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

[sockmonk at gmail.com]

On 11/2/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
> > -----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
>
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If we shouldn't call them "anon" then what should we call them? It could be
worse. We could call them Anonymous Cowards like some forums do. The problem
I have with non-logged-in users is that when you find one (or several?)
engaging in edit wars or other anti-social behaviour, it's very difficult to
address them by name, let alone hold them accountable for their edits.
Particularly when the similar edits come from within a block of ip
addresses. Could be one person using different terminals on campus, or
getting different ip's via a dhcp server, or a group of separate people who
just 'look' the same.

--
Anonymous Coward