6 ms·

Possibly. However, I've found that it's fairly easy to identify who is saying what based on writing style, grammar and punctuation habits. Any HR person will

by spking 15y ago

Possibly. However, I've found that it's fairly easy to identify who is saying what based on writing style, grammar and punctuation habits. Any HR person will tell you that's how they identify respondents to "anonymous" employee surveys.

akharris 15y ago
Agreed that you can probably find commonalities within the individual comment threads, but I feel like you'd be hard pressed to do it within a large group. Though I guess those semantic specialists from HR could do some damage.
terio 15y ago
Perhaps you can try translating the message to another language and back. Then present the resulting text to the user for corrections. The resulting grammar and punctuation could be very different than the original.
- rl41 15y ago
  This could easily mangle the original meaning of the message, as www.translationparty.com gracefully demonstrates. I suppose that the user could take a second to approve the recycled message before sending it though.
  - icey 15y ago
    Auto spellcheck + auto grammar adjust would help some, but you'd still have troubles because of habitual use of colloquialisms.
jabo 15y ago
You could probably strip all punctuation and capitalization from any user input so that the style remains fairly obfuscated. IMO it's punctuation and capitalization that usually gives away the IDE identity especially on a chat medium.
hammock 15y ago
I suppose it depends on the size of the company, but I can't imagine any HR person at a co with >20 ee's that could identify someone based on their writing style unless it was particularly idiosyncratic.
- bricestacey 15y ago
  I imagine the answers would allow you to shrink the sample down to a few select individuals. E.g. This anonymous survey complains a lot about a supervisor, let's start with his/her direct reports.
bugsy 15y ago
This is a good point. To date I have not had an anonymous survey in a small group that hasn't bitten me in the ass afterwards. I also find some anonymous surveys interesting when they are placed in my mailbox and come with a unique identification number. When asking about this uid, I am always told it is for quality control purposes or such. Yeah right. Anyway, the proposed idea is interesting. I could see it being abused though. Someone from management, A, who wants to know what you really think of them could set up a fake discussion using several other sign ins from coworkers B C and D (and of course management has their passwords, that's required per the corporate contract), puppets who then ask "What do you think of boss A?" followed by puppet accounts B-D saying A is a jerk and then listening to see your response. This is the sort of thing that happens with the sort of jock management that infects many workplaces.
- yuhong 15y ago
  Of course, in the long term these problems needs to be fixed. That will of course take time though.
ericmoritz 15y ago
How about each message has to be rephrased by another person in the room in order to scramble the original author. It suffers from the telephone problem and general misunderstanding however.
qjz 15y ago
I've worked in environments where it would be trivial to get an email of your SSN the moment you visit an HR online survey, let alone complete it. It's possible to promise confidentiality, but you should be extremely suspicious whenever someone guarantees anonymity.
kahawe 15y ago
Could you elaborate on this with some real world examples? Unless it is something very obvious like using "..." or "-" a lot while nobody else does, I am wondering how this can be done reliably and efficiently especially considering that what HR knows about your writing style is most likely only from business emails, your application and other business correspondences where one would likely use a different writing style than in an internal anonymous discussion.
- JoachimSchipper 15y ago
  I find it funny that you use a 66-word sentence to express this sentiment. Just how common are those, I wonder?
  - kahawe 15y ago
    Good point - then again, how many 66-word sentences do I usually write and is that enough to "identify" me? And see bugsy's reply, there is a looong sentence there too.

by spking 15y ago

akharris 15y ago

Agreed that you can probably find commonalities within the individual comment threads, but I feel like you'd be hard pressed to do it within a large group. Though I guess those semantic specialists from HR could do some damage.

terio 15y ago

Perhaps you can try translating the message to another language and back. Then present the resulting text to the user for corrections. The resulting grammar and punctuation could be very different than the original.

rl41 15y ago
This could easily mangle the original meaning of the message, as www.translationparty.com gracefully demonstrates. I suppose that the user could take a second to approve the recycled message before sending it though.
- icey 15y ago
  Auto spellcheck + auto grammar adjust would help some, but you'd still have troubles because of habitual use of colloquialisms.

jabo 15y ago

You could probably strip all punctuation and capitalization from any user input so that the style remains fairly obfuscated. IMO it's punctuation and capitalization that usually gives away the IDE identity especially on a chat medium.

hammock 15y ago

I suppose it depends on the size of the company, but I can't imagine any HR person at a co with >20 ee's that could identify someone based on their writing style unless it was particularly idiosyncratic.

bricestacey 15y ago
I imagine the answers would allow you to shrink the sample down to a few select individuals. E.g. This anonymous survey complains a lot about a supervisor, let's start with his/her direct reports.

bugsy 15y ago

This is a good point. To date I have not had an anonymous survey in a small group that hasn't bitten me in the ass afterwards. I also find some anonymous surveys interesting when they are placed in my mailbox and come with a unique identification number. When asking about this uid, I am always told it is for quality control purposes or such. Yeah right. Anyway, the proposed idea is interesting. I could see it being abused though. Someone from management, A, who wants to know what you really think of them could set up a fake discussion using several other sign ins from coworkers B C and D (and of course management has their passwords, that's required per the corporate contract), puppets who then ask "What do you think of boss A?" followed by puppet accounts B-D saying A is a jerk and then listening to see your response. This is the sort of thing that happens with the sort of jock management that infects many workplaces.

yuhong 15y ago
Of course, in the long term these problems needs to be fixed. That will of course take time though.

ericmoritz 15y ago

How about each message has to be rephrased by another person in the room in order to scramble the original author. It suffers from the telephone problem and general misunderstanding however.

qjz 15y ago

I've worked in environments where it would be trivial to get an email of your SSN the moment you visit an HR online survey, let alone complete it. It's possible to promise confidentiality, but you should be extremely suspicious whenever someone guarantees anonymity.

kahawe 15y ago

Could you elaborate on this with some real world examples? Unless it is something very obvious like using "..." or "-" a lot while nobody else does, I am wondering how this can be done reliably and efficiently especially considering that what HR knows about your writing style is most likely only from business emails, your application and other business correspondences where one would likely use a different writing style than in an internal anonymous discussion.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago
I find it funny that you use a 66-word sentence to express this sentiment. Just how common are those, I wonder?
- kahawe 15y ago
  Good point - then again, how many 66-word sentences do I usually write and is that enough to "identify" me? And see bugsy's reply, there is a looong sentence there too.