Becoming Anonymous

If there is some part of the page that offends you, let me know.

Posting on WardsWiki is no longer anonymous. Your IP address is accessible via the RecentPosts feature.

Here are various methods of hiding your IP address for anonymous browsing, however:

Curiously, tests show one or two such services (not those listed) are blocked by Ward, despite assertions to the contrary.

Found on another page: Anyone using an anonymizer is wide open to a new kind of abuse. I just used that same anonymizer to add "Oh yah! Interesting..." to [a post made by an anonymized author], and noticed that it appears to all have been done by the same author, although there where two of us. In other words, someone else can easily undo, edit, or vandalize what you have just done, and no one would be the wiser besides the original user of the anonymizer. Indeed, all very interesting and dangerous... a DoubleEdgedSword. [When one person edits from different locations, the same effect, if not abused, can be an advantage.]

I find I used to sign all my contributions. At some point I stopped. I just didn't see the point. Has anybody else become anonymous?

These days I leave many of my contributions unsigned, too. My desire to do this increased as I saw more and more Wikizens get too possessive of their words, and I wanted to lead by example a bit. But I sign when I'm talking about something very personal, or saying something highly controversial. But those can always be erased later, too ...

I find wiki quite useless for communication with even medium emotional content (like other online forums), so I nowadays contribute mostly to technical discussions. So there's no reason to add a signature (but signatures are indispensable to find who thinks what in heavily emotional content).

Person4: If you believe in editing pages to DocumentMode, you eventually stop signing everything. I have no problem refactoring an unsigned contribution, moving it up and into the DocumentMode at the top, but didn't do that as often to signed contributions. Perhaps we should include GentlyReduceSignatures? (our own at least) as part of the FixYourWiki plan.

I too find that my signing or not signing is related to the emotional content of a discussion. I might be tempted to say "I sign a contribution when I believe that taking the risk of public stupidity will make a difference in whether people take me seriously." I am leery of attributing only one meaning to the act, though, or of asserting consistency in my actions or motives. Sometimes I sign, but mostly I don't. I'll sign this one just out of nonconformism. -- LaurentBossavit

I sign when I don't want a piece of text to be easily editable by the community. I still expect my signed contribution to be deletable/refactorable. Usually these days I stay anonymous. -- PeterMerel

There's a difference between signing content (or not) and concealing ones identity in RecentChanges. -- JeffGrigg

I hope Anonymous does not mean using IpUsername. You can leave your contributions unsigned, but I would prefer to see less use of IpUsername in RecentChanges. This is quite useful to understand where a person is coming from, before I continue the discussion. Unfortunately I see more use of IpUsernames? in recent months, not less.

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