in reply to Re: Re^x: No Anonymous Reply Option
in thread No Anonymous Reply Option

would it be less presumptious to say 'the 5 monks who want nothing ever to change, the 10 monks who don't want to implement the change, the 15 monks who are ideologicaly opposed to the change and the 6 monks who habit Anonymous'?

Well, not much (at least, assuming you phrased it in a way that made it seem like you actually thought those numbers meant something), but it would be less asinine, since you wouldn't be making a blanket assertion that everybody who disagrees with you is doing so for the worst and most self-serving of possible reasons. Myself, I didn't downvote the original node because I felt it had been hit hard enough, but I did downvote the node under discussion here, because I felt it to be a pointless ad-hominem attack.

And in answer to your second question, yes, I believe it is generally considered less of a presumptuous act to assume (in the absence of any evidence in either direction) that people are acting from reasonable and moral motives than to assume the contrary. But this is neither here nor there: nobody but you has imputed a motivation to the downvoters of the original node beyond "they thought it was a bad idea"—their reasons for thinking it a bad idea may be presumed to vary. Especially given that many of them have in fact expressed such (varying) reasons elsewhere in this thread.


If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have given us the railroads.
    --Michael Flanders

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Re: Re^z: No Anonymous Reply Option
by zengargoyle (Deacon) on Nov 27, 2003 at 10:04 UTC

    that's true, i had started and was stuck way down in a subthread and hadn't scanned the whole thread. i was thinking the discussion was about disallowing Anonymous posting replies anywhere rather than disallowing Anonymous from posting replies to a particualr thread at the whim of the OP. the second i can be seeing more worthy of diverse downvoting. the first is merely policy, the second is censorship/discrimination/icky mea culpa

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      the first is merely policy, the second is censorship/discrimination/icky
      Considering that the first is far more restrictive than the second, (not allowed to reply at all, vs not allowed to reply sometimes), I find this highly peculiar.

      OTOH, so what? Slapping "censorship" or "discrimination" onto something is easy, and shows you really are from now. But if disallowing anonymous replies in certain threads is "censorship" or "discrimination", what is considering notes then? What about the actions of Nodereaper? What about not frontpaging a node that's about "how to enjoy cranberry sauce in your sex games"? What about not answering CGI or Windows related questions? And, when it comes to non-perlmonks examples, what about running a spam filter? Or a firewall? Those could easily be labelled as "censorship" and "discrimination" as well, but so what?

      Abigail

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        i don't think it's that peculiar. there's a difference between a Post and a Reply in the general case. a Post requests, a Reply informs. sometimes it goes back and forth.

        because the first applies across all Replies in all Threads in all of Perlmonks for Anonymous is it indescriminant in that regard. it is descriminant in Post in all Threads in all of Perlmonks vs Reply in all Threads in all of Perlmonks for Anonymous.

        because the second applies only to Replies in certain Threads in all of Perlmonks for Anonymous it is discriminant in that regard. it is also descriminant in Post in all Threads in all of Perlmonks for Anonymous vs Replies in certain Threads in all of Perlmonks for Anonymous.

        the first is therefore All vs All, the second is therefore All vs Certain. thus is born Policy vs Discrimination.

        \Dis*crim"i*nate\, a. {L. discriminatus, p. p. of discriminare to divide, separate, fr. discrimen division, distinction, decision, fr. discernere. See Discern, and cf. Criminate}. Having the difference marked; distinguished by certain tokens. --Bacon. (Websters, 1913)

        the first needs no special marker, as Posts and Replies are seperate concepts and the abilities of Anonymous are consistant across the Domain of each.

        the second needs a special marker as Replies are but a single concept and the abilities of Anonymous are inconsistant across the Domain of the concept. therefore a marker must exist to distinquish the abilities of Anonymous across the Domain of the concept.

        therefore the first is Indescriminant in Concept while the second is Descriminant in Concept.

        OTOH

        what is considering notes then? What about the actions of Nodereaper? What about not frontpaging a node that's about "how to enjoy cranberry sauce in your sex games"? What about not answering CGI or Windows related questions?

        of the first three, i never considered myself qualified for such duties, but those are discriminations as in discriminating taste. they happen After and not Before.

        the last is discriminating as in discriminating judgement. it's a matter of choice.

        the Bad discrimination is a Verb, it's something you do. the OkDependingOnHowYouDoIt discrimination is an Adjective, it modifies a Noun.

        what about running a spam filter? Or a firewall?

        both are discriminating, the first in an Adjectivial way, the second in a Verbial way (unless it's a smart firewall, then the Adjectivial way)

        SPAM is the best example of damage controll that once was done by people but quickly exceeded their capacity such that drastic measures had to be taken like having a filter do the work.

        as to firewalls, a machine run with discrimination (adj) gains nothing from a firewall. a firewall protects the indiscriminate by discriminating for them. plus nobody makes one that fits my pipes. plus they all get some little feature wrong (having IE/Java only management, poor to no API for triggering events, failing in the wrong mode, running SCO, using giant animated images in their applications so performance sucks over remote SSL connections, the list goes on and on).

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