At our monastery, Anonymous Monk is everybody who doesn't wear robes. Those fine folks are either visitors, or monks who chose not to wear robes, for whatever reasons.

Our monastery does not exist in isolation, and neither should it. It lives from trade, and many monks first came here as visitors - it's not like parents send their youngest sons or daughters to our keep :-).

At our monastery, Anonymous Monk is everybody who doesn't wear robes.

The anonymous posters are all naked? That doesn't sound like the behavior of somebody with above-average privacy concerns. Though we do occasionally get anonymous visitors who behave a bit like streakers. But they are a distinct minority, IMHO.

Robes that convey identity rather than conceal it? Perhaps monogrammed robes? This place never struck me as a spa or over-the-top hotel.

A bunch of faceless volunteers dressed in identical robes calling each other by the same generic name ("Brother") while transcribing wisdom without signing their names. I just don't see how anonymity is antithetical to monkly attire. Nor to monkly ethos (to touch on a previous subject).

The root of this thread said "past abuses of the Anonymous Monk robe". So I'm not the only one who finds your use of "robes" reversed.

But the whole Monasterial theme is just for amusement. The analogy falls over quickly.

Whether anonymity matches monkly ethos seems completely irrelevant to me. My concerns tend to be more on the practical side. I think they mostly boil down to encouraging constructive contribution and discouraging disruptive contribution.

- tye        

The anonymous posters are all naked?

Of course not. There's other clothing besides robes.

Perl 6 - second systems done right

Sometimes Anonymous Monk is also the monk whose face is so deeply buried in his (or her) robes, that no one can see just who it is that silently sweeps by and sows a good deed.

Recently, my greatest frustration with Anonymous Monk is the inability to say "thumbs up" or "thank you" in a private message when the anonymous monk offers up a good post or well spoken word.

The only definition of his role is that it is and remains undefined.

Like the court jester he can say earnest things in jest when others dare not to speak, but he can as easily make mountains out of molehills.

The stache is strong with this one

That's about the only benefit I see from having a login name. It's just lazyness on my part that I haven't changed my loginname in a while.

I can see lots of uses of having a login name. To name a few:

• It makes socializing with other monks much easier
• It allows you to tailor your answers to other monk's background, where applicable
• It allows usage of the CB
• It allows participation in the voting/XP system
• It allows you to put a face to your statements
• It allows participation in certain groups (like Janitors, pmdev etc.)
• It allows customization of settings, layout, nodelets etc.
• It enables taking up responsibility via the consideration system
• It makes it possible to follow threads of opinions through threads of nodes. It's not so easy to discuss with three different anonymous monks with different opinions in the same thread
Perl 6 - second systems done right

For you, maybe. For me, not so. I don't socialize here (or on any Perlmonks related social event (picture, lunch with big Perl name, BOF) on YAPCs), I very seldom use the CB (and if I do, it's to answer a question), I seldomly vote (and if I vote, it's usually negative, so people don't really mind if I don't vote), I don't understand the face statement, I've no interest in the various groups, I've only a little customization, and I can live without, I haven't even bothered to learn what the entire consideration system is about, and I don't care about unraveling opinions by studying posts grouped by name.

So, while undoubtedly all those things are important to you, I'm just here to answer questions and correct answers.

Having a login name makes that I get informed if there's a reply to my post.

That's about the only benefit I see from having a login name.

Having a login name lets me use the chatterbox.

I completely completely support Anonymous Monk++ because the pros are so much more important than the cons.

• Easy to confuse with AnomalousMonk because I'm old and my eyes are bad.

Putting the following snippet in your On-Site CSS Markup (Display Settings) may help distinguish:

a[href="?node_id=961"],
a[href="?node=Anonymous%20Monk"] {
  color: #c000a0;
}
[download]

(Feel free to use a different color, if you don't like pink :)

Caveat: Attribute Selectors may not work with older browsers.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't even know you were here before!

The Robe of Anonymous Monk is here to provide master and novice alike the fair and unbiased consideration of their words.

I'd love to see Anonymous Monk continue to be anonymous. :)

I'd also like to see people remember that the words you chose when addressing others will have the same effect whether you sign your 'name' or not. Please reconsider responses that don't add to the discussion, distracts from the discussion, attack or bait users into an overheated argument.

I can't say that I've ever had any problem with Anonymous Monks. Most often, for me, their posts have been good and helpful; sometimes, of course, they're not. But I mostly just ignore the bad ones; just as I do with the non-Anonymous Monks' posts.

My thought is that it is a good institution and I have benefited too often from the good wisdom offered by Anonymous Monk to want to give it up. If annonymity helps or seems useful, no matter what the reasons or rationale, then so be it...IMHO.

I would like to see Anonymous Monk stay around and don't have any reason to change the annonymity.

Explanation of what is and is not a troll:

• http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1764/what-is-a-troll
• http://trollpolice.com/

Perhaps Anonymous Monks could be granted a unique name tag upon entry to the Monastery to distinguish them from other Anonymous Monks. Something like 'Anonymous Monk 12345', or the like (Not sure how easy this would be to implement, though).

Trivial to do. And easy to create this name in your mind as well. Just tag the node id (which has to be unique) to "Anonymous Monk".

I'm not sure what problem that's going to solve though.

Nun take vows here

Force of habit, I guess.

The Monks don't, but do the Nuns?


Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

A couple of thoughts:

I had the idea of separating new monks as Guest User and only signed in members would have an option of posting as Anonymous Monk.

We could then award a certain number of Anonymous Monk posts to members based on their XP level on a per day/week basis. So for example, if you're at level 5 you would have five Anonymous Monk posts available to you per day/week.

As for Guest posts we could limit those to a certain number per visit (maybe 3). To prevent users from working around this system, if they post those three times as a Guest the number would be deducted from their available Anonymous Monk posts the next time they login.

I don't think this would "fix" Anonymous Monk but maybe by putting a limit on how many times we can post as Anonymous Monk, the handful who abuse it — may — think more carefully about throwing away a post.

I've argued against Anonymous Monk (although not 'banishing' him/her altogether). I do think it plays a valuable part here but maybe with some adjustments it could be made better.

Which problem(s) with Anonymous Monk are you trying to solve? And why do you think separating guest account and AnonMonk would do anything except adding confusion?

Perl 6 - second systems done right