There are several 'private' items of information at PerlMonks. They can't be seen except by gods and other admins, all of whom don't share them (and only very rarely look at them).

If you think this specific case was abusive, then make your case.

If you think this specific case was abusive, then make your case.

I perfectly understand that anonymity isn't absolute, here or elsewhere. But I do think that if anonymity is offered at perlmonks it ought to be with the implied trust that the information necessary to subvert anonymity is not only highly restricted, but that such subversion only be made in extraordinary circumstances. Thus, I think *any* peeking by those with such powers is an abuse of that power unless a case of extraordinary circumstances can be made to justify it.

You may consider the present case to be harmless, especially since the OP didn't seem to mind that their identity was discovered by at least one administrator, but that doesn't lessen the transgression. Violating anonymity should never be done on the basis of not seeing the harm in a particular case, but whether the value of doing so outweighs breaking the expectation of trust (of all). Even if you thought you could provide information the poster might consider valuable, you could just as easily have posted that you could relay that information if they chose to reveal themselves in a private /msg (their choice, not yours).

In short, IMHO, you're asking the wrong side to make their case.

In short, IMHO, you're asking the wrong side to make their case.

I don't think so. The previous node was fairly useless. This latest node¹ is much better. Good points. I'm glad you made your case, because it is a good one.

I'll certainly consider your points in future. I have not yet decided whether I agree with you or not, but I appreciate the criticism. It will likely at least push me closer to your stance on this point, but I want more time to reflect on it for now.

- tye        

¹ Note that the link to "This node" is not one of those very annoying uses of [id://...|this] that just make it tedious to tell what node is being reference (out of context), but is a use of "This node" to indicate the node I am replying to with a link added to make exactly which one I mean absolutely clear (since I didn't go the route of the awkward but clearer "the parent to the node you are currently reading" and "the great grand parent to...").

The concept of hiding anything from the gods is superficial. There are only two things keeping the gods from being truely all powerful and all knowing. The first is technical feasibility. The second is their own judgement.

In this case, it's perfectly technicaly feasable to figure out who wrote that node: we log IPs. It obviously was not against tye's judgement to see who wrote the node, and it wouldn't be against mine either, if the purpose was to provide them with useful information (which it was).

In this case, it's perfectly technicaly feasable to figure out who wrote that node: we log IPs.

Anonymity is an arms race. Logging IPs is just a first strike. Not a good strike (multiple people behind a proxy, people behind multiple proxies) to begin with, and parried long before perlmonks existed. Apparently, the original poster wasn't taking any steps to defeat IP logging, but if someone wants to, it becomes harder to lift anonymity. I guess the OP cared about his/her XP, but didn't care that much.

Abigail

Wrong question. You should ask "is anonymity merely a superficial concept on the Internet?" For which you will get a resounding "sort of".

Since the AnonMonk in question said he accesses PM from just a few static IPs, it shouldn't be surprising that anyone with as much access as tye should be able to figure out who it was.

Surely the question was not whether anyone could break the OP's choice for anonymity. The question is: Should they?

Whether the choice for anonymity is a valid chioce in this case or any other is an interesting debate, but irrelevant.

Whilst the choice exists, it should be made clear whether that choice has any meaning beyond "nobody--except any God that whimsically decides to look--will know who posted".

It's been stated elsewhere that there are certain activities and procedures that will enevitably lead to the authorised person carrying them out to encounter private information. I also seem to recollect that this was a) rare, b) came with the suggestion that any such authorised person making such an encounter would keep the information to themselves and "try to forget it".

Unless PM has processes in place that routinely cross-reference the ip of anonymous posters with the ip's of known posters, and routinely present this information to God's as they log-on, it would seem likely that the discovery of the OP's "true identity" was rather more than a chance encounter during routine operations.

Given that the OP was hardly controversial, in no way rude or offensive, and phrased as a very open question, there seems little reason for tye to ..use his powers to discover that true identity, other than to say "I have the power". Which doesn't seem to me to be a valid justification, and makes mockery of the notional anonymity provided by Anonymous Monk

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail

The poster rather clearly stated their reason for choosing anonymous posting. I don't feel I acted in contradiction to that stated reason.

whimsically[...]other than to say "I have the power"

I'm sad that you can't think of any other reason why I might do this. I was trying to be helpful. There was no whimsy involved on my part. Yes, I am often whimsical or perverse, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised if sometimes such is attributed to me erroneously.

It's been stated elsewhere that there are certain activities and procedures that will enevitably lead to the authorised person carrying them out to encounter private information. I also seem to recollect that this was a) rare, b) came with the suggestion that any such authorised person making such an encounter would keep the information to themselves and "try to forget it".

A request was made for feedback on an issue that I feel is important to the Monastery. It raised a point that I feel is a valid item to be concerned about and I wanted to investigate the situation as an administrator dealing with a potential problem. In the course of that investigation I went through a process to get summary information about what votes the author of the node had received when not being anonymous. That process was successful and required that I encounter some private information (their likely usual non-anonymous handle and information about many of the votes cast upon that). I honestly don't remember what that handle was nor much about the votes other than what I said in that node.

I would have preferred to privately ask the author if it would be okay if I looked into this, but to "privately ask" would require that I pierce their anonymity anyway. I was reluctant to do the search (and considered asking publicly) and then reluctant to report my findings, but both times I decided that the potential benefit justified the action. I can certainly see how some would take issue with those judgements and I may well take issue with them myself in the long run.

In part, I think a big issue here comes down to image. I currently care less about instilling an image of propriety than about actually acting with propriety. Unfortunately, when it comes to privileged actions, there will never be great transparency so this preference for substance over image is probably ill advised in this case.

I feel lucky that quite a few people that I respect actually trust my judgement (near as I can tell). But I need to remember that there are lots of people who have no reason to trust my judgement so I should be trying to appear trustworthy (my need to actually be trustworthy is based on other reasons). (I should probably try to phrase that more clearly... rather, I *have* tried to phrase that more clearly but have now given up, despite realizing that it may be misread and give the wrong impression, thus proving that I still need work on appearances.)

Thanks for being frank. I'll try to do better (both at instilling trustworthiness and at actually treating the boundaries more strictly).

- tye        

: Given that the OP was hardly controversial, in no way rude or offensive, and phrased as a very open question,

I agree with this. But not the rest of the line. When I read the original post, I read it as "I'm worried I'm getting more downvotes, and want to know if this is true, without getting more downvotes." In short, I see it as a request for information. But clearly, there are two ways of reading it.

Therefore possible solutions would be: 1) just give everyone more detailed information (possibly in such a way that you wouldn't have to see it if you didn't want to) such as "You have gained 2 experience points. You have 200000000 points to go to reach level vroom. (+3,-1)" or having nodes show the + and - votes as well as the total. The arguments against this have generally been that this information will cause obsession about points, but tye's willingness to answer the question suggests that perhaps the attitude has changed.

2) /msg gods Could you please tell me if I've been losing more xp lately?

With either of these solutions, the original poster gets what she or he wants (an answer without exposing her/himself to the world at large), and tye isn't guessing about whether it was an answer or a conversation that the person wanted, so everyone else is happy too.

Update Summary of my post could be that I agree with point 1 below and am not at all concerned about point 3.