Anonymous Posting in Online Communities
Online communities vary with their stances on anonymous postings. Wikipedia allows anonymous editing in most cases, but does not label users, instead identifying them by their IP addresses, with other editors commonly referring to them with neutral terms such as "anons" or "IPs".
Many online bulletin boards require users to be signed to write (and in some cases, even to read) posts. 2channel and other Futaba-based image boards take an opposite stance, encouraging the anonymity, and in the case of English Futaba-based websites, calling those who use usernames and tripcodes "namefags" and "tripfags," respectively. As required by law, even communities such as 4chan do require the logging of IP addresses of such anonymous posters. Such data however, can only be accessed by the particular site administrator.
Slashdot discourages anonymous posting by referring to anonymous posters as "anonymous coward". The mildly derogatory term is meant to chide anonymous contributors into logging in.
Read more about this topic: Anonymous Post
Famous quotes containing the words posting and/or communities:
“The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“... feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, or we are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)