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| Author |
Message |
jkrauss
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Anonymous...
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Jan 20 00:09 UTC 1995 |
Recently, I was on the Sexuality .cf, and thought of something I wanted to say
that was potentially embarrasing. And so I wondered... How many people have
wanted to say things anonymously? Well, after thinking for a while, I have
come upon a solution:
Anonymous
A login availible to ANYBODY--we distribute the password.
At the end of an anonymous message that needs and anwer, place a "signature", a
word, string of digits, or whatever, that you would like to be referred to by.
So, here we have it.
loginid: who
password: who
name: ANONYMOUS
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| 105 responses total. |
whoami
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response 1 of 105:
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Jan 20 00:19 UTC 1995 |
SLIGHT change of plans, actually
loginid: whoami (Who am I! Get it? Get it?)
password: whoami
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robh
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response 2 of 105:
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Jan 20 00:49 UTC 1995 |
Oh boy. That's opening a jumbo extra-large can of worms
there, my friend.
If you (or anyone) wants to put something in the Sexuality
conference without attaching your name, please send it
to the fair-witness of the conference (i.e. me) and I'll
enter it there myself, with a note saying "This is an
anonymous response from a Grex user." I'd much rather do
that than set up an account with so much potential to
wreak havoc.
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steve
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response 3 of 105:
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Jan 20 03:37 UTC 1995 |
But don't we efectively have anonymous accounts here already? IO
remember asking about this back in '91. I don't think there was much
interest in it at the time.
Anyone who wants to send nasty things to people is going to create
what is effectively an anonymous account already. I think we might be
able to make the case that a public "anon" account might save us some
resources by not having umtpeen effectively anonymous accounts created
here for posting/mailing purposes.
Also, I'm kinda playing devils advocate.
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rcurl
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response 4 of 105:
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Jan 20 06:37 UTC 1995 |
Very well, too.
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carson
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response 5 of 105:
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Jan 20 09:05 UTC 1995 |
there's the matter of changing the password of such accounts,
plus the want to hide behind a pseudo for the purpose of
malicious actions (Agora #32?)
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cicero
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response 6 of 105:
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Jan 20 09:48 UTC 1995 |
I don't understand the objections. If I want to be malicious and
hide behind a psudo, I can. (I shouldn't, but I can). This is an
open system. There is nothing to stop people from creating psudo's
if they want to. But steve's right. Having a public anon psudo should,
logically cut down on the number of special purpose psudo's created. As
far as someone changing the password, they could, but it would be rude.
Let's hope nobody is rude. If someone is, it isn't the end of the world,
you know. We can always start another public psudo. As far as to wether
we should do this or not, there is really nothing to discuss. jkrauss
has already created the account, and publicised the password. The public
Psudo exists. Your only question as a user is now "do you want to make
use of it or not?"
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steve
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response 7 of 105:
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Jan 20 23:01 UTC 1995 |
The only problem I can see with an "anon" account here is that
we're sort of advertising the anonymous ability of accounts created
on Grex in a way that we haven't. We will attract some of the element
that I call "cyberslime" in having such an publically available account.
Of course, the cyberslime already know about Grex anyway, so it might
be a moot point.
But let's say that someone sends Newt Gingrich a peice of hate mail
say that he'll be killed. Would it look "worse" for Grex, for that mail
to have come from "axxc13@cyberspace.org" or "anon@cyberspace.org"?
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gregc
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response 8 of 105:
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Jan 20 23:19 UTC 1995 |
I'm against this. People can already create all the anon accounts they want
to, we don't need a publicly available anon account too.
Now if, as cicero suggested above, this one account cut down on all the
other anon accounts, it would be a good thing. But unless we turn OFF
the ability to create all the other anon accounts, it won't really work.
We'll just have *both*, some people will use the public one, and other
people will just keep on creating more anon accounts.
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cicero
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response 9 of 105:
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Jan 21 07:44 UTC 1995 |
But Greg, that's just the point! Logic dictates that at least some of the
people who would otherwise create thier own psudos, will instead use this one.
The net result is fewer new psudeos created. Not none, we'll never see that,
but fewer... YES!
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carson
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response 10 of 105:
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Jan 21 10:09 UTC 1995 |
Isn't jkrauss a pseudo to begin with?
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remmers
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response 11 of 105:
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Jan 21 15:44 UTC 1995 |
How would you prevent someone from logging into the official anonymous
account and changing the password of that account?
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tsty
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response 12 of 105:
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Jan 21 16:34 UTC 1995 |
Anyone who runs newuser creates an account which may or may
not include valid .plan information. Isn't that sufficient?
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nestene
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response 13 of 105:
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Jan 21 16:40 UTC 1995 |
What if we put the anonymous account in a different group from the default,
and disallow it access to the password-changing programs? Or else, unix
must have some mechanism built into it for creating accounts that can't
change their passwords.
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steve
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response 14 of 105:
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Jan 21 18:01 UTC 1995 |
We can take technical steps to ensure that anon can't change the pw.
Thats the easy part. The "hard" part is, do we want an official anonymous
account? What would it look like for threatening mail comming from an
officialy supported account? Technically, of course we already have this
already. But in the social sense, I think it's a lot different.
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scg
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response 15 of 105:
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Jan 21 20:47 UTC 1995 |
If we were blocking out password changing, could we also block out the
ability to send mail, or would that be more complicated?
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remmers
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response 16 of 105:
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Jan 21 20:57 UTC 1995 |
My personal opinion is that an "official" anonymous account would
create more problems than it would solve. I doubt that the difference
in total number of anonymous accounts created would be significant,
when you consider the high rate at which accounts are being created.
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andyv
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response 17 of 105:
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Jan 21 23:32 UTC 1995 |
Couldn't we have another choice at the respond pass reply called respond
anonymous which could be expergated in necessary.
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kentn
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response 18 of 105:
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Jan 22 00:19 UTC 1995 |
This response has been erased.
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kentn
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response 19 of 105:
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Jan 22 00:20 UTC 1995 |
What does the "pseudo" command do at the Respond or pass? prompt?
Not quite anonymous, is it?
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steve
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response 20 of 105:
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Jan 22 05:36 UTC 1995 |
I think the reasons for an "anon" account would be at least as much
for mail purposes as anything else.
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cicero
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response 21 of 105:
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Jan 22 08:22 UTC 1995 |
You know, it can still be a "public" account, without being official.
If the grex organization takes no action and sets no policy on this
matter, then we are not opening the political can of worms. Meantime, if
someone wants to create a psudo and publicize it's password, then who is
to tell them no? Freedom of speech and all that. This is so far, what jkraus
did the other day. (Isn't jkrauss a psudo?--I have no idea!) I think it
addresses the need without really creating controversy.
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chelsea
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response 22 of 105:
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Jan 24 13:05 UTC 1995 |
I'd suggest Grex not get into the business of policing how
users use the system. From what I've seen that only serves
to increase the amount of nasty behavior. It also puts added
responsibilty on Grex in regards to consistently enforcing such
policies.
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steve
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response 23 of 105:
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Jan 24 19:36 UTC 1995 |
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying with reference to this
conversation, Mary.
I don't think people want to control things, but rather should we have
an officially appointed "anon" account or not?
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chelsea
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response 24 of 105:
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Jan 24 20:52 UTC 1995 |
My understanding is that this anonymous account was being suggested as an
interesting conferencing tool, not to send mail to the President. I've
often though such an ID might be fun although I'm not sure I've got the
inclination to do much with it at this point. But, way back when when
enthusiasm was high and conferencing was brand spanking new, well, it
would have been lots of fun. Years ago I was asking John why we couldn't
have a conference where all responses would be from "Bob" with no trace as
to the poster's actual identity. It would have been the Bob conference
(imaginative, eh?). But he suggested this was impossible under PicoSpan.
Pity.
If folks would like to play with such an anonymous account, make one, and
disable mail privileges if this is a cause for concern. Or maybe this
isn't possible. Again, pity.
But, for heaven's sake, don't even consider trying to police the
"realness" of any ID. I picked up a few hints in this and other recent
comments that this would be a good and responsible thing for Grex to do.
Hence my comment.
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