December 9, 2005

3:48 AM

Matt, threads like this underscore the need for the anon poster to have the ability to respond in his or her thread. I'm sure that it's not a trivial amount of work for you - what would it take to make this happen, and what can we do to support your efforts?

I think that this is one of the most important features on the to-do list. It must be so painful for the poster to be unable to respond in many cases.
posted by By The Grace of God to feature requests at 3:48 AM (56 comments total)

In this particular case, the anon poster can't get to his sister in trouble. This is something the MeFi community can work on. There are SO many reasons the poster might not be able to travel: money? ailing loved one at home? inescapable work responsibilities? personal fear or phobia? For each of those reasons, there ARE resources available that the MeFi community might know about. I am personally aching with empathy and the wish to help this poster - I'd even toss in fifty bucks towards a plane ticket if that were the trouble.
posted by By The Grace of God at 3:50 AM on December 9, 2005

As I'm sure others will point out, the option of e-mailing someone to post a reply on their behalf is still there.
posted by grouse at 3:51 AM on December 9, 2005

That remains a good option, grouse, but it does involve more work for the OP. To maintain his or her anonymity they'd have to create an additional email account, for example. What's far, far worse is that it takes the problem solving out of the community. The anonymous posts are often human situations that are all too common, and taking the thread offsite detracts from the knowledge base that is AskMe.
posted by By The Grace of God at 3:53 AM on December 9, 2005

I stand behind my earlier idea.
posted by Eideteker at 3:56 AM on December 9, 2005

Good thread, that. I like this idea, too.
posted by By The Grace of God at 4:00 AM on December 9, 2005

Yes, odinsdream's idea (reposted by BYTGoG) is good, although might need some tweaking. Still, I think creating a new anonymous e-mail address can't be that hard.
posted by grouse at 4:04 AM on December 9, 2005

or pony up $5 for an account
posted by andrew cooke at 4:40 AM on December 9, 2005

Anon can email Matt and Matt would post any additional remarks or comments in the thread. Matt already knows who each anon poster is, right? So there's no need to create extra email accounts or "take it offsite." Matt is trustworthy enough to post the anonymous questions in the first place without revealing who's who, he should be trustworthy enough to pass along additional remarks from the OP.
posted by Gator at 5:22 AM on December 9, 2005

What about when a person submits an anonymous question, a random number is generated in return. That number becomes a login, such as "anonymous #1" and generates a random password. The login and password are open and useable for a limited time - perhaps 1-2 weeks and can be used for the person to respond to the thread.

Pros:

They can answer queries people pose about their question, mark "best answer" comments, or post resolutions. Also, this would alleviate those accounts people create just to respond. That's $5 gone from Matt, but eliminates future potential sock puppets as well.

Cons:

Since they're branded with specific anonymous+number login names, people may start creating permanent user accounts that are similarly named, so something would need to be in place that would disallow that. Maybe they could get an anonymous+number login that has a Stan Chin Gold Star attached or something similar. Of course, this entire idea may be impossible to code.
posted by cyniczny at 5:41 AM on December 9, 2005

If the anonymous poster is going to let people do things like send him money and directly intervene with his sister, he's going to have to break anonymity anyway. I agree with the idea of giving anon posters a way to respond, but I don't think this is the poster child post for why.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:01 AM on December 9, 2005

Just thinking out loud, but wouldn't all this be easier if you just posted anonymous questions as yourself, but in "Anonymous Mode"? So for example, if I wanted to post an anonymous question, I would do so in the same way I'd post a non-anonymous question, except that I'd tick an "Anonymous" checkbox. Matt would then approve it, and it would appear is AskMe, but "the system" knows that when displaying the thread, rather than saying "Posted by Chill" it should replace this with "Posted by Anonymous" for the initial post and any comment I make within the thread.

I would then be free to comment in the thread at will, using my normal account, but nobody (apart from Matt) would actually know who I am.
posted by chill at 6:01 AM on December 9, 2005

I disagree that an on-site mechanism for anonymous follow-ups should be a priority; and in the grand scheme of AnonAskMe, I don't think this case serves as a particularly strong argument in favor.
posted by cribcage at 6:11 AM on December 9, 2005

I agree with cribcage. What's so hard about setting up a separate e-mail account for this purpose? And responses from that account could be posted in the thread by whoever got them if they wanted to add to the knowledge base.
posted by languagehat at 6:25 AM on December 9, 2005

I like Chill's idea. It would require the creation of one additional database with a foreign key defined by the primary key of a) the user id, and b) the post. This table would define which users were anonymous in which post.

The only time a user could become anonymous in a post (that is the only time this is exposed through the UI) would be that checkbox on the post page.

The display code would need to make two decisions: whether or not the to display the poster name as anon, and whether or not to display the commenter name as anon.

Matt wouldn't need to moderate. Stupid/fake questions would carry the same penalty, as the real user is exposed to Matt.

Matt, if you don't have time I'd be willing to code this for you.
posted by jon_kill at 6:26 AM on December 9, 2005

Er. Database table, that is.
posted by jon_kill at 6:31 AM on December 9, 2005

I think the one concern about linking anonymous posts to someone's username is whether that would inhibit people from commenting. SO, right now Matt knows who you are if you post anonymously, but once the question is posted, it's not linked at all to your username. In the even of some security-compromising situation, the identity of anonymous posters would never be compromised. I know that for most people anonymous posting lets them post things they migh tbe worried about their significant other or boss knowing about, but in some cases, they are worried about legal ramifications, or other very serious consequences if their information was known. How do people feel about balancing the ability to allow anonymous posters to reply in-thread (without Matt or me assisting, though we're happy to do so) but having some database-level link between their mefi ID and the anonypost, versus having anonymous posts be completely anonymous to everyone but Matt?
posted by jessamyn at 6:42 AM on December 9, 2005

I'm not exactly sure how well a blinding mechanism would work, given the limited amount of static, unchangeable data we have for each user. If we could make the table above blidned in some way (ie: put an MD5 hash into the table for the user ID, and then query it the same way when putting up a post with the username).

Of course, that reduces the security to just running and MD5 on all user names to see if it matches the table entry.

The more complicated matter of generating an anonymous account. This is not _much_ more complicated. You hit anonymous, you get a page with a user name and password, when you see that the post is approved, you go to town posting on it... if its not, then your user name and password are meaningless and will be trashed, accordingly.

As a developer, I would have qualms about littering the main user table with anonymous entries. Perhaps the architecture would be better suited to, again, a seperate table.
posted by jon_kill at 6:54 AM on December 9, 2005

As has been mentioned above, but is obviously misunderstood by a bunch of people, once an anonymous post goes up there is no electronic trail linking the poster to the posted. Sorry, FBI, mathowie just can't recall, he gets so many you know.

A mechanism:
Have the "post anonymously" message come with "specify a password for this post". Then let anyone who comments be given a text entry box to include the post password if they know it and so wish, so they too can comment anonymously.

Of course, the most obvious use of this is so the OP can follow up. But there is a new use: if it's such a sensitive topic that other people are unlikely to comment nonymously, the OP can mention in the original post the post password, for anyone to use.

This is open to serious abuse, obviously! Probably anonymous comments should get the same filtering process that anonymous posts do.
posted by Aknaton at 7:06 AM on December 9, 2005

jessamyn - since the goal of anonymous is to totally divorce the user from the posting (which I think is fabu), then the solution is my mind to to have three levels of posting:

• regular
• latent
• anonymous

If you post latently, the user is listed as latent and the association is internally maintained with a clear caveat that this is not anonymous and anonymity can not be guaranteed. Latent is capable of following up her posts with answers.
posted by plinth at 7:23 AM on December 9, 2005

I applaud BTGoG's impulse to help directly, and think eventually some sort of automatic anon comment thing for the poster in the posted thread would be a good thing, but disagree that this is an urgent problem. Anon posters can always email a clarification to Matt or Jessamyn; anon commenters can do the same with comments (someone has done this in the thread already), and folks looking to connect with an anon poster can encourage contact via email (someone has done this as well).

Doesn't that cover all the bases, BTGoG?
posted by mediareport at 7:47 AM on December 9, 2005

I think Aknaton's offered a very good and simple solution to the follow-up issue. Users never make up good passwords though; how about the AskMe posting form just having: "Write down this password so you can follow up anonymously: U4E9C2"
posted by nicwolff at 7:47 AM on December 9, 2005

Yeah, but then people are going to lose and/or forget their anon passwords. That's a whole new set of problems. AskMe questions are open for a year, remember.
posted by raedyn at 7:53 AM on December 9, 2005

An automatic anonymous responder account would work. The anonymous poster would get a login/password combo of some sort (different from the account password) when the question is approved and could use this to send a comment to the responder account. The account would then automatically post the comment to the appropriate thread. The upside is, anyone could code the automatic commenter itself if only as just a proof-of-concept. Matt would then have to just implement the system and create a login/password allocation thingy for the anonymous question approval process.
posted by fred_ashmore at 7:53 AM on December 9, 2005

depending upon what password hashing algo is in use, you could clone your own account using the same password. You hit the "make me an anon account" button, and you get an anon-9876 account with the same password as your normal account. This way you know for sure that it's the same anon sock puppet replying to their post, and if y'all are using something like md5 to hash passwords, you can easily find out what account made the anon account by looking for another account with the same hashed pw value, in the event of abuse.

These accounts would only work in AxMe, and a simple cron job that locked accounts starting with "anon" once they were a week old would sever the last link with the old account (the hashed pw's would no longer match), giving you long-term deniability.
posted by popechunk at 8:03 AM on December 9, 2005

Jessamyn: thanks for actually answering the question :) I assumed there was a db level link anyway, so I'd be fine with it, personally.

To the folks who think this is a low priority: Consider that this would vastly increase the utility of AskMe, especially in dire situations.

mediareport: How about we "hire" a dedicated poster (the way Matt "hired" jessamyn) to be a conduit those answer-post-requests? I would certainly be willing to give some hours to such a project.
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:09 AM on December 9, 2005

I still don't see what's wrong with just emailing Matt or Jessamyn.
posted by Gator at 8:14 AM on December 9, 2005

This will be an unpopular view, but:

I think that the benefits from this feature would not outweigh the cost. Anonymous posting is a nice perk, and adds value to askMefi, but the additional value added by allowing anonymous comments isn't great enough, IMnsHO, to justify the cost of design and development.

... though I do wonder about all these token-oriented solutions. Aren't anonymous posts just entered against a users posting record and flagged as anonymous? That's what I'd do. I would assume that my "anonymous" posts were logged against my ID by the system, and just not revealed as being from me. If that were the case, the implementation could be much simpler, and I'd withdraw my objection.

Not that this matters. When we can actually have an impact on development costs (i.e., when it's actually conceivable that volunteering assistance could make a difference, which it hardly ever can), then I'll have more sympathy for pony requests. Until then, they mostly look like -- well, pony requests.

There's a reason they got called that, after all: Ponies are somethign you dream about; they're not something you actually expect to get.
posted by lodurr at 8:18 AM on December 9, 2005

Gator: I still don't see what's wrong with just emailing Matt or Jessamyn.

How can the admins tell that the anonymous person emailing them a response is the same anonymous person who posted the question in the first place?

Also, if someone is embarassed enough to want anonymity, why would they want to share this secret with an admin, especially if they were a well-known poster here?
posted by popechunk at 8:20 AM on December 9, 2005

Missed jessamyn's post above. So I guess I withdraw my cost argument. But I will say in addition that I don't think there's any good reason to allow fully-anonymous posting. That's a pony of great price and little value, IMO.
posted by lodurr at 8:20 AM on December 9, 2005

And as a sidenote, it might be too much to expect Natt to maintain the anonymity of posters under all conditions. Not trying to slam Matt here but as far as I can tell he has no legal basis for a refusal to break anonymity. He is not a doctor or a lawyer or a priest. Under some circumstances, Matt might even be required by law (and/or common sense) to break the anonymity of a poster, even if no one asks him to.
posted by fred_ashmore at 8:23 AM on December 9, 2005

popechunk, like I said, Matt already knows who we are when we submit an anonymous question.
posted by Gator at 8:24 AM on December 9, 2005

... why would they want to share this secret with an admin, especially if they were a well-known poster here?

I could make two answers to this: First, the tough-guy answer -- "tough tiddy", as our resident neurosurgeon might put it. That's the cost of playing on Mefi. If you don't trust the admins, don't play here.

Second answer overlaps with the first: That's the price fo community. You have to trust someone. Maybe if there was a published policy of information exposure amongst admins (I think we'd all assume that there will be more than two at some point), it would make people feel better, but really, if there isn't that trust, then... well, we don't get to hear the question. We don't have to hear all questions. It's not a requirement for our continued existence as human beings for us to hear all questions.
posted by lodurr at 8:24 AM on December 9, 2005

To the folks who think this is a low priority: Consider that this would vastly increase the utility of AskMe, especially in dire situations.

The only reason I don't think this is a good idea is that MeFi is Not a Good Single Solution for Most Dire Situations compared to real world alternatives. Making it work better for dire situations is not an unqualified good thing.

Obviously casting a wide net solution-wise is usually a helpful approach, and sometimes a stable of semi-anonymous, available, thoughful, or resourceful people is just the solution you need. However, I think it's important to balance AskMe's utililty with the reality that it's a web site, with admins who sleep or who are otherwise unavailable from time to time. Every now and again I'll wake up to an ADMIN PLS HOPE ME!!!$!$! email that's a few hours old (or a front page train wreck of login/login proportions) and I'm jarringly reminded of that fact, and I think it's important that other people keep that in mind as well. That said, I'm all for a good technological solution to this problem and the ideas people have had have been great. Go team!
posted by jessamyn at 8:25 AM on December 9, 2005

Gator: I guess I misunderstood jessamyn's statement that once your question posted, you were anonymous (it was no longer linked to your account). I've not done this, so I'm not sure how it works.
posted by popechunk at 8:34 AM on December 9, 2005

Well, on the Ask a Question page, Matt says, "I'll have to approve it, so it won't be posted immediately, and when it does, it will have no connection whatsoever to your account." So yeah, once it's posted it's not connected to you in any way -- but Matt knows it was you, since he had to approve it.
posted by Gator at 8:36 AM on December 9, 2005

Then the solution is for Matt to change that language by inserting the word "public" before "connection."
posted by lodurr at 8:43 AM on December 9, 2005

I still don't see what's wrong with just emailing Matt or Jessamyn.
It's not so much that it's wrong, it's just that it would be easier and quicker to respond as an anonymous poster if you could just post your comment straight into the thead.
posted by chill at 8:45 AM on December 9, 2005

That remains a good option, grouse, but it does involve more work for the OP. To maintain his or her anonymity they'd have to create an additional email account, for example. What's far, far worse is that it takes the problem solving out of the community. The anonymous posts are often human situations that are all too common, and taking the thread offsite detracts from the knowledge base that is AskMe.

The ops, or matt at least can find out who an Anon poster actualy is.
posted by delmoi at 8:46 AM on December 9, 2005

I like Chill's idea. It would require the creation of one additional database with a foreign key defined by the primary key of a) the user id, and b) the post. This table would define which users were anonymous in which post.

First of all, you mean table not database and you're wrong, it could be done without adding another table, you'd just need another column in the 'posts' table, one 'anon' bit. If the bit is anon, you would display the username as 'anonymous' and replace the code that prints the username with an if statement.
i.e.

if(logonid = poster_id && anon_post){
print("anonymous");
}
else{
print(logonid);
}
posted by delmoi at 8:49 AM on December 9, 2005

To the folks who think this is a low priority: Consider that this would vastly increase the utility of AskMe, especially in dire situations.

As has been explained many, many, many times, there are already several options available for an anonymous poster who wants to comment in his thread ($5 sockpuppet, drop email, note via admin, etc.). You're saying that, compared to these options, an on-site reply mechanism would "vastly increase the utility of AskMe"? Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

You're grossly exaggerating (1) the importance of anonymous questions, (2) the alleged "problem" posed by a lack of anonymous comments, and (3) the value of your solution over those that already exist.

And I don't know what you define as "dire situations"; but as far as I'm concerned, that phrase is incompatible with the scenario of a person sitting in front of a computer with enough free time to post on MetaFilter.
posted by cribcage at 8:52 AM on December 9, 2005

The last thread on this topic included a suggestion that the user get a cookie that allows them to post anonymously in their thread. This could be some kind of hash. I think that's the best solution; it retains anonymity at the database level, it should be fairly easy to implement, and it doesn't require the user to do anything different as long as their browser accepts cookies. It does have the limitation that the user must remember to use the same browser they originally posted with to comment in the thread, and if a user is involved in multiple simultaneous anonymous questions that could get a bit hairy to handle from a coding standpoint (though it could be done). I recommend a big flashing "You are commenting anonymously" notice above the posting field so users can verify that the site did indeed recognize their cookie.
posted by kindall at 8:55 AM on December 9, 2005

I think an 'anon-account-password' is a good idea, however, if the password is the same as their main account, a hacker could compare all the password hashes in the database to find out who you are (unless it's a really common password).

The best secure way to do this would be to generate a random password, which the person must write down or memorize.

By the way, how do matt and jess know who's who when posting up anon answers? If they can cross-check with their personal email, so can the FEDS
posted by delmoi at 8:55 AM on December 9, 2005

I doubt that the anonymous posting system needs to be strong enough to protect you from law enforcement, even if such a thing were possible.

I take back my md5 suggestion (in retrospect it opens up a lot of avenues for abuse), and I guess I'm in the "spend $5" camp. It doesn't add any new avenues for abuse that don't already exist, and it's not a huge penalty for the right to not make it clear to an admin who you are when you post something embarassing.
posted by popechunk at 9:06 AM on December 9, 2005

Under some circumstances, Matt might even be required by law (and/or common sense) to break the anonymity of a poster, even if no one asks him to.

And preferring not to get into those situations, he's set up anonymous posting so he can't, in fact, break the anonymity, because he doesn't have the information. That's why anything that links an anonymous poster to their actual user ID is problematic.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:38 AM on December 9, 2005

And preferring not to get into those situations, he's set up anonymous posting so he can't, in fact, break the anonymity, because he doesn't have the information.

Hunh? Matt has the information. He approves each anonymous question before it gets posted.
posted by TimeFactor at 10:23 AM on December 9, 2005

Honestly, how hard is it for some of you people to pay $5 and create a sock puppet for your anonymous needs?

Cripes, all this work, just so you can respond anonymously, when any one of us could afford the simple five bucks.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:46 AM on December 9, 2005

Honestly, how hard is it for some of you people to pay $5 and create a sock puppet for your anonymous needs? - SeizeTheDay

Fairly difficult if you don't have a paypal account.
posted by raedyn at 10:48 AM on December 9, 2005

This isn't going to be a popular view but I don't think the ROI on enabling anon email or follow-ups is going to make it worthwhile. I'm not sure it's practical to automate something like this without either creating a ton of extra work for the two hardest working administrators on the web or opening the site up for a whole heap of abuse. It seems like the tech guys have all sorts of tokens and database stuff figured out but doesn't that only add level of complexity to an already overburdened site and server? I assumed that four nines was Priority 1.

When you post anonymously you are giving up the ability to make clarifications or participate in the discussion (unless, of course, you post in the thread saying it was you). This strikes me as reasonable considering the price of another account is only five bucks. If you want the ability to remain both unknown and follow-up, there is a price tag attached. If it's important enough five dollars shouldn't be an insurmountable barrier.

In the end this boils down to owning your words. If a posting is going to jeopardize your employment, your relationships or otherwise come back to haunt you, MeFi probably isn't the best place for answers. We have priests, lawyers, social workers, friends and doctors for this stuff.
posted by cedar at 10:49 AM on December 9, 2005

Hunh? Matt has the information. He approves each anonymous question before it gets posted.

You're willfully missing the point. There's a world of difference between one guy seeing a username for a couple seconds once (and most likely forgetting it instantly, unless it's particularly amusing) and the username being linked to the question in a DB on a subpoenable server.
posted by j.edwards at 11:23 AM on December 9, 2005

Honestly, how hard is it for some of you people to pay $5 and create a sock puppet for your anonymous needs?

PayPal accounts are not anonymous, and the name of the PayPal account is transferred automatically to the new Metafilter account. So the new account would need to be modified before use.

On preview, what raedyn said.
posted by Rothko at 11:51 AM on December 9, 2005

j.edwards, perhaps I missed the point, but I swear it wasn't willful. Matt does say that he promises not to reveal who asked what to anyone "if you have something...embarrassing". I'm not sure that's the same thing as "I won't reveal your (user)name if subpoenaed".
posted by TimeFactor at 12:08 PM on December 9, 2005

First of all, you mean table not database and you're wrong

I wasn't wrong, Delmoi, I was slightly less than optimal, and I corrected myself in the next comment. Feeling a little dickish today?
posted by jon_kill at 12:23 PM on December 9, 2005

Another great post, jessamyn.

People ask intense questions under their regular names and anonymously and it is certain that they take the 'websiteness' into account before they do it.. I am sure they will keep ordinary caveats in mind.
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:55 PM on December 9, 2005

This is a much-needed feature.

As far as privacy concerns go: as was mentioned, there is no guarantee that Matt won't reveal the username, in court or otherwise. And presumably the username is associated with the post somewhere on the server (or on another server) already, being as Matt needs to approve them. So the concern about the username being linked to the anonymous post in the DB isn't really relevant, because there are already these equally or more vulnerable weaknesses.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 1:31 PM on December 9, 2005

Regarding emailing Jess or Matt: That remains a good option, grouse, but it does involve more work for the OP.

To which I say "good." Anon posting is valuable for certain situations but there's already ones that I look at and raise an eyebrow and say, "this needs to be anonymous?' A la the question about difficult neighbors some months back, etc etc. There SHOULD be some additional hassle in posting them for all the community reasons others post above.
posted by phearlez at 1:51 PM on December 9, 2005

I think that all answers to anonymous questions should have a checkbox to make them anonymous - not just for the asker's follow-ups.

There are numerous examples of the asker being abled to hide their "shame," but requiring that anyone who helps them out with info reveal their own. This strikes me as unfair.

No need for Matt to step in to authorise the answer, he's already authorised discussion of the subject by approving the anonymous question. Then use the standard flag system to get rid of any chaff.
posted by The Monkey at 10:14 PM on December 11, 2005