Why is it that people (many, although Dave is certainly one) acts as though someone saying or posting something anonymously makes them less credible? Really, at the end of the day, what difference does it make who is saying something? Shouldn’t we be evaluating their comments on their merits and not based on the commenter? In fact, there’s a logical fallacy (that Dave often mistakenly accuses people of) whose entire point is in saying that arguments should be made on their merits and not on the merits of the author. Or, in other words, the identity of the author does not make something true or false.
The most recent place I noticed this was on the talk page for Dave’s wikipedia entry. First, an anonymous user accused both this site and I’m Not Dave of being (more or less) spam blogs… which is odd, because neither of the sites have any ads on the whatsoever. Of course, then Ben Houston comments that EOW is “problematic” because I don’t identify myself.
I would be ineterested to have any post in which my identity changes the validity of my statements pointed out to me. I doubt there is one. But, further, there are some good reasons to be anonymous here.
- This isn’t a comparative personality study. I’m not saying I’m better than Dave (or that I’m not), only calling him out for the things he does. I welcome people to call me out both for things I do with this persona and things I do with my public one (both in their appropriate places).
- This sort of thing would bore my regular blog readers… which is more a reason for a separate site, not one for anonymity I guess, then again I’m sure I’d attract some trolls to my personal site, which would cause annoyance for more than just me.
- In that same vein, anyone who has had had misfortune of running up against Dave’s merry band of sycophants knows how nasty they can be, which makes sense, because Dave himself is a fairly nasty individual. Though I doubt I rate high enough on the importance scale to warrant Dave siccing his minions on me, I’d rather not run the risk.
So… anyway… there’s that. Also, speaking of Dave’s Wikipedia entry, the link to Eye on Winer is now outdated. Some enterprising wikiteer might want to make that 10 second edit.
winer was referring specifically to ME when he started this little tirade against anonymous posters. winer would know who I am, we’ve tangled before. winer refers to guys like me as “weiner boys” to dismiss everyone who posts criticism anonymously. This anonymous criticism is a long tradition that goes way back to the days of the winerwatch website. The reason we comment anonymously is that winer has taken malicious, nasty, vindictive actions against us personally when we posted under our real names. I mean REALLY malicious things that would have ended up with the police or the courts if any of us had the inclination to waste even more time getting even more entangled with with an asshole like winer. There is a whole network of “zaphodim” out there (I use that name in honor of the pseudonymous “Zaphod” that ran winerwatch). We zaphodim have spoken to each other and shared our stories, and every time we share our experiences with winer, some new and horrific tale of winer’s atrocious misbehavior is revealed that would astonish even the most jaded of winer’s critics. winer has never learned to deal with critics, he cannot deal with criticism, he prefers to dismiss valid complaints with vicious ad hominem attacks. To avoid further retribution, we must remain anonymous.
My dealings with Dave left me feeling used and thoroughly let down by someone I had grown to admire as a guru (little did I know).
I engaged in an email conversation, sending some ideas about syndication I had had, and was surprised to receive a constructive reply from someone whose opinion I valued. Buoyed by being appreciated by someone I had believed invented a lot of technologies I used, I kept up the conversation, sharing some other ideas I had.
Suddenly, the line went cold. No more replies. Later that day, a bunch of my ideas were repeated on Dave’s blog as his own, and that was that. No more contact, no more interest in me. No credit, no acknowledgment. He even built a complete web site about the idea, and touted it for weeks and months on his blog (you’d know of the technology if you’re a regular reader of his blog, but I don’t want to say just in case. He implemented it all wrong anyways so it didn’t do much).
Considering I have more important things in life to get on with, I used it as a lesson in dealing with Winer: just don’t do it. In contrast, my online dealings with people he’s regularly flamed or discredited, like Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby, have been nothing but professional and helpful.
So, I can’t help but smirk now when I read him sniping and getting all flustered by people like Adam Curry because he feels they’ve broken his trust.
How ironic. The thought of him blustering away all by himself in his apartment / mini-van / touring show is my retribution
In an update to the above, actually, to be fair, I did receive a mention from him a week later. I just searched his blog in retrospect.
So, to be fair, even though it wasn’t an acknowledgment for the idea sharing, I take some of my statements above back. I don’t like the guy, but I don’t want to be untruthful.
Still, it wasn’t a great interaction and I won’t email an idea again so eagerly.
I find it ironic that Winer will bash people for posting anonymously, calling them “cowards”, while not allowing any comments on his own blog.
anthoer zphodim,
Sounds like you got a raw deal indeed. What was the idea? Can you link to Winer’s posts about it?
ps EOW site down again today? ? can’t be …
Isn’t the real reason you’re anonymous is because you’re embarassed to be doing this? Heck, that’s why I’m anonymous.
Think hard on this one. Real hard. Don’t snap at me. Just consider the possibility.
FYI, I’m not anonymous, I’m pseudonymous. There is a difference. Pseudonymous writing has a long tradition in America, it goes back to the founding fathers like Thomas Paine. Pseudonymity protects my freedom to write without interference, while still establishing my identity.
I write under a pseudonym not because I am embarassed, but to protect myself from winer and his minions that would do me direct harm if they knew my real name.
Why is it that people (many, although Dave is certainly one) acts as though someone saying or posting something anonymously makes them less credible?
Because you have absolutely nothing to lose by being wrong, malicious, or unfair. Your reputation will not be harmed by anything you say, so those of us who risk our standing in the community with every dumb thing we write take you less seriously.
I wish that pseudonymous and anonymous people would stop being so defensive about it. You want to speak freely without consequence. There are times that freedom’s great — I love what Misanthropic Bitch has done with it — but most of the time, it’s just a great way to nurture your inner asshole.
“so those of us who risk our standing in the community with every dumb thing we write take you less seriously.”
Sounds like a personal failing. If you really have to base your opinions of something on who is talking and not what they’re talking about, you might need an intellectual tune up.
Two quotes:
Al Franken: “President Bush should be impeached.”
Colin Powell: “President Bush should be impeached.”
Same information, two sources. Do you give them equal weight?
On their face? Yes. None.
If they back them up with more information than that? Then I judge on that. It’s really easy.
That’s a pretty glib answer, Eye.
No one treats all information equally regardless of source. It would be a terrible way to go through life, because there’s so much BS to wade through.
On this weblog entry, you pointed out that an “anonymous user” of Wikipedia made an accusation about this site. Why point out his anonymity if its irrelevant?
I didn’t say I treated them equally, I said I gave them equal weight.
I would be more interested to hear what Powel had to back up his claim with than Franken, but if Franken could support his accusation it would be given equal weight in my mind. Just because Franken is a partisan schmuck doesn’t make him wrong.
There are, of course, certain types of statements that will be believed or not based on who is saying them. For example, if I say “Software Package X is the best one on the market right now.” It matters who I am so the statement can be put in context. If I say “Software Package X is able to do Y” it doesn’t matter at all who I am because what I’m saying is either true or false. Opinion/Fact issues roughly coincide, but not all opinions lose validity based on their author.
In fact, if someone says “Software Package X is the best program on the market because it does A, B, and C” then my identity doesn’t really matter any more because I’m quantifying my statement and giving the reader a chance to judge for herself.
But the bottom line is that I wouldn’t have any problem not being pseudonymous/anonymous if #2 and #3 weren’t so well documented and widespread.
Oh, and I’m not really trying to convince anyone to change their mind about Dave… I realize that’s not going to happen based on my postings whether I use my name or not. Dave’s followers are, by and large, rabid and blind to anything contradicting his awe-inspiring genius.
Mister Rogers fails to make an important distinction. winer is a public figure, he seeks to be a public figure. winer’s critics are not public figures, our position and persona are irrelevant since nobody (not even winer) has sufficient knowledge of us to judge us by who we are.
The sophistry of you guys kills me. The only people whose identities matter in the public sphere are public figures, and the rest of us are nobodies whose identities are irrelevant?
I don’t have a major beef with people for choosing to publish anonymously or pseudonymously. If that’s all Eye on Winer wants to share about himself (or herself), the audience can judge that accordingly. He asked why some people take him less seriously because he’s using a pseudonym; I tried to answer as one of those people.
But the notion that no one knows enough to judge you is farcical. I know the names of four people who’ve contributed to sites like this one over the years, in spite of their efforts to stay private. (I’m not referring to Eye.)
In all four cases, there’s a lot of information about them floating around the web — certainly enough to judge the merits of the criticisms they make related to technology.
In my own case, I’m not a public figure, or at most an extremely minor one. Has that stopped you from judging my position to comment on this subject?
I think you make a strong counter-argument. Yet, and yet… What concerns, if any, do you have about your making a strong association with your views and identity, especially when (or if) your line of work isn’t political? In my line of work, people might misunderstand my participation in debate, if they were to use my real name in a web search. That might be the point raised in the public versus private persona discussion.
Having said that, the cloak of anonymity tends to add more heat to a discussion than light. For possibly the same reason the Klan wore hoods. I really don’t like anonymity but it’s better than saying nothing in the name of risk-avoidance. Or is it? Without it, I wouldn’t be typing this minute (and without the savagry as expressed by the klan, too)
I’ve had a job where I pulled back from online participation, figuring the boss would have problems with it. I can’t blame people for being more circumspect with their identity than I’ve been in the quarter century since I discovered BBSes.