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

[Alphax]

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Poor, Edmund W wrote:
<snip>
> 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.
> 
<snip>

I try to avoid the term "anon" when talking about IP address editors,
but I still think the term is valid in some sense.

A registered editor has said to all who ask, "Hello, for the purposes of
editing on Wikipedia my name is $(nick)".

The "problem" with IP editors is akin to knowing people by the barcode
or dewey number of the last book they checked out from the local library.

While it might be possible to say "edits A, B and C were done by this
IP, and they all look roughly the same, so we can assume that they were
all done by the same person", there is also the possibility that they
were done by completely different people. Conversely, two IPs might have
been used by the same person, or they might have been used by different
people. It's very difficult to tell who is doing what.

You can draw all the conclusions you want about an IP by doing WHOIS
lookups and the like; you might find that it's a dynamic, static or
shared IP, but it actually tells you very little about who is using it.

Going back to the book example: Two people borrow the same book, so they
both get the same IP. You can't tell them apart. One person borrows two
books. You don't know they're the same person. One person only borrows
one book a year. They look like a static IP. A dozen people are in a
speed reading club. They look like AOL users.

The greatest problem with IP editors is ease of recognition. Because we
think in words, not numbers, it's very easy to recognise and tell apart
names; it's not so easy to recognise and tell apart numbers, especially
[[dotted quad]]s.

Just wait until we get IPV6 usernames...

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