patrick.net

If I know you love Trump then I hate you, and will automatically oppose everything you say! Like a Real American!

This is all super-interesting to me, after years of trying to get people to concentrate on the message and not the messenger.

So it is possible. Attention to the message is gained, but something is lost as well (a sense of having specific friends and enemies online, and the ego-feedback pleasure of caring for one's own reputation).

It's kinda like walking around on the street and not being able to recognize anyone's race either. You don't know whether they are likely to be friend or foe. It's the end of prejudice. It's the utopia of everyone being just citizens.

One important question: will such a forum gain new users, or will it simply lose the old ones? I don't want to piss anyone off, but I do want to let this run a bit longer and then see if there is a bump up in new users.

BTW, I just noticed that you can simply mouse-over the user number and you'll see the user name in your browser's footer. Works that way in my browser anyway.

1 says

BTW, I just noticed that you can simply mouse-over the user number and you'll see the user name in your browser's footer.

I noticed that right away, but I didn't tell all the trolls for a reason. Geeze...

You should implement the per thread pseudonym mechanism I described.

8267 says

You should implement the per thread pseudonym mechanism I described.

So everyone gets a random but more human-readable username per thread?

So it is possible. Attention to the message is gained, but something is lost as well (a sense of having specific friends and enemies online, and the ego-feedback pleasure of caring for one's own reputation).

-----------

Nothing ventured, nothing gained

I like it.

Go back to the way it was.

Gimme a bit of time to see what the effects of semi-anonymity are.

Does it cut down on the flame wars?

Is '69=666' taken?

1 says

Gimme a bit of time to see what the effects of semi-anonymity are.

Does it cut down on the flame wars?

I think it will cut down on the flame wars initially. It'll also cut down on people's interest to post here.

Eventually people may learn the number of their most and least favorite user.

Not a fan.

www.youtube.com/embed/d0LaT6qVRpg

21548 says

I think it will cut down on the flame wars initially. It'll also cut down on people's interest to post here.

I think it has already reduced flame wars and gotten people to read more of the point before judging.

But yes, I see that it's harder to become attached to a forum if you don't recognize and feel something positive or negative about the other users.

Still just an experiment.

>>cue music>>
Sometimes you want to go

Where nobody knows your name

1 says

I think it has already reduced flame wars and gotten people to read more of the point before judging.

This is just initial confusion, it won't last. Numbers are not going to change people's tendencies and fundamental nature.

1 says

So everyone gets a random but more human-readable username per thread?

Precisely. Make it impossible to tell who posted what.

People will occasionally figure out the other person's username by the writing, but that information is only good in that one thread.

This, of course, is just an experiment in preventing trolling by making the trolls incapable of distinguishing their butt-buddies from their marks.

21548 says

Eventually people may learn the number of their most and least favorite user.

Yes, which is why randomized names are needed for each thread.

1641 says

This.

You could always choose to identify yourself in a thread with randomized names either in a post by clicking a link to reveal your username.

Conversations would still be easy to follow since your pseudonym would be in green, and everyone else's pseudonyms would be human readable, even more so than usernames.

1 says

But yes, I see that it's harder to become attached to a forum if you don't recognize and feel something positive or negative about the other users.

You could also reveal real usernames to friends, but that would greatly diminish the anti-trolling properties of the feature. Even trolls generally don't want to piss off their butt-buddies least they lose the support of those users.

Agree with others that the numbers only suck. The numbers aren't memorable - recognizable the way a name is. Hard to have a conversation if you cant recall if 12345 said something to me, or was it me responding to 23456, etc. Even designated single thread names would be better than this.

It's interesting to me that others value the personal nature of the usernames (aliases). I like to read the comments without prejudices of who it is that's posting. What if you were sure you hated someone, but they had a good idea, or piece of information, you may have discarded prior to even considering such, solely because you know said person is a complete dickhead?

Is the cost of missing out, worth the benefit of self censoring ideas before even considering them? All in the name of hate.

How about color coding the word "user", with no numbers.
everyone is assigned a color from 1 to 65535
this could be a problem for those with opsin apoprotein deficiencies,
but hey ...fuck em...the worlds gotta have ditch diggers too...

1104 says

What if you were sure you hated someone, but they had a good idea, or piece of information, you may have discarded prior to even considering such, solely because you know said person is a complete dickhead?

Is the cost of missing out, worth the benefit of self censoring ideas before even considering them?

Yes, that's the point here!

Not quite ready to undo it. In fact, I think people have already learned a lot of numbers and fallen back into their old ways of "I hate this before reading it"

I should try out Dan8267's idea of a unique name per thread...

After thinking about it, yes, lets stay with the numbers. If people want to identify themselves, they can put their name or handle in the text of the posting.

All "user#" should be preceded with Asshole.lol

It would also be very interesting to simply list political positions and have people say whether they agree or not before knowing which politician holds the view.

1 says

It would also be very interesting to simply list political positions and have people say whether they agree or not before knowing which politician holds the view.

The problem with politicians is they only say what they believe when it helps them win votes. And to make matters worse, they often don't believe in anything except self promotion and self gratification.

how many politicians DON'T use their office to enrich themselves?

Trump is our first president in many years who can truly say he "served" as president, because he was clearly more comfortable as a private citizen than he is as the leader of the free world in so many ways. That is not to say he will not see some of the same benefits of his office as past presidents after he leaves the White House to his successor, but merely to point out that he had the freedom to do what he wanted MUCH more prior to taking office than he does now. But for Senators and Congressman the corruption is even greater

Too needy!

OK, names are back, but after the timestamp to make it just a bit harder to see them.

It was actually pretty painful not to know who was commenting, because almost all of us have a history here.

I'll make a different forum that really is entirely anonymous soon.

errc says

It's interesting to me that others value the personal nature of the usernames (aliases). I like to read the comments without prejudices of who it is that's posting. What if you were sure you hated someone, but they had a good idea, or piece of information, you may have discarded prior to even considering such, solely because you know said person is a complete dickhead?

You are very guilty of this. And it's that A perceives B to be a dickhead, regardless of whether or not that is true.

errc says

It's interesting to me that others value the personal nature of the usernames (aliases). I like to read the comments without prejudices of who it is that's posting.

Yes, people build up an online identity that they are attached to, and have feelings about that name and about the other names that they have come to know.

Which is a bit odd because our real-world identities are generally unknown. There must be something really fundamental in human psychobiology which causes attachment to one's name. I wonder if other animals actually have names for each other, but we just don't know it. I can imagine crows are smart enough for that, and apes, and dolphins.

Anyway, I plan to create anon.patrick.net after I get this site migrated to node. There will be no users at all on that one, just a stream of disembodied posts and comments.

rando says

Yes, people build up an online identity that they are attached to, and have feelings about that name and about the other names that they have come to know.

Which is a bit odd because our real-world identities are generally unknown.

It's more than that. It's groupism. Randomly divide a room full of people into two groups and members of each group will become less cooperative with the members of the other group. Humans are stupid. They follow cave man instincts even when it makes no sense to do so.

Yes, that sounds about right:

People have mental models of the self as a group member and of groups as sources of identity and esteem. These models affect thoughts, emotions, and behaviors related to group membership. Three studies show that two dimensions of attachment to groups, attachment anxiety and avoidance, can be assessed with good reliability, validity, and over-time stability. These factors are distinct from relationship attachment and from other measures of group identification. Group attachment predicts several important outcomes, including emotions concerning the group, time and activities shared with a group, social support, collective self-esteem, and ways of resolving conflict.

Dan8267 says

rando says

Yes, people build up an online identity that they are attached to, and have feelings about that name and about the other names that they have come to know.

Which is a bit odd because our real-world identities are generally unknown.

It's more than that. It's groupism. Randomly divide a room full of people into two groups and members of each group will become less cooperative with the members of the other group. Humans are stupid. They follow cave man instincts even when it makes no sense to do so.

You are very guilty of this

errc says

You are very guilty of this

I'm too stubbornly rational and objective to be guilty of this.

PCGyver says

Truth is in the eye of the beholder.

No, it's not. Reality is objective.

Dan8267 says

errc says

You are very guilty of this

I'm too stubbornly rational and objective to be guilty of this.

Lol. That's hilarious

You've literally posted mountains of evidence to the contrary

errc says

You've literally posted mountains of evidence to the contrary

Then it should be trivially easy for you to quote plenty of examples. Go on, do that.

Dan8267 says

errc says

You've literally posted mountains of evidence to the contrary

Then it should be trivially easy for you to quote plenty of examples. Go on, do that.

Why waste my time? Everyone knows I'm correct

errc says

Why waste my time? Everyone knows I'm correct

You are wasting everyone else's time with your baseless assertions. I challenged you to back up that assertion with evidence. If you refused to do so despite allegedly having "mountains of evidence", then we all know you are lying. Your reputation is on the line.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

www.youtube.com/embed/ryUVdwdzOwQ