You seem to be saying, "This isn't a problem for me, therefore it is not a problem." Is that correct? This is not judging you, this is asking to be sure I understood your post. | [reply] |
My understanding would be more like, "Yes, it can be a problem but who promised you there would be no problems?".
I'm unsure why there are repeated attempts to solve social issues with technology. We could more easily solve world hunger than to have all Perl programmers on this site agree on exactly how the site should work. Either you continue to use it, or you don't.
As for identifying anonymous posters within a thread, a cookie with the root node ID and a random string could be set and read back signifying AM #1 through AM #n with something resembling session handling code. It wouldn't require a password or grant anything above AM access, and would cut down on identifying AMs from correlating disparate threads together. I'm not sure how hard this would be in the site's codebase so it's possible but may not be feasible given the circumstances.
| [reply] |
Succinctly put, because there is a social problem for a minority, and the majority does not see it as a problem, none of the existing social mechanisms can fix it.
If a social problem is to be solved socially, but the society in question does not see value in solving it, then either the minority having the problem put up with it, leave the society, or attempt to disrupt the social milieu.
To be cynical about it, the only social tools that always work are bribery, threats, and flattery. None of those work well directly on Perlmonks - no one's exchanging money, and karma points have no real intrinsic value. Threats are pointless and laughable. Flattery is the weakest of the tools, and most monks aren't very susceptible to it. The only remaining option is disruption - restructuring the societal interactions by changing the way they are mediated or perceived - specifically, either changing the way the Anonymous Monk works for everyone, or allowing individual users control over their interactions with other members of the site.
To show a parallel - not that I think that Perlmonks is anywhere even in the same category of importance - when workers we striving for better hours, better treatment, and better pay in the early 20th century, the employers looked at the societal situation and said, effectively, "I'm not having the problems you are; I don't see any reason to change anything." It was necessary for the workers to strike - threat and indirect bribery - to get improved conditions, thereby restructuring the paradigm to "we won't work for you, and neither will anyone else, until you address these problems". Similarly, the civil rights movement was about changing the way that Black people were treated - upending not only social assumptions, but actual law - that the majority felt no need to change because Jim Crow laws and "separate but equal" didn't affect them - perceived threat of disruption and cost of suppression were deemed greater than the threats of making changes.
Again, I am in no way equivalencing Perlmonks to either of these movements; it's just another social website. But the parallels do exist, and they're the reason that a minority of the users keep coming around to the question of how anonymity is implemented, and how the Perlmonks society views the actions of the Anonymous Monk: as an unquestionable privilege, whose negative aspects must be put up with because the concept is sacrosanct. If you happen to be on the bad end of that stick, then there's no option for you. The larger Internet culture seems to have achieved a more nuanced balance in acknowledging that the downside exists. We haven't - at least not enough that we at least concede that the downside exists, it happens to people, and it's very painful, off-putting, and enraging when it does.
I do understand about a shortage of tuits to get even the critical infrastructure problems addressed (the password-lengthening code still hasn't happened as far as I know), and when you can't put the fires out, it is hard to commit to picking the right shade of paint for the fire engine. The Anon #N code, or blocking, or...are all in that same work queue of too much to do and too few to do it.
| [reply] |
| [reply] |
