Anonymous Posting
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Discourse is testing anonymous posting on meta, it's immediately found to be not anonymous:
If they get it working, do we want it here?
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It'll only be available to TL4+
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Lightening quick response reflexes, you have.
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Nope, admin-configurable trust level barrier. TL2 would make sense here.
Also, found a bug: the join date is that of the parent account, which can be used to almost uniquely identify the anonymous user given the trust level restriction
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We already have it here.
Says @accalia... (or maybe not, but it's a high-probability guess.)
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Nope, admin-configurable trust level barrier. TL2 would make sense here.
Assuming the join-date bug is fixed, it's far too open for abuse for my tastes to allow it for TL2+.
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But posting anonymously is what happened on the front page articles.... done by anonymous users.... This is not even the right feature shrugs
Filed Under: Oh well
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well yes, but anyone could have done that.
;-)
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almost uniquely identify the anonymous
At least for those of us migrated from CS, we all have the same join date (and time, at least for the couple I checked), so there is a fairly large group of us that would potentially remain indistinguishable.
not even the right feature
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well yes, but anyone could have done that.
;-)
This is the first time @RaceProUK is trying it out; will it work?
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This is not even the right feature
This is the kind where you can still see a list of each anonymous user's posts. Not sure if that's the kind we'd want here, if we even want it at all. I don't really see the need for it. Posted because I thought the join-date hole was funny.
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This is the first time @RaceProUK is trying it out; will it work?
No, because you did it at the same time and caused by post to get 429ed
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No, because you did it at the same time and caused by post to get 429ed
Mine made it through OK
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I'll stop now…
See how easy it is to abuse something like that? Do we really want that as a core Dischorse feature open to TL2+? At least with going via bots, it's easy to curb; we just turn off the Anonymiser module.
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Assuming the join-date bug is fixed, it's far too open for abuse for my tastes to allow it for TL2+.
If it's actually anonymous, then why the fuck would it matter what trust level people have? How could it be "abused" more by one person than another? How the fuck would you even know?
Of course, those questions assume it's actually anonymous.
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Of course, those questions assume it's actually anonymous.
At the moment, if you're willing to do a little detective work, it's not.
@blakeyrat said:If it's actually anonymous, then why the fuck would it matter what trust level people have? How could it be "abused" more by one person than another? How the fuck would you even know?
You of all people should be able to imagine a situation where someone is being hounded by anonymous messages. With your reputation, would you be happy to allow that many people the opportunity to troll you without you knowing who they are at least?
I guarantee, if this feature arrives and is available to TL2+, it will be abused.Just look above where me and Cali conversed via SockBot. Now, that's easily stoppable; SockBot's Anonymiser can simply be turned off, or the bot account can be trust-holed. Can't do that if anonymous posting is a first-class feature in Dischorse.
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If it's actually anonymous, then why the fuck would it matter what trust level people have? How could it be "abused" more by one person than another? How the fuck would you even know?
Of course, those questions assume it's actually anonymous.
It's Discoanonymous. So, there's enough info available, especially to admins, to make it not so.
Logged in users posting anonymously is a IMO the best setting for here is "off".
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It's Discoanonymous
Yeah - I don't think it's anonymous at all to admins. Anon posts can still get flagged, admins could ban your real account. (Your anon posts are from your real account, just masked for display, I think.)
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With your reputation, would you be happy to allow that many people the opportunity to troll you without you knowing who they are at least?
If that's your argument, then we should turn off the feature altogether.
Otherwise, it doesn't matter if I get 10 anonymous posts from 5 people or 50 anonymous posts from 1 person, it's just as much a problem either way.
I guarantee, if this feature arrives and is available to TL2+, it will be abused.
I don't even know what "abuse" constitutes when people post anonymously. What do you consider "abuse"?
Just look above where me and Cali conversed via SockBot.
Fuck bots, and fuck you for making bots. You talk about abuse, THAT'S fucking abuse, and we haven't banned that shit. Although we should.
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Posted because I thought the join-date hole was funny.
what about the anonymous accounts getting badges thing?
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@RaceProUK said:
With your reputation, would you be happy to allow that many people the opportunity to troll you without you knowing who they are at least?
If that's your argument, then we should turn off the feature altogether. On that, we're more or less on the same page.
If it's going to be limited so much, then I don't see why it can't just be turned off.
@blakeyrat said:@RaceProUK said:
I guarantee, if this feature arrives and is available to TL2+, it will be abused.
I don't even know what "abuse" constitutes when people post anonymously. What do you consider "abuse"?
I believe I've already answered that.
@blakeyrat said:@RaceProUK said:
Just look above where me and Cali conversed via SockBot.
Fuck bots, and fuck you for making bots. You talk about abuse, THAT'S fucking abuse, and we haven't banned that shit. Although we should.
There are two reasons they haven't been banned:- Some people find them useful; look at how much @shadowmod is used.
- There are countless ways in which we've limited the ability to abuse bots. As a result, outside of Bot Testing, you almost never see them.
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As a result, outside of Bot Testing, you almost never see them.
that's got to be a joke....
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I believe I've already answered that.
No you haven't. What's the difference between getting trolling from anonymous posts and normal trolling? Why is one more "abusive" than the other?
There are countless ways in which we've limited the ability to abuse bots. As a result, outside of Bot Testing, you almost never see them.
You liar.
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I think anonymous accounts that have a post history aren't really anonymous. What's the difference between that and a regular account, except for the name starting with "anonymous"? The only difference is that there's presumably another "real" account that the same user posts from. It's not much different than getting an alt account.
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Logged in users posting anonymously is a
TDEMSYR (where YR isn't directed at @loopback0, but whoever came up with that idea)
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@RaceProUK said:
I believe I've already answered that.
No you haven't. What's the difference between getting trolling from anonymous posts and normal trolling? Why is one more "abusive" than the other?
You really don't see the difference between knowing who's trolling and who isn't?
@blakeyrat said:@RaceProUK said:
There are countless ways in which we've limited the ability to abuse bots. As a result, outside of Bot Testing, you almost never see them.
You liar.
@darkmatter said:@RaceProUK said:
As a result, outside of Bot Testing, you almost never see them.
that's got to be a joke....
Prove me wrong then.
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http://what.thedailywtf.com/users/zoidberg/activity
pzl what categories are those?
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Seven posts in four weeks isn't exactly widespread abuse, is it?
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By one of at least a dozen bots?
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As far as I'm aware, only Zoidberg is summoned with anything approaching regularity. With the possible exception of DiscourseBot.
My point still stands though: outside of Bot Testing, bot activity is barely on the radar.
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Again, outside of Bot Testing (and this thread), almost nothing.
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You mean your point stands if you ignore all the evidence that refutes your point.
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Again, outside of Bot Testing (and this thread), almost nothing.
Yes the 4 posts in Meta this past hour alone, clearly nothing.
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About once a week someone says OH HEY REMEMBER THERS BOTS and half the active topics, or at least all the ones I'm reading, get trashed to uselessness for a few hours.
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When you show me widespread bot activity outside of Bot Testing, then I'll cede the point. Until now, you haven't done so.
@darkmatter said:Yes the 4 posts in Meta this past hour alone, clearly nothing.
Four relevant posts at that, demonstrating that there's an anonymous posting method already available. One that can be turned off at short notice, btw.
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About once a week someone says OH HEY REMEMBER THERS BOTS and half the active topics, or at least all the ones I'm reading, get trashed to uselessness for a few hours.
I read just about every topic, and I haven't see that outside of Bot Testing.
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and t/1000... a once thriving topic that has been neutered by no one wanting to get bot-spammed by posting in it anymore.
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and then the other random topics where people decide to pm an auto-responder bot.
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I'll give you /t/1000; if enough people want, I'm happy to turn the autolikes off on my bots, and just leave the binging. I can't speak for other bot operators though.
Also, you can add the bot accounts to your ignore list; it actually works now (as much as anything works here).
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cat's out of the bag now, there's little point dumping a bucket of water over the side of a capsizing ocean liner.
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and then the other random topics where people decide to pm an auto-responder bot.
I don't follow; PMs are private?
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@mention a bot, whatever
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It'll only be available to TL4+
So if your site has, what, say five TL4's out of a population of a couple of hundred regular posters, then it's not really all that "anonymous", really, is it?
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it's only available to TL4 on meta.d
in the wild it will be admin discretion as to who all can do it.
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@mention a bot, whatever
Ah, that makes more sense.There are controls in place to stop the bots posting at all in Articles and The Lounge (and any thread blakey starts, as per his request), as well as rate-limiting on TL0/TL1 (not sure about TL2), but there's only so much we can do; we can't control human behaviour ;)
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I might just go off and register @bnonymous, @cnonymous, @dnonymous, @enonymous, and so on...
Except I just said I was going to do that, so now I'm not. Somebody else did it!