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I'm not sure what you mean by an "authentic community". I have many friends on social networks whom I've never met in real life and whose names I have no knowl
by nika 16y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by an "authentic community". I have many friends on social networks whom I've never met in real life and whose names I have no knowledge of, but they are real people, and the relationship is authentic, based on our interactions.
They are not fake, they are simply anonymous.
Further, by having some anonymity, I can say things that I otherwise would not be comfortable saying. This is important on a site where the purpose is to answer questions.
Is it better to get a vague question or to have an answer that fails to reveal critical information because this information might make a business associate look bad? Or would it be better to be able to say X attempted to do Y because they believed Z, and I thought Z true, but Z turned out to be W and so Y caused a Q. X is a good entity, they just made a mistake here, so beware of this kind of error if you do business with X.
- yuhong 16y agoQuora already has an anonymous mode for that. Just click "Make Anon" when you need it.
- benologist 16y agoThat's probably not really anonymous - Quora almost certainly knows you posted it still even if they don't display that you did.
- hornokplease 16y agoCorrect, Quora does know that you posted it, however other users won't be able to know: http://www.quora.com/How-anonymous-are-anonymous-questions-in-Quora http://www.quora.com/How-anonymous-are-anonymous-questions-i...
- yuhong 16y agoYep, of course, but often that is enough.
- ekanes 16y agoFor now. It would be a mistake to assume their system is so secure now (and forever into the future) that the data can't be found, or simply leaked inadvertently by Quora.
- benologist 16y agoOr forced to be handed over with a court order. It's a very false-anonymity, even by internet standards.
- hornokplease 16y agoI agree with you, and I have also posted this question on Quora which remains (to date) unanswered: http://www.quora.com/Have-Quora-admins-ever-unanonymized-a-question-or-answer http://www.quora.com/Have-Quora-admins-ever-unanonymized-a-q...
- chronomex 16y agoI would say that they're not "anonymous" so much as "pseudonymous", if you can even say that. A name is whatever a person calls himself; if it's adopted at the age of 23 and only used online that doesn't make it any less a name. I try to say "legal name" rather than "real name" when interacting with people. While this is not perfectly correct (according to Wikipedia, in common law a "true name" is any name used non-fraudulently), it does help to remind people that assumed names aren't less real than given names.