Okuna-api: Anonymous comments?

From Cyrill

I'm absolutely not a fan of this idea. Everyone can use Openbook anonymous according to nickname/profile picture. When someone still fears to comment what he want, then we have a community/communication problem generally or this person shouldn't write down the comment anyway. Adding this feature would just conceal a problem not solve it and maybe brings more problems into the platform by abusing this feature. That's my opinion about that.

Personally not in favour of this, anonymous comments tend to be mostly misused for trolls/taunts/minor insults rather than properly used for the purpose mentioned. This type of sarcastic micro aggression doesnt cross the line to warrant strong action but still destroys healthy debate.

I think the fear of retaliation exists because people fear being attacked online rather than expect having a healthy discussion. We should strive to make Openbook a platform where everyone stays respectful (and maybe is incentivised to be remain way? ) That way people will know that a difference of opinion is fine and that expressing it will not result in being attacked. They will also know that being disrespectful for no reason will have consequences.

And then the need to be Anonymous (for fear of retaliation at least) wont be there anymore.

There still might be a wish to be anonymous for example if someone wants to share something very personal to get opinions from others, but wishes not to identify themselves. But that needs a separate discussion, in this context at least I agree with Cyrill that it only hides the problem, does not solve it.

Anonymisation definitely has some potential uses, like e.g. to (temporarily) anonymise entries into content-based contests and similar to avoid voter bias (we do this at writingforums.org, e.g.) or to allow admin and moderators to post under the name of a page/community (like Facebook does).

In general, I would say that one of the biggest advantages and biggest problems with the internet is that it is (mostly) anonymous. Anonymity means that people dare to do things they wouldn't otherwise do, and those things are more often malevolent than not (IMO).

As a consequence, if full anonymity is added it should be in a controlled manner (e.g. limit anonymous postings, only allow anonymous stuff in communities that have it enabled, mods/admins can see the original poster).

I'm not a fan of anonymous comments for the reasons that Cyrill, @uiboy and @Komposten already mentioned, but I can see value in allowing people to post anonymously when, for example, they're being critical of oppressive regimes.

Could the ability to post anonymously be coupled with sentiment analysis and a ruleset governing it?

Example:

• Don't allow @ mentions in anonymous posts / comments.
• Check the content (via sentiment analysis) for negativity / hate speech
• Allow for members of the community to confirm or deny the automatically detected sentiment