AskMe Anonymizer

September 10, 2004 9:34 AM

I'd greatly enjoy an anonymous feature on Ask Metafilter. Just last week I was going to ask for tips on buying an engagement ring, but worried the Google Indexing of the question might result in the surprise being ruined for my (now) fiancée. I'd be ok with it not *really* being anonymous (ie, for tracking down abusers, the data would still be stored, just not displayed).
posted by davebug to Feature Requests at 9:34 AM (18 comments total)

I do plan on letting people submit questions anonymously pending approval.

So I'll have to tick them off by hand, to curtail illegal/goofy/abusive uses. I myself have all sorts of questions I'd rather not let everyone know about.

Actually, now that I think about it, anon comments on anon questions would be good too, though even more ripe for abuse. If I asked some embarrasing anon question like "So, how do you shave your pubes?" I doubt everyone would come out of the woodwork to offer tips attributed to their names (I figured this out in the condom thread -- did I really want to tell everyone about my condom experiences?).

Anyway, anon questions are definitely in the hopper. Anon answers are a possibility, but we'd have to tread very carefully in that space.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:09 AM on September 10, 2004

I use my Mach 3 Turbo. Itches like hell but I'm smooth like a baby's butt.
posted by BlueTrain at 10:13 AM on September 10, 2004

Shit, that anonymous thing was a feature in progress, wasn't it... :-)
posted by BlueTrain at 10:14 AM on September 10, 2004

In other words, more on anon posting and comments anon.
posted by mcwetboy at 10:41 AM on September 10, 2004

did I really want to tell everyone about my condom experiences

lol, that exact thought went through my head when I read your comment. I applaud your honesty, though.
posted by mr.marx at 10:48 AM on September 10, 2004

I think an anonymous Q&A site would be fantastic. I also think that for it to be useful, it would have to be heavily moderated since anonymity can breed useless responses as well as highly insightful ones.
posted by jonah at 11:37 AM on September 10, 2004

I would hope that the knowledge that you can see the usernames and potentially unmask them might help reduce the abuses. Maybe instead of anonymous it should be a "don't publicly display my name" (or some such phrasing) checkbox to make the point clearer.
posted by davebug at 12:26 PM on September 10, 2004

I had a question once that I would have asked had I been able to do so anonymously; and I can think of a couple that I would have answered had an anonymous option been available. Nothing too scandalous, really; just things I wouldn't want permanently connected to my name in the google record of the universe.
posted by Mars Saxman at 12:26 PM on September 10, 2004

I would think that regardless of whether a username displays or not, Matt will still be able to attribute comment X with user Y, which should keep down the noise from the anons
posted by luser at 12:30 PM on September 10, 2004

Could we also hide user names if someone blathers? A complex algorithm would determine if someone should be embarassed by how many words it took them to say so little, and automatically hide their username.

It could be called onanon-anon.

Thank you. I'll be here all week.
posted by putzface_dickman at 12:52 PM on September 10, 2004

Waitwaitwaitwait. Mach 3?
What kind of masochist are you? Damn. There's too many wrinkles. My boys'd look like Gerry Cheevers' goalie mask afterward.
Those little nostril-hair-sized clippers are pretty cheap and work just fine, with much less downside.
posted by chicobangs at 12:56 PM on September 10, 2004

The condom AskMe had me wishing for a sock puppet. Most other boards I spend any significant time on I have two accounts Mitheral and my other one. The sock puppet account is the extroverted me that the actually introverted me sometimes wishes he was. A close observer could probably figure out the other account[1] but at least my mother can't search for my handle and see my views on condoms.

[1] if nothing else a posting analysis would eventually narrow it down because Mitheral never posts in the same threads that SP does and vice versa.
posted by Mitheral at 1:08 PM on September 10, 2004

Davebug, just fyi - there have been several threads on advice for engagementring-buying in AskMe - just search if you still need the info.
posted by widdershins at 1:20 PM on September 10, 2004

people have been known to post questions for others (just don't ask me to post a question about buying rings - sorry + all that, but...)
posted by andrew cooke at 7:35 AM on September 11, 2004

I thought there already was a solution to this that works for both questions and answers, i.e.,

"A friend of mine (who doesn't have a mefi account) was curious about how to shave his genitals/dispose of a body/looking for paparazzi pics of quonsar."

"I checked with a friend of a friend who hangs out with quonsar, and he sent me
this pic"
posted by Meridian at 6:25 PM on September 11, 2004

Is MetaTalk anonymous ;)
posted by cohappy at 12:30 AM on September 12, 2004

Good example?
posted by shoepal at 10:51 AM on September 13, 2004

Anon answers are a possibility, but we'd have to tread very carefully in that space.

How about having a "flag this message as insulting, etc." next to each anonymous reply?

If that link gets more than, say, "X" (5-15?) clicks, the admins get notified and check it.

I'm thinking Craigslist here.
posted by kchristidis at 8:57 PM on September 14, 2004