Mods, would you ever re-initiate contact with anonymous?

October 14, 2008 7:53 PM

Do the mods ever ask an anonymous questioner for follow-up info, or does the anonymous asker always initiate the follow-up process? I'm just curious.

Often the first few answers to an anon question will say "We can't answer this until you clarify X." When no follow-up appears, someone will eventually point out that anonymous can email a mod to have them post an anonymous follow-up about X, in case they didn't know. More time passes, people get tired of waiting for clarification, and finally they start trying to enumerate the possible values of X and giving answers for each possibility. It's kind of crazy, and it leaves me wishing someone could poke anonymous and say, "Hey, people are trying to help you, but they need some more info!"

I'm definitely not suggesting that mods should take responsibility for babysitting anonymous threads. You guys have enough to do already. I'm just curious whether you have ever or would ever contact an anonymous poster to ask for more info, rather than waiting for them to contact you. What might make you do so?

posted by vytae to etiquette/policy at 7:53 PM (15 comments total)

We always wait for them to offer more details, due to the convoluted way we keep anonymous questions anonymous, it's very hard for us on the admin side to even figure out who asked what.
posted by mathowie at 7:54 PM on October 14, 2008

I don't think I've ever contacted an anonymous poster once a question has been posted unless I knew them personally. Rarely I'll MeMail/email someone and be like "look, your anonyme question is good but I think everyone is going to ask 'What about X?' so I think you might want to add something about X in your question" and then we can edit the question before it goes live [with the OPs permission] to be a better question.

Generally speaking we don't know who asks the AnonyMe questions though we can figure it out with a little digging (and some are more obvious than others) and my general feeling is that my short memory of who asked what in the AnonyMe realm is one of the things that makes me good at my job.

And no I don't think this is the sort of thing we'd consider doing. The more Anonymous the AnonyMes can be, the better. Otherwise we get people asking us "hey can you send this response anonymously to anonymous" and that is definitely not the back and forth situation we want to get in.
posted by jessamyn at 7:59 PM on October 14, 2008

I'm sure variations have been proposed before, but what are the drawbacks to a thread specific anonymous account?

So, you'd ask your anon-ask me question just like you do now, a mod would have to clear it and everything (without explicitly seeing who was doing the asking), but once it was posted you would be able to respond in the thread as anonymous. Either you'd get a temporary account (anon2743854, say) or (better still) it would just work. You wouldn't have to manage your anon identity, you'd be that particular anonymous on that particular thread and that thread only, everywhere else you'd be you. There would be some sort of very clear graphical cue on that thread (black and white? Red and black?) that indicated you were posting as anonymous. You could, however, at any time, click a "remove from my activity" button, and you would be irrevocably disconnected from that anonymous AskMe.

I mean, the drawbacks other than someone having to actually program it.
posted by dirtdirt at 6:36 AM on October 15, 2008

Either you'd get a temporary account (anon2743854, say) or (better still) it would just work. You wouldn't have to manage your anon identity

Wouldn't the server have to know who you are, defeating the whole anon thing?

Perhaps just include a note on the ANON posting page, big and bold, that the poster should include a throwaway email account. It's lowtech and solves the "problem"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:14 AM on October 15, 2008

Thanks for the insight!
posted by vytae at 7:16 AM on October 15, 2008

The guidelines on the AnonyMe posting page do suggest this.

1. Use this if you have to, not just as a convenience.
2. Follow up with mathowie if you have questions about your submission.
3. You can't post any follow up comments anonymously. Either set up a throwaway email account and mention it in your post to get feedback or email mathowie or jessamyn to add anything additional.
4. Questions may not be approved for 24-48 hours, so time sensitive questions need not apply
5. Questions about illegal activities are unlikely to be approved. Questions about ordinary subject matter that doesn't seem to fit the needs of being anonymous may not be approved. Please add enough information about your situation so that people can help you without asking a bunch of follow-up questions.
6. Please do not ask questions about suicide or revenge. We can not promise to keep your information confidential if we think you might harm yourself or others.
posted by jessamyn at 7:16 AM on October 15, 2008

The throwaway email address thing works fairly well, but does not allow the conversation to be reliably posted in thread, where it is useful to other people. It's unverifiable, too. Anyone, at any time can say "I just heard from anonymous and they said that declawing cats is really the way to go", and there is no way to untangle it. I don't know that that happens, but it could.

Wouldn't the server have to know who you are, defeating the whole anon thing?
The server already knows who you are. At least in any realistic information forensics way. This wouldn't change that, wouldn't publicly link you to the anonymous question in any way, and yet would allow you to publicly (well, anonymously publicly), verifiably respond in thread.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:23 AM on October 15, 2008

The server already knows who you are.

Sure, but wouldn't it have to know you're anon for X particular thread at X particular time? Not saying it's impossible, but I always got the impression that Matt tried pretty hard to make sure there was no connection between the user account and the private one, even if you looked behind the scenes in the database.

The guidelines on the AnonyMe posting page do suggest this.

Cool, but it seems kinda buried in there. Maybe bigger or bolder? Just a suggestion, doesn't really seem like it's a problem.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:32 AM on October 15, 2008

but I always got the impression that Matt tried pretty hard to make sure there was no connection between the user account and the private one, even if you looked behind the scenes in the database.

Could be, I don't know. But since you need to be logged in to make an anon question anyway, your anonymity already exists solely as a function of you trusting MetaFilter. So why not allow them to use that trust in a constructive way, while not actually exposing you any more than they already do?

And, magnetized doorways aside, I am sure that if the Feds (or whoever) were to comb through a set of server logs they could figure out who asks any given anon question anyway.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:58 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

If you have nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear... well, except for the fact that yes, it is infected, and no, you really shouldn't eat that.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:13 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'd like to, once again, advocate the elimination of anonymous questions. If you need to ask something anonymously that bad you can always get a second Mefi account. I think the ease with which people can currently ask anonymous questions is a net negative for Ask Mefi.

A $5 speedbump to the constant barrage of "should I dump my (bf/gf) y/y?" questions isn't a bad thing.
posted by Justinian at 5:57 PM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

If you need to ask something anonymously that bad you can always get a second Mefi account.

Of course, to pay for that second account you'd have to Paypal Matt $5, which would make the account waaayyyy less anonymous (from the admin end) than it is now.
posted by anastasiav at 9:14 PM on October 15, 2008

The real deal is if you absolutely have to be totally anonymous for some sort of legal reason or something, we can't do that for you. We've had people historically who swore they had "very sensitive" questions and wanted us to create convoluted ways they could ask in some double-blind fashion so they could never be traced. We are not interested in being a site that allows you to do that.

We have older accounts on the site that, except for IP addresses, are pretty impossible to identify who the person behind them is. (no email address, no paypal, no personal information, very little content on the site) and that's about as anonymous as you can get here.

That said, we respect anonymity. We don't gab about who asked this or that question and we mostly don't remember. We'll post follow-ups by the OPs of anonymous questions and delete the emails and MeMails from them afterwards.

I feel like enabling anonymous follow-ups would create a second less-anonymous way to be anonymous on the site which would create a small amount of confusion [you'd be less anonymous, but still a little anonymous...?] and solve a problem that doesn't come up terrible often. My general feeling as someone who has overseen thousands of these, is

- anonymous posters sometimes just don't ask very good questions and also don't follow up well. This won't solve this
- many people are okay following up via the mods or other MeFites (unclear how many people are not okay with this, obviously)
- getting a second account for sensitive replies etc is something we've seen a few people do and you'd be about as anonymous as you would bewith an anonymous commenting feature
- I worry about feature creep [why can't people follow-up anonymously to non-anonymous but embarassing questions? Why can't I post anoymously to MeFi?] and generally seaking your identity in this community is about the only social currency you have and it makes sense to us to mostly keep identities fairly static (except in extreme situations) esp for something like this which is not really one of the main roles of the site.
posted by jessamyn at 6:24 AM on October 16, 2008

My IP address is 192.168.0.1, I'm not afraid! Try to attack me! Just try it!
posted by blue_beetle at 9:40 AM on October 16, 2008 [1 favorite]

Mine is 127.0.0.1.

So when you get that nasty script kiddy torrent all downloaded, hey, I'm just the asshole you want to point it at.
posted by SlyBevel at 9:53 AM on October 17, 2008