I think that this idea is bad for several reasons.

First off, AM is a valuable part of the community. It allows people to “try before they buy”. It allows people to eschew recognition and still post. It allows people to post when legally encumbered.

Secondly, singling out any single user in this manner is just not right. It’s discrimination, plain and simple. I do support allowing users to not see posts from any users they want – that is, an “ignore posts by…” user setting. However, that’s unlikely to be written, largely because nobody has the time/effort required to write such a largely useless feature.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, posts written by you are not for your consumption alone. Just because you do not want to see AM posts in reply to yours does not mean that other people are so inclined.

Hey there theorbtwo... i agree that disallowing AM posts is not a good idea, but i also think an "ignore posts by ..." is not a good idea.

Let me tell you why i think so.....

In a purely social situation it could be a great feature, allowing people to not be bothered by other people with whom they don't agree or dislike intensely.

The thing is, perlmonks seems primarily to be a "help board" community, where the primary goal is to ask questions, gain knowledge and help-and-be-helped with all things Perl-related. To allow people to *dis*-allow posts/replies (which is the logical result of don't-view-xxx's-posts) could only result in people not getting the answer or help they need, because they refuse to listen to the words of that particular helper.

For example, some of the local wizards/saints/Perl-ghods have fairly snooty attitudes sometimes. They likely have every reason to have such attitudes, and i note that .sig disclaimers abound. Still, these monks can sometimes be irritating, and we all know that this sometimes results in "personality voting" and such.

If some monk has irritated me through her/his (apparent) attitude, and i 'block' replies from him/her, chances are that the next time i ask a question i'll miss replies from that monk.

Given that ((insert saint here)) knows a whole hell of a lot more about Perl than i, it would be a shame to miss that advice. Worse, others may not answer, since someone a whole hell of a lot more knowledgable (said saint) has already answered.

Anyhow, that's a lot more about it than i intended to type.
cheers!

Howdy!

...of course, if *you* choose to not see replies from poster X, and thereby miss a reply to your question, that is only on your head, self-inflicted. We'll assume you are an adult, making adult choices, and we get to point and laugh.

Yeah, killfiles ought to be used sparingly...but there are times where someone has demonstrated a persistent cluelessness such that you are willing to risk missing a useful reply from that person to avoid seeing all the crap.

yours,
Michael

But why would you want to exlude the only reply you'll sometimes get to one of your nodes? As well as the useful replies to your alogorithms? Don't forget interesting links provided for other questions. There's also some good insight for search engine implementation, along with information about peace of mind.

Perhaps you don't like the idea of having an anonymous person ranting against you in certain nodes, and the odd straightforward reply that shoots down one of your ideas or they're bluntly honest when they see things differently. Or the ones where someone anonymous asks you to explain your original post further.

As an alternative crazy idea, I'd suggest that a node should be automatically deleted from the database if it DOESN'T get an anonymous reply within 48 hours. Just because the anonymous answers are often either just as good or perhaps even better than replies made by known monks. Of course, I'm not really offering that suggestion, that one's even sillier.

Would you mind explaining *why* you'd have gotten such an idea in your head? Next you'll be asking for a feature where you can block specific users from replying to your nodes??

List of users to block from replying:
(separate entries with commas (ie: "artist, Coruscate")
<input type="text" name="block" size="50" />

tilly, one of our most valuable monks was in Anonymous Monk exile for a while. I certainly would not have wanted to preclude him from replying to any of my posts.

This is a public forum - public means public.

Some of the contributions to the offering plate are made anonymously - would you really want to deny someone who pays money so that you can enjoy this site from replying to your node?

No matter how idealistic you are, reality is that we have a damn good system that shouldn't be changed without serious consideration.

Anonymous Monk

artist, I wonder if you might care to explain what it is about anonymous postings that bothers you so much --- that is, in what way would excluding anonymous replies enhance your perlmonks experience? Are there particular threads where i) one or more anonymous replies are somehow bothersome to you, and ii) you would be less bothered if those replies were associated with a registered monk? What is your perceived gain from having and using such an option?

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. Ralph Waldo Emerson; The Conduct of Life, 1860

Interestingly, this thread got lots of anonymous replies ;-)

artist, you didn't specify your reasoning, but my observation during last couple of months is that, lots of answers provided by Anonymous Monks are very good ones.

If you don't allow them to post anonymously, they probably would stop posting, as nobody likes people to dictate his/her way of posting.

The single and only purpose for people to post questions is to get valuable answers. If anonymous answers serve the purpose well, why should we disallow it?

Interestingly, this thread got lots of anonymous replies

Yep, and especially the first three of them prove the point being made. They don't contribute much.

Abigail

Well, those first three anymous postings are very clear, just basically answering the question (what do these monks think), making clear some AnonyMonks (some are probably respected monks), sometimes want to be anynomous:
* Horrible idea.
* Why would you want that? Don't you like us, the AnonyMonks? By the way, the answer is no, not yet, and as a proud member of the AnonyMonk I would be against it, because it is so much fun to know nobody knows my name.
* I am an anonymous monkette and I find your suggestion rude and silly. The AMs have always had a home in the monastery. It would be wrong to forbid us to reply to posts here.

The fourth one is very clear, giving reasons "why":

I do not like this idea. I have some reasons why.
tilly, one of our most valuable monks was in Anonymous Monk exile for a while. I certainly would not have wanted to preclude him from replying to any of my posts.
This is a public forum - public means public.
Some of the contributions to the offering plate are made anonymously - would you really want to deny someone who pays money so that you can enjoy this site from replying to your node?
No matter how idealistic you are, reality is that we have a damn good system that shouldn't be changed without serious consideration.

Anonymous Monk means:

• Not having to be afraid to be --ed, when one wants to play the XP game, and as a game it can be fun. And yes, I do check my own XP, but I know it means nothing, certainly not for me, my (little) knowledge of and exerience with Perl are not reflected by my (quite a lot of) XP at all, but still, I posted some good nodes and I am proud, also for the rep they have, I consider that for what it is, appreciation.
• Legal issues; not having to post under your real name, not having to post under a new (another) identity, being completely free in what you want to say. Any company, institution, government agency or whatever is going to have difficulties to trace it.
• I like this community because of the tolerance, the sense of humour, the knowledge, the willingness to help people. Anonimity plays a role in this. Lack of anonimity would make Perl Monks a less nice place. Making anonimity impossible might even be a reason for me to stop coming here. No big loss maybe. But still, I am not the only one who thinks that way.
• Being able to tease someone. Let them guess who is teasing. Just for the fun of it. I really love some of those anonymous comments.
• Maybe someone is using this forum for his public image, as a marketing tool. Some posts could damage that image. Let them. It does not hurt the monks. Yes, another account could be helpful, but it's a bit of a bother. Next to that, I hate that idea even more: someone with two or more accounts might ++ all his own nodes, just to play the XP game. Not fair at all.
• I like the argument "try before buy". That's just how I did it. I posted 3 anonymous posts before signing up as woolfy.
• For whatever reason they are posted anonymous, lots of the anonymous posts are brilliant. I really do not want to miss them. Was it necessary for those posts to be posted anonymously? I don't care, I'm glad they are posted anyhow.
• Lighten up. Really. If you don't want to read the anonymous posts, ignore them. If someone posts an OT node, why bothering asking "where's the Perl in this", just ignore it, please don't get angered, it's better for your heart. There are so many good nodes at Perl Monks. Why bother to make so many sarcastic remarks to the posters of the lesser nodes.
• And for the sake of the argument, replying to a useless post (well, useless maybe in your eyes), stating that that useless post is useless, well, that is really useless. Energy that could have been used more useful. The dozens of posts asking questions like "Where is the Perl in this question?", I consider those quite useless and very demoralizing.
• So, when someone posts anonymously or not, what's the difference? You still might not know who's really posting. What would be the next step after abolishing anonimity, requiring a copy of a new monks' passport? I hope not.
• It's not like making anonymous posts impossible would do any good. Monks who create a new account, and post just one node and never return, are just as irritating (or not irritating at all) as anonymous monks.
I considered posting this anonymously, just for the argument. Well, I didn't.

Yep, and especially the first three of them prove the point being made. They don't contribute much.

And your node does?

"They don't contribute much."

No, I think they contributed, as they clearly stated their disagreement. A lengthy reply could contribute, as well as those short ones.

Although some of the wording could be softened a little bit, but that's a different issue.

They answer the question What does monastery think of this feature? .

What does monastery think of this feature?

And finally, I'd just like to reiterate what theorbtwo said:

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, posts written by you are not for your consumption alone. Just because you do not want to see AM posts in reply to yours does not mean that other people are so inclined.

sauoq has made a very good point deep in a subthread that's worth repeating close to the top of the thread. I've seen this in my time as an administrator of another forum, as well.

Perlmonks does not require any sort of identity verification to grant an account, other than a valid email address. Which amounts to no verification at all. Thus, any action taken against Anonymonk will only lead to the registration of throw-away accounts.

Experience teaches us that trolls are more determined than stray visitors. Anonymous trolling will be replaced by throw-away-account trolling which is much harder to ignore because, well, all the trolls are using different accounts. Meanwhile, valuable contributions possibly posted by stray visitors will be prevented.

This is confusing. Either you are ignoring anonymous posts, or you aren't. If you are ignoring anonymous posts, you will miss the stray visitors valuable contributions. If you are not ignoring the anonymous posts, you will see the trolls.

I've decided to ignore anonymous posts. I won't answer their questions, I won't correct their errors in their replies, I won't back up or disprove their claims with benchmarks, or all the other things I do with signed postings.

No doubt this will be a big relief to many people, and I wouldn't be surprised more people will start posting anonymously.

Abigail

You seem confused about the point of this thread and your position about it. It is not about ignoring Anonymous Monk, it is about being able to ban him. You are also missing the fact that ignoring Anonymous Monk will do you exactly no good at all in ignoring signed trolls. This means Abigail does not want to prohibit Anonymous Monk posting, because then all trolls will be signed, and he will have achieved the opposite of what he was after in the first place. I hope you are now in the clear about your own intentions.

Makeshifts last the longest.

No doubt this will be a big relief to many people, and I wouldn't be surprised more people will start posting anonymously.

I can't tell if this was intended to be tounge in cheek, or if it was a serious comment born of your prodigious ego.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

I vote against this idea.

If you are a noob, then that is because you didn't log into the site.

But as to the general question: I am against the idea as well. Sure the trolling can get annoying, but I can see its value as some people offer ideas that the senior members don't like and thus trash with -- votes.

Then again, points don't really mean much do they?

your question was posted anonmously because you haven't created an account or you weren't logged in. if you create an account and login your posts will show up under your name like this post is by zengargoyle. you also get a spiffy homenode where you can put things if you like. having an account also lets the rest of us know how long you've been around and once you've posted a bit let's us know a bit about how you use Perl and how we can best answer your questions.

until you do create an account and log in, all of your posts will be Anonymous, some monks here think that allowing anonymous posts anywhere anytime (how it works now) is a good thing, some think that anonymous questions are ok, but anonymous replies aren't (you don't know you can trust Anonymous to give a good answer), some want to make everybody create an account before posting but think too many newbies wouldn't want to and would leave instead of creating an account.

that's what this tread is mostly about.

i'm pretty sure that most of us would like you to create an account if you find perlmonks a usefull place you like to visit so we can maybe get to know you a bit better. but you're free to remain Anonymous if you like.

Just checking to see if i'm no longer anonymous