In all of these various threads, in all of their various flavors, I think that we come down to the supposition that “Anonymous Monk” postings are made by people who have something to hide, or that want to say things “candidly” without bruising their “precious XP,” and so on.   And, we come up with all kinds of complexities to deal with these perceived-wrongs.   Most of these somehow seem to revolve around de-anonymization of some kind.

I doubt that most of these things are actually true.   (And:   screw “XP ...”)

Frankly, I post things anonymously sometimes because I am embracing one of the Key Principles of Perl:   Laziness.   :-)   The site does not oblige me to log-in before snapping off a reply, never asks me for a password when I don’t, so I don’t.   Mea culpa.

Personally, I think it’s crazy that a site permits an anonymous user to post something, and for it to immediately appear on the site.   I can only imagine how much additional garbage-cleanup this must generate.   If I owned the site, I would choose to do different things with it.   I do not.   The mere fact that a posting is anoymous does not necessarily mean that it was a choice at all, let alone that it was a nefarious choice.   (The site sometimes drops logged-on sessions without warning.   Poof ... anonymous.)

If some people don’t like some other people, then ... so be it.   If some people want to hide behind AM in order to vent their spleen, then ... ditto.   If enough people want to get rid of AM, then, we’re all capable programmers and it could have been done in a day or two.   If not, then why keep talking about it.   Eccentricities are not always bad.

The site’s value, to me, is that it is an information resource:   it is IMHO the “go to site” concerning the Perl language.   I don’t think that you can compensate for human behavior with software, and perceptions of human behavior probably should not drive “one-of-a-kind features.”   Making this site, including its many years of “super searchable” archives, the very best possible resource for Perl-related information, ought to be our primary goal.   Trying to second-guess what other people do and/or why they do it is probably a waste of time and code-complexity.   JM2CW.™