I just thought I'd throw this out for discussion. I'm still pretty new to PM, but I think it's a great service and community. There's just one thing that's been bothering me since day one. Why is the Anonymous Monk allowed to reply to posts?

I haven't seen many good responses posted anonymously. A lot of them are just snipes and flames. While I don't have a problem with online anonymity, I think if you’re responding to someone, then why not stand behind it? Especially on a site where users can police the content by up/downvoting messages.

Do we, as a community, gain that much by allowing anonymous replies? What do we lose if we take that away? Here's are the reasons I've seen for replying anonymously:

• Unregistered user posting a follow-up to their question. (Is it fair to ask people to register for this purpose?)
• Registered user logging out to post something they expect to be downvoted. (Skews the XP system.)
• Registered user forgetting to log in. (I'm guilty of this myself.)
• Registered user doesn't want to be associated with the response for personal reasons. (Maybe they don't want their employer to be able to connect the code to them.)

Sorry if this is an old discussion. I tried to find answer to these questions, but the closest I came was Get rid of Anonymous Monks?. That's just a bit too drastic for my liking, but it was a good discussion.

Thanks for your consideration. If you know of helpful, anonymous replies, then please let me know. I'm basing a lot of this on what I've seen. I could just be way off here.

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