in reply to Feature Request: Abandon content to Anonymous Monk

PM is the only site I use where I have absolutely no control or ownership of the content I generate.

No control? I can go in today and edit any node I posted over the preceding years/decades. What more control do you envisage having?

As for ownership, this is a community platform and always has been. Anything which you or I post here should be considered a gift to the community. If you don't want to gift it in that manner, don't post it.

That said, PerlMonks is far less aggressively proprietorial than say L*nkedIn or F*cebook, either of which will immediately claim all rights to anything you might do in connection with them. Those are well worth avoiding but this place is much more easy going.

And you can still wash your hands of it all if you so decide.


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  • Comment on Re: Feature Request: Abandon content to Anonymous Monk

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Re^2: Feature Request: Abandon content to Anonymous Monk
by SankoR (Prior) on Jan 03, 2025 at 19:18 UTC
    You're not entirely free to edit any node you posted because they'll physically stop you. Removing 'your' content is considered vandalism and they'll lock your account to prevent it.

    As for the gift aspect... I'm not exactly handing out treasure here but I'm not talking about deletion anyway. It just follows that, if given the option to claim AM comments, the opposite might be something someone might want to do. Until this thread, I never even considered it but the link I posted contains links to several other people asking for the same thing over the years and not getting it.

    I don't use social media but PerlMonks doesn't even compare to "aggressively proprietorial" sites when it comes to content ownership. After deleting your account, LinkedIn will remove everything within 24 hours, Facebook hides it immediately and gives you 30 days to change your mind before deleting everything as does the site formerly known as Twitter. Reddit, the site I consider the worst on the web, doesn't delete your content automatically but removes the username and other information from everything you don't remove yourself which you are free to do by hand before deleting the account. Even non-commercial, greater good systems like the Wayback Machine allows you to request outright content removal.

    I guess I'm suggesting Reddit's interpretation of what a deleted account means: full disassociation from the content having originated from a single account. Anyone concerned with their privacy would expect at least that but I wasn't asking for my account to be removed. Maybe I should be, given the response, but my comment wasn't a request to have <quote type="air">my</quote> stuff removed either. Giving people the option to have their content attributed to Anonymous Monk seems much more easy going than the current options.

      if given the option to claim AM comments, the opposite

      adding differentiation of authorship adds value. the opposite does... the opposite.

      Reddit ... removes the username and other information from everything
      full disassociation from the content having originated from a single account

      I'm not familiar with how Reddit does things... When you say "removes the username and other information", what is that replaced with? Are all posts reassigned to some "anonymous coward" type of user?

      Anyone concerned with their privacy

      Is privacy what you're concerned about? If so, why wouldn't you create your user with a username not linkable to you? You do that with email accounts you open, right?
      PerlMonks only knows what you tell it, and we have no "real identity" requirements like Farcebook does (or used to).

      have their content attributed to Anonymous Monk seems much more easy going than the current options

      Again, I'd ask you to elaborate. Asking the gods to anonymize your account and sitting back waiting for them to do it seems pretty easy to me...

        I'm not familiar with how Reddit does things... When you say "removes the username and other information", what is that replaced with? Are all posts reassigned to some "anonymous coward" type of user?

        Essentially, yes. Usernames (which are usually links to the user's profile) are displayed as "[deleted]" on all posts, comments, and private chat messages and are no longer links to a user profile. User profiles, which usually list of all posts and comments created, no longer exist either after deletion. The content of the posts and comments is still public but it's impossible to connect a comment made by a deleted user with another comment found elsewhere on Reddit by the same deleted user.

        If someone has requested claiming anonymous content often enough that it's now a feature, it seemed natural to me that someone has probably wanted the opposite and it must be possible to do on the backend of PerlMonks. And I don't know how many times I have to repeat myself, but I am not (or at least I wasn't originally...) speaking for myself. I'm honestly a little weirded out that this is getting such harsh pushpack and that I'm being asked to explain a hypothetical person's definition of privacy.

        I've learned my lesson and will be much more careful the next time I see someone here ask for feedback.