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Quote: from Forever Angel at 12:18 am on Aug. 30, 2007

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Is this a mod team consensus or something you have unilaterally posted without discussion? And can you list the criteria for when a mod will likely check the identity of of an anonymous poster?

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1) All 8 mods that saw it unanimously approved this announcement. As did David who expressly said that this summed up both the purpose and mechanics of the feature.
2) No. Not relevant.

You are trying to be difficult because this doesn't conform to your ideal of the feature, even though that happens to be out of line with most of LW/the mods/David.

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Quote: from insertnamehere at 6:22 pm on Aug. 29, 2007

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Quote: from Forever Angel at 12:18 am on Aug. 30, 2007

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Is this a mod team consensus or something you have unilaterally posted without discussion? And can you list the criteria for when a mod will likely check the identity of of an anonymous poster?

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 1) All 8 mods that saw it unanimously approved this announcement. As did David who expressly said that this summed up both the purpose and mechanics of the feature.  
 2) No. Not relevant.  

 You are trying to be difficult because this doesn't conform to your ideal of the feature, even though that happens to be out of line with most of LW/the mods/David.

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Apparently David has given a little more thought to this. So my ideal wasn't so far out of line after all?

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And there's still no even slightly conceivable way of listing every possible scenario in which mods'd have to check the identity of anonymous poster. Waaaaaaaaay too diverse.

Anyhow, this really isn't constructive, so can we leave it at this?

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Satan Oscillate Metallic Sonatas

1. Ability to add notes to members profiles without us seeing that member's profile.
2. Ability to send private messages to anonymous posters without us seeing that members name.
3. Ability to formally warn anonymous members (at this point in the process we should be allowed to look at who they are though without a doubt).
4. Ability to suggest anonymous members for DOS (we should definitely be able to see at this point as well).
5. Ability to somehow identify members who have been warned in the past for a specific behavior and are continuing that behavior under the guise of anonymous.

I will be checking every single suspicious anonymous reply because it's my job to moderate the forum. #5 is impossible, by the way, unless David makes it so that previously informally and formally warned anon posters have a little flag by their name so mods know that the member is a troublemaker without knowing who he is. That flag would have to link to a version of the member's profile that showed me what his moderator notes and past formal warnings were without revealing who he was.

So really, if you want to change how anonymous anonymous is, you need to get David to make it possible for us to effectively moderate without looking at member's public profiles, as that's pretty much one of our biggest tools in determining action.

Post edited at 11:33 am on Sep. 1, 2007 by medjai

If you think you can't do your job without checking the identity of every anonymous poster, then you probably should rethink the reason why you are a moderator.

And, medjai, before you jump me to tell me that's not what you said, in essence it is. You seem to want total freedom to do that 'at your discretion' and without having to justify yourself. Otherwise, why are you so adamant in your defense of that ability? Being 'mature' moderators, why would you have a problem honestly answering 'why?' you checked a poster's identity?

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Don't laugh at me, Don't call me names
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes we're all the same
Someday we'll all have perfect wings

The point I'm making is that I only ever check anonymous posts when they 'raise serious questions' in my mind, and that you have no way of knowing whether or not a moderator looked at a member's identity 'without reason' because you aren't a moderator.

The example you were giving, as far as I know, was a post I made a while ago regarding an anonymous member, I'm telling you that if it was me then I did have serious enough concern to look at the member's identity (and I was even correct, it wasn't a random guess) and that the only example you guys are giving is in fact a bad one based on hearsay and opinion rather than any solid fact.

In other words I don't know where the paranoia is coming from, and honestly, an anonymous post doesn't need to raise "serious" concerns it just needs to raise 'enough' of a concern for us to consider it necessary to look at the member's identity.

As a moderator it's rather necessary to know who's posting what and I could care less about a member's unwillingness to post anonymously because of that. If a post is violating the guidelines you can bet it's going to looked at, we might not delete the post if we determine that while it's technically against the guidelines, the post can stay, we'd still look at who was posting it though because that does matter.

You can name any action I've ever taken and I could justify it easily, if I couldn't justify it then the member the action was taken to was apologized to and in fact generally speaking I give out around 500 reward points to compensate them for the mistake (as well as fixing it). I sure as shit believe in accountability and am offended that you'd accuse otherwise.

By the way I'm not being defensive at all, I've been around long enough to not be threatened by retarded threads like this and I know that I'm doing things the right way, I'm just letting you know that I'm doing them that way and that I'll continue to do so until someone other than an angry member who isn't moderating this board tells me to do so, pretty much.

Post edited at 3:25 pm on Sep. 1, 2007 by medjai

Seeing as this is a website designed to help people with their often very personal problems, it's worrying that some moderaters take a flippant approach to respecting anonymity.

The anonymous feature should only be applicable in the "help" forums and, considering the colourful history of the mod team, unveiling anonymity should be a collective decision.

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Sort of two/three dimensional Wizard of Oz for the future.