Comments on: ask a scatterbrain: anonymity at blog parties?!

By: tamsynx

tamsynx — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:38:58 +0000

Reporters Without Borders has a blogging guide you can download too (with anonymity information). I’m keeping my blog pseudonymous because I’m still in grad school. I have another blog that is my “professional” blog, but I don’t want to come out until after I’ve graduated and found a job. Depending upon your field, sometimes you may alienate prospective employers with something like your political stance, for instance. And I do have an e-mail address specifically for each blog. But I’m not so paranoid that I worry about my IP address.

By: socfreak

socfreak — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:05:05 +0000

so how are we supposed to know where/when the blogger party is going to be? Did I miss something? Is there going to be a post on scatterplot with the location? Is it in the ASA program?

By: belle lettre

belle lettre — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:00:58 +0000

Electronic Frontier Foundation has suggestions for anonymizing software. Location is hard to figure out unless it’s a .edu domain; if you use a ISP that runs its servers in another city, it’s totally confusing by location. But ISP is usually about right, but anonymizing software helps.

Of course, no one cares that much, unless you’re trollish, abusive, defaming, harassing, stalking. Be good, and others will be good to you. Google “Autoadmit WSJ law blog” for an example of NOT being good, and having “anonymity” not be enough to protect you. Also google “Trustafarian Hastings bomb threat” for another example.

Yes, law students can be awfully stupid. I was about to say that lawyers also have a strong sense of norm, which is mostly true, even with these bad examples.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Sun, 18 May 2008 03:38:34 +0000

As for being anonymous as a commenter, even if you leave a fake e-mail address, you still have to worry about your IP address if the blog proprietor cares enough to look it up.

By: olderwoman

olderwoman — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:16:37 +0000

That happened because your email address is visible to the blog owner. If you also create a pseudonymous email address to use when you write blog comments or posts, you can keep your true identity secret. Because I have not bothered to create a pseudonymous email address, whenever I comment, a person finds out who I am. If I want to take up snarking for a hobby, I’ll set up a gmail account named olderwomansnark (or maybe olderwomansnark1325 as I guess that is probably a popular name) and then I can say anything I want.

By: laurabethnielsen

laurabethnielsen — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:01:49 +0000

I am sure no one is still reading this at comment 41, but I gave up when I posted a comment here under a psuedonym and the author of the post emailed me to thank me for my comment. That was when I realized nothing is ananymous, started using my real name and resolved not to blog while drinking.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Sat, 17 May 2008 01:57:49 +0000

Norms are pretty effective, btw.

Norms seems especially effective among sociologists, which I take as a matter of pride.

By: pitse1eh

pitse1eh — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:07:54 +0000

Hmm… well, I don’t know if that was my original concern. Being new to blogging, my original concern was even having other bloggers know who I was. Regardless of “outing” me, if you met me and then saw me with my regular badge at ASA, you would know who I am. Even if you didn’t do anything with that knowledge, you would know.

But, I’ve come to the decision that I no longer care about that. At all. 1. Because it’s foolish, you can’t stop people from figuring out who you are; and 2. It creates a false barrier between you and those whom read your blog.

By: Kieran

Kieran — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:32:40 +0000

what i meant was that i was surprised by the original concern about a the blogger party because i thought the norm was so entrenched that it wasn’t something people even thought about it (and that there would be consequences to breaking it). to see it raised at all was surprising to me.

I wasn’t being picky, I just didn’t understand. I guess I’d be surprised if it was really so entrenched that it wouldn’t occur to people (hardly anything has that sort of quality). Rather, I think people are well aware that it would be the wrong thing to do, and that everyone else would think it the wrong thing to do as well, and that there would probably be a lot of negative reputational consequences for anyone who did it.

By: belle lettre

belle lettre — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:30:55 +0000

This reminds me of when Brian Le/ter called a bounty for “Juan Non Vo/okh” (http://www.volokh.com/posts/1119457598.shtml ). Everyone in the blogging community thought that was declasse. The disagreement may have been substantive and intellectual and may have concerned legitimate issues of “owning your words” and not using a pseudonym as a veiled bully pulpit, but still, really, not cool by the Blogger’s Code of Honor and Conduct.