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Message: 6
Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 02:23:53 +0530
From: Theo10011 <de10011@gmail.com>
To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects
<gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Accidental Troll Policy - beyond gender gap
Message-ID:
<CAP9+R94miYuwUUQe_6cFk-UCN6XZ73cfuzANqZVZwMTD8zGy3g@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

Hi Sylvia

It seems the crux of your argument is against the nature of the Internet
itself, rather than anything specific to Wikipedia. There is nothing unique
about anonymity on Wikipedia. In fact, it could be argued that internet
itself promotes anonymity - Internet protocol don't require any real user
identification for access, beyond giving a rough idea of someone's access
point, the only information that is there is what a user willingly chooses
to divulge. As the adage goes - On the internet, nobody knows you're a
dog.[1] And in this day and age, a dog can indeed have a FB profile, a
twitter account, gmail, a youtube channel, a tumblr and even a Wikipedia
account (TOS doesn't have anything against dogs....I think). I don't see
what is unique on Wikipedia that promotes pseudonymous or anonymous users
anymore than other places - it would always come down to what someone
chooses to reveal and their own level of personal boundaries.

Then there is the entire idea about the wisdom of the crowd, which implies
that the individual is irrelevant to a certain extent, nameless at best. It
is the collective that gives the crowd its identity and strength - to that
purpose it is easier to join the crowd, as it is easy to leave.

There is something also worth mentioning here about American/European
elitism, where coming from places in Middle-east, South-America, and parts
of Asia, associating your political opinion with your real-world identity
can have very real and dire repercussions. In India, for example, two women
were arrested for expressing their opinion on FB at the demise of a
political figure, I believe one of them posted a comment and the other
"liked" it on Facebook.[2] They were both arrested in the middle of the
night by police from a completely different area. And that is probably one
of the tamest example I could think of, when you consider what the
political situation is in the parts of the middle-east. I'm sure I can pull
up horrifying stories about bloggers in Egypt or Iran or elsewhere, who
don't truly share the luxury of free speech.

Then the second implication, I don't think anonymity alone permits someone
to cross any lines. It would be a facile argument to disprove, that once
anonymity is removed from the equation that you can expect someone to be
more civil. You still don't know anything about the person on the other
end, neither would they about you, besides what you choose to reveal - you
would remain two perfect strangers. Now, implying that associating their
name with that a single comment to you, would be singled out and have
real-world implications, be it work or family - would be another stretch.
All this seems like a case of "telling on someone" as children, usually
their parents and expecting intervention. Online platforms already have
system that resembles this, whether its an admin, or flagging something or
contacting support. Then, most work-places I have known can't censor
someone's personal or political opinion or what they do or say in their own
personal time, impeaching them would be against their civil rights - even
if it is politically incorrect - it would have to be of their own volition
to change. As Voltaire put it - "I do not agree with what you have to say,
but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." (or perhaps it was
Evelyn Beatrice Hall.)

If such a totalitarian system were ever to be conceived that won't permit
anonymity, I suppose it would get complicated with different nationalities,
especially EU, where handling and sharing someone's personal information
requires far more restrictions, not to mention the oppressive regimes would
have their own "requirements". I suppose someone would have to weigh what
they gain vs what they lose. Sadly, they might lose Freedom of speech and
Privacy, for the chance that someone would be nicer on the internet.