by full disclosure and responsibility-taking later (when the reports are "signed").

You may have read something about the "Delphi system" for the utilization of experts. It was invented by people who noticed that in meetings, nearly all of the time was taken up by people simply repeating their views until they were sure that everybody else was thinking about them. And that personalities tended to interfere with the first open evaluation of new ideas (though the last bit may have some Baysian problems, if you know what I mean; it DOES help if you know from the outset WHO an idea is coming from, as it properly influences your prior expectation values). Anyway, the Delphi solution is to have everybody first anonymously write proposals and then circulate and discuss in cycles, so that everybody's idea gets a hearing and they know it, but personalities don't enter, at first. Things happen much faster that way.

In the Manhattan (MED) project, where everybody KNEW everybody else was a frigging genius, they used to run meetings without need of this. Basically because everybody had huge respect for everybody else, and because everybody could remember what everybody else had said. Thus, no ego problems, and no need for repetition. Or so Feynman claimed later. And as I read the way Oppie used to summarize things, I think there's some truth to it.

--Milt

As I have said many times, we can all look to the ways that controlled censoring of PersonData is used in the real world for guidance about sensible procedures, whether in journalism, jurisprudence, or scholarship — confidential sources that are double-fact-checked and vetted by a responsible publisher, under-age children and secret agents who may testify under BlueDots with limited anonymity, double-blind and triple-blind experiments, blind peer review of papers, etc., etc. And history tells us the ways that Courts of Star Chambers and Secret Evidence are bound to spawn abuses.

But Wikipedia throws out all the lessons of basic common sense and collective historical experience and tries to start from scratch. Which is itself a Violation in Principle of its rule against original research. Meanwhile the world is supposed to stand by and watch this infantile ontogeny recapitulate all the errors of human phylogeny at the expense of everyone else on the planet.

Jonny

Well, historiography tends to recapitulate proctoscopy, so people attempt reinvention of the wheel sometimes. Usually unsuccessfully. As has been said, personal experience is a hard teacher, for she gives the test first and the lesson AFTER. But fools will have no other.

The problem with wikipedia is that it was such an amazing success in distributed writing, that the people there looked at their captive mob and thought they'd also simultaneously come up with a new solution to all the problems of human culture. Duh. Big surprise that all they did in the way of governance was put witchtrials on crack. Distributed computational speed for processes is great, but it needs to be the Bill of Rights on speed, not McCarthyism.

-- Milt

Indeed, WP reinvented the Spammish Inquisition (aka Witch Hunt, Star Chamber).

The concept of Civil Rights begins to emerge with the Magna Carta, some 800 years ago.

WP has not yet discovered the importance of Civil Rights in these matters.

Oh, Bayesian!

And here I thought he was talking about eBaysian problems …

But that would be the Tail Of Another Prioress …

Jonny

I'm quoted out of context. You make it sound as if I have opposed full disclosure. I believe any encyclopedic article should have a real author, with real names. Someone must take responsability for what he/she writes.

On the other hand, such disclosure of name is not necessary when sources are provided. It does not matter who post the sources. Of course verification that the sources were not falsified should be done, but this can be relayed to those who write the articles.

Your way of presenting this as either no to anonymity or yes is extremist to say the least.

Wikipedia actually discredit you, I think this has already been said here somewhere, the strongest point of Wikipedia are the sources provided for the articles. The first thing I do when researching on Wikipedia is to check the footnotes used and pick the book used to know more about the subject.

The whole thin about administrators disclosure of full name or arbitrators is a none issure, since those should not exist to begin with, the need of such a structure is created by Wikipedia core weakness itself.