[WikiEN-l] Don't call them "anon"

[Poor, Edmund W]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: steve v [mailto:vertigosteve at yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 8:10 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: Article creation (was Re: [WikiEN-l] More fodder
foryoureditcountitis)
> 
> 
> I kind of agree with Charles in the sense that some
> institution computers dont allow cookies to cache -
> meaning all edits must be IP edits (dont use term
> 'anon').
> 
> It would be interesting to hear from the regular IP
> community what their concerns are - anonymity,
> caching, too busy to log in, dont care to have a web
> ident, dont want to get personal, etc?
> 
> SV

I sympathize with this POV for two reasons: 

1. Because Steve was recently taken down a peg (he lost his sysop
rights) but he STILL is contributing to the encyclopedia and trying to
find ways to improve the community.

2. Because Steve is right about the term 'anon'. Actually more than 95%
of our contributors are anonymous. Choosing a recognizable pseudonym
does not remove the mantle of anonymity; it just substitutes another.

I'm sure no one means anything derogatory by saying 'anon' - it's just
convenient shorthand for "non-logged in user". But it still can grate on
the ears. It can offend, in the same way that Mark Twain's use of
'nigger' in his otherwise anti-slavery novel [[Huckleberry Finn]]
offends. (The relationship of Huck and Jim clearly showed the moral
superiority of an adult black man to an adolescent white boy. And Twain
would not have put this in his novel, if he hadn't meant Southerners to
take the point. It may even be one of the reasons that he moved up
north, to Connecticut.)

The marginalized, the downtrodden, the people with no formal education
have a voice, and Wikipedia is listening to that voice. We are not
storming the citadel of Academia by the gates, but we are (like bloggers
rebutting TV networks and Matt Drudge scooping news magazines) LEVELING
OUT the playing field. This is democracy in action.

Uncle Ed
Former Bureaucrat