Removing anonymity discourages normal users who don't want to leave a permanent record that may come back to haunt them later ("The Internet's not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in ink").
Just because anonymity might be useful in some online discussion forums does not mean it's necessarily appropriate or best for all online discussion forums.
Most newspapers require letters to the editor that appear in their print editions to be signed with the person's real name, and they suffer no shortage of letters as a result of that policy. I see no reason why they can't hold online users to the same standards.
I agree. Anonymity is essential for honest discussion. Anonymity is almost required to know what people "really" think. That's why we created Spottiness. In our site, every "spot" has to be anonymous or won't be published. Our challenge is to weed out the garbage while we make it very easy for everybody to say what they think.
Never heard of that site. I gave it a look and realized that your comment is ironic, but still I'll reply: Our content is heavily moderated, so the obvious crap that 4Chan shows has no possibility of being published. Yet, if somebody has something interesting to say about pornography, we provide the anonymous channel, as long as the idea meets common sense standards of civility and good taste.
It seems like it's combining different audiences at once - the red ones are transmission of random teenage angst (better to put in any pseudonymous journal site or tumblr), the gold ones are positive reviews (seems like they're safe on Yelp), and no black ones have actually appeared in the time I've had this window open.
It's nice that the page live-scrolls, but then why does Read More reload the page?
> Yet, if somebody has something interesting to say about pornography
They might not care whether you think it meets your standard of good taste?
We will use registered users to help us moderate our content. We also want to work, eventually, on creating a network of trust. By the way, user accounts are optional, not required to create spots or comment about them.
> It seems like it's combining different audiences at once...
The fundamental difference between our service and tumblr, yelp, etc, is that our main content (the spots) must be anonymous. We don't want to know who is the author of a spot. Anonymity is the core of what we do because what matters to us is only what people think.
So far, about 50% of the spots are goldspots, and the other 50% evenly divided between blackspots and lovespots. The fact that goldspots are dominating makes us happy.
> why does Read More reload the page?
Read More takes you the the page of the specific spot.
> They might not care whether you think it meets your standard of good taste?
Common sense is common (pun intended). If a spot doesn't look "publishable" to us at Spottiness, the probability that it will look the same to the majority is high.
Comments
Removing anonymity discourages normal users who don't want to leave a permanent record that may come back to haunt them later ("The Internet's not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in ink").
Just because anonymity might be useful in some online discussion forums does not mean it's necessarily appropriate or best for all online discussion forums.
Most newspapers require letters to the editor that appear in their print editions to be signed with the person's real name, and they suffer no shortage of letters as a result of that policy. I see no reason why they can't hold online users to the same standards.
I agree. Anonymity is essential for honest discussion. Anonymity is almost required to know what people "really" think. That's why we created Spottiness. In our site, every "spot" has to be anonymous or won't be published. Our challenge is to weed out the garbage while we make it very easy for everybody to say what they think.
So you think 4Chan is the epitome of honesty?
Never heard of that site. I gave it a look and realized that your comment is ironic, but still I'll reply: Our content is heavily moderated, so the obvious crap that 4Chan shows has no possibility of being published. Yet, if somebody has something interesting to say about pornography, we provide the anonymous channel, as long as the idea meets common sense standards of civility and good taste.
Why does your site have user accounts?
It seems like it's combining different audiences at once - the red ones are transmission of random teenage angst (better to put in any pseudonymous journal site or tumblr), the gold ones are positive reviews (seems like they're safe on Yelp), and no black ones have actually appeared in the time I've had this window open.
It's nice that the page live-scrolls, but then why does Read More reload the page?
> Yet, if somebody has something interesting to say about pornography
They might not care whether you think it meets your standard of good taste?
> Why does your site have user accounts?
We will use registered users to help us moderate our content. We also want to work, eventually, on creating a network of trust. By the way, user accounts are optional, not required to create spots or comment about them.
> It seems like it's combining different audiences at once...
The fundamental difference between our service and tumblr, yelp, etc, is that our main content (the spots) must be anonymous. We don't want to know who is the author of a spot. Anonymity is the core of what we do because what matters to us is only what people think.
So far, about 50% of the spots are goldspots, and the other 50% evenly divided between blackspots and lovespots. The fact that goldspots are dominating makes us happy.
> why does Read More reload the page?
Read More takes you the the page of the specific spot.
> They might not care whether you think it meets your standard of good taste?
Common sense is common (pun intended). If a spot doesn't look "publishable" to us at Spottiness, the probability that it will look the same to the majority is high.
Thanks for taking the time to look at our site!
It's probably up there. Would you mind spelling the name correctly?