Still working to recover. Please don't edit quite yet.
Talk:Anarchopedia:Community Portal
Contents
- 1 Disambiguation pages
- 2 Restored data
- 3 Eng is on new server
- 4 User unfriendly
- 5 can't write on eng: ?
- 6 licensing
- 7 anarchy or not
- 8 So, what is the rationale behind bans?
- 9 Questions
- 10 Suggestions
- 11 Search question
- 12 Case sensitivity
- 13 General Strike
- 14 Notes/questions by a new user
- 15 envirowiki interlinking
- 16 Important Pages Missing?
- 17 Guidelines
- 18 Creation of Anarchopedia:Inter-projects
- 19 Uri Gordon
- 20 Anarchopedia in spanish
- 21 Anarchopedia is becoming authoritarian
- 22 Anarchists are getting a bad name in Toronto
- 23 What's the difference between AP and Wikipedia?
- 24 Should I be private (anonymous-pseudonymous) or public?
- 25 User Block request for Advertising Bot
- 26 Viaduct not Veritas
- 27 Solved
- 28 My religion
- 29 Can one defend anarcho-capitalism in Anarchopedia?
- 30 The caterpillar
Disambiguation pages
Ive noticed a lot of disambiguation pages, epsecially ones about abbreviations, that dont actually have any articles to direct to. What is the point of this?--151.199.25.180 21:49, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Ive noticed that too, and ive sterted deleting them Carlostmpl
GFDL is not appropriate to a wiki. Should be replaced by GNU GPL or a Creative Common Licence (discussion on meta community portal)
- I think we should make this a lot more organised. Wikipedia's articles are duplicatable; I believe we should copy those articles first, then modify them to our own standards. As of now, this looks like a sub-standard wiki; just a mess. We can add the anarchist perspective and rearrange the (already well-organised) articles as we wish. lockeownzj00 20:46, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
You are right. Anarchopedia in English doesn't have a lot of contributors and my English is not so well. Some time ago, I started to copy Wikipedia's articles about anarchism, and I'll join you :) next week. --millosh 21:13, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
What's the point of this? If you do a search on Google of a passage from a Wikipedia article for Louis XIV - "bankruptcy when Louis XIV assumed", you get 109 hits, with Wikipedia being #1. Why be hit #110? What's the point of just cloning Wikipedia?
I have copied articles from Wikipedia, usually original articles by a good author. I think copying wholesale Wikipedia articles is pointless. If you want to copy and modify articles from Wikipedia, then copy them to your hard drive, modify it and then upload it. What's the point of being just another Wikipedia clone? Lance Murdoch 01:32, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- I'm going to add articles from Wikipedia I created or contributed toward, largely articles on U.S. leftist groups. DJ Silverfish 18:56, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
- Why is copying all of Wikipedia pointless? No, that's a bad question... let me try again:
- What is the purpose of this site other than to be "not Wikipedia"? If the purpose is to be an encyclopedia, doesn't it make sense to start with an encyclopedia that you think needs work and then do that work? Any other position would seem to be based merely on territorialism. -Harmil 21:26, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Sorry to sound negative, but was this site started by non-anarchists to make anarchists look hopelessly disorganised? I thought that Wikipedia was a mess, but this... 81.202.195.21 14:40, 8 Jul 2005 (UTC)
- Hehehe... I started it and I am an anarchist. People from German and French Anarchopedia are better organized because they were working on site organization. So, if you want to make some better organization here, you are welcome. The point is self-organization, not leadership. And we have a lot of time to try to do that. To say again here (and this is the answer to Harmil's question, too): Anarchopedia should be "an anarchist encyclopedia" and "an encyclopedia for anarchists", but also the virtual place where we can try to build anarchy. May we organize us without leaders and power; at least in the virtual world? ... as well as with people who are not explicit anarchists? Even Infoshop OpenWiki doesn't intend to be "an encyclopedia for anarchists" (just "an anarchist encyclopedia") Anarchopedia would not have a lot of sense without the goal to build a virtual anarchy. --millosh 00:09, 11 Jul 2005 (UTC)
- So, this is the main reason why I am writing here only at the talk pages. People who want to write here should write here without the idea that Anarchopedia is "project which belongs to someone" and without the idea that one person can make decisions about relations between contributors or about the site content. --millosh 00:09, 11 Jul 2005 (UTC)
- It is not easy to make even virtual society without hierarchy and we want to do that in reality. The good thing is that we have a lot of time to try to do that here (or anywhere else). --millosh 00:09, 11 Jul 2005 (UTC)
Restored data
I restored eng: from database dump from September 8th. Between 5 ti 10 changes (from 8, 9, and 10 September) are lost. --millosh 17:49, 11 Sep 2005 (UTC)
- No big deal, it should take just a few minutes to resubmit the changes (and apparently i was the only person active during the period :). e★f 20:26, 11 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Eng is on new server
millosh 14:50, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
User unfriendly
Want to grow the articles here? Improve the ease of submitting a new article. First, what the hell is this about having to log in to create an article? How anarchic is that? Second, typing an entry in to the search box should bring up a "create new article" dialog if the database query finds nothing, not the apocryphal MySQL space language it does now. Denni 01:38, 14 Dec 2005 (UTC)
- We have a very small community here so far, and i think this (logging in first) was done to prevent bots from editing and creating crap articles... personally seeing how there was an influx of regestering bots around, i say this rule has to be deprecated, since it doesn't help anyhow. User:Beta m/sig
- First of all, YOU DONT HAVE TO BE LOGGED IN TO CREATE AN ARTICLE! Second, making a new article is not terribly complicated. All you have to do is search for it, and if it doesnt come up a link will show up in red at the top of the page. Anyone that cant figure out how to do that probably shouldn't be contributing to Anarchopedia anyway. Im sick of people complaining about how you have to be logged in and how it is un-anarchistic. I have a user name, but I dont always log in with it (usually due to laziness) and it never hinders my ability to edit articles. Furthermore, if you look at the records, only one user was ever banned from this website, and that was because he added "an eggcup" onto the end of every article he could find.
- Right on.
can't write on eng: ?
i tryied to make a translation for "diego abad de santillan" from the french article, and put it on eng:, but it seems created, but it show nothing : see Diego Abad de Santillan. What happen ? Libre 08:51, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
- something strange !? it passed now ???!! finally good :) Libre 08:52, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
- It happens sometimes that you have to submit the same thing twice before it actually works. I suspect it has something to do with the timeout threshhold being too low. ~ Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) Talk 09:37
licensing
I also have thought a bit about licenses. I think the bad thing about licenses like GFDL and CC are that they gibe somebody the right to go to the courts in order to enforce the rights. I think for anarchists that should be a no-go. So I suggest to develop an anarchistic anti-licenses. This should be very short, maybe one paragraph - and could also be used on other projects. The idea is to give the people the "rights" they need but make clear that these "rights" can not be enforced by any jurisdiction. I would call such a license AAL Anarchist Anti License. The "Anti" should make clear that this is not a real license. Please take a look at http://www.cypherspace.org/CPL/ for an idea - but I think this could be made much shorter. --Vinci 08:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
- I do like the idea, but think it's more silly then anything. Public domain is the way to go if we want to be anarchic. And i don't see what is wrong with GNU GPL anyhow. Taking away somebody's right to restict freedoms of others isn't a bad thing, nor is it anti-anarchist. ~ Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) Talk 2006 July 02 16:47 (UTC)
- The problem with public domain is that someone takes your stuff and changes it and then claims they own the changes, even if they are just corrections, then sues you. The only way around this is a share alike license, and yes the GFDL does qualify. It gives you a lot of powers actually if you use the GFDL Secondary Sections properly - especially the GFDL Invariant Section - to make sure no one can abuse the materials. For instance you could add an Invariant Section promoting anarchy and giving all the most useful URLs to anyone who reads any derived article. So an article on gardening would only be distributed with a secondary section on how to anarchize gardening, e.g. by planting illegal plants in everyone else's garden all around.
- You could write a more complex terms of use like let.sysops.be or openpolitics.ca or lp.greenparty.ca to sort out all the various possibilities. One nice idea that came from the (now defunct) livingplatform.ca was to let tense of articles and PoV of articles actually determine their copyright. So instructions were CC-by-sa but political opinions were CC-by, and compilations of many opinions were CC-by-nc-sa etc.
anarchy or not
Anarchy or not, how are people supposed to find what they want? What is the meaning of anarchy? chaos and time wasting?
- They can use the search engine, or they can just learn the lingo. The language used to describe community here, like faction stuff, is 'way more sensible than Wikipedia which tries to deny there are factions and everyone Jiminy Wales hates is a "troll."
So, what is the rationale behind bans?
Yes, vandals are obviously bad, but isn't banning them un-anarchic? Could someone explain what the reasoning is?
- Anarchism is about empowering people for social change, not making slaves of everyone. Every community has the right to demand that it will not be oppressed, and vandals do exactly that. Think about it: A landlord can come and instill ans rule in your house, and vandals come in and destroy our project.
- Anarchism is not anomie or nihilism. There is nothing wrong with protecting your home and your life from others. We welcome everybody to come in and contribute to the project, but not to destroy it. ~ Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) Talk 2006 October 28 07:35 (UTC)
- Quite, anarchism doesn't mean "no rules" it means rules are made and applied by community consensus. All anarchist communities have the right to exclude someone who breaches the rules, as long as there is a consensus for such a course of action. Indeed in anarchism exclusion from the community is considered the greatest sanction against an individual, and is usually the last resort. On the other hand any individual in the community should want to follow the rules because the community itself has decided those rules, anyone who does not want to follow the rules is quite free to move to a different community where the rules are different. Isn't this the basis of freedom? All communities have the freedom to function independently. Trolls/vandals are not interested in contributing to the community, they just want to disrupt it, so why should we put up with it? Alun 05:44, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Questions
I have a few:
- I've found that I'll type in the exact title of a page into the search bar and hit go or search, and it won't take me to it or offer me any options (I'm aware of the case-sensitive thing). What's going on and how can I fix it?
- I've read that all logged-in users have sysop rights. Is this no longer true? I'm not able to delete anything. (I'd like to delete some spammer- and vandal-created pages). If I have to petition for sysop rights, how do I do it?
- Just curious: The case sensitivity thing seems like a terrible inconvenience; what's the rationale behind it?
- Can anyone point me to existing discussion about the possibility of joining forces with other underpopulated anarchist wikis?
Thanks in advance, Delldot 03:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Some answers... (sorry did not see this before)
- seems to be working for me (just tried "Wikipedia" and "labor note")
- I am not sure about the current setting, one year ago it was changed to give admin-rights three days since the first edit. The software configuration should be published. The people currently managing the server can be contacted via the mailing list anarchopedia-dev, and occasionally via IRC [#anarchopedia@irc.indymedia.org].
- I agree with you... I like the ability to distinguish between "moon" and "Moon" for example, but the software could be smarter and automatically redirect when just one of the two possible titles is missing, (possibly a bot could create the redirect).
- ~Rev 22 16:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Suggestions
- Merging this page with Talk:Main Page, since both do basically the same thing, so discussion is fragmented between the two (or actually creating a community portal, but that would take work).
- Not blocking open proxies. I was doing it for a while blocking spammers, but then I decided it's pointless, since a spambot will edit from a new IP most every time, while blocking an open proxy could conceivably deter a legitimate editor (e.g. someone who has to obscure their IP due to political repression...). I'm thinking of unblocking the ones I blocked, any objections? Delldot 05:05, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think that IPs are blocked all the way. They are blocked from editing without registration as far as i know. I do like an idea of merging this with Talk:Main Page ~ User:Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) 2007 May 10 06:21 (UTC)
- I think I agree, we would have to deal a little more with spammers, but I would not want those users (or anybody) to be accidentally blocked from editing. ~Rev 22 15:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
- With the spammer thing, I guess the question is how often are they reusing that IP? If one IP is consistently spamming/vandalizing, sure it makes sense to block. But if a spambot is using a new IP each time anyway, then I say it's a waste of time to block them and the (admittedly quite small) chance that someone legitimate would want to edit from it would make it not worth it. Therefore I propose that we look at the user's contribs before blocking them. If they only have one or two edits, consider not blocking or keeping the block short. Beta, I know that in newer versions of the software there's an option to allow editing from registerred users from an IP you're blocking, but I think it's a new feature and we'd have to update the software to get it. I think autoblocking still exists here. Delldot 04:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
- After thinking about it i no longer block IP if it's been used only once, also i've noticed that spammers change their IPs while vandals tend to use their own ones. ~ User:Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) 2007 May 16 10:35 (UTC)
- Cool, then if no one objects I'll go through my block log and unblock the open proxies I blocked. I think the vandal/spammer difference is because vandals don't have a profit motive so usually aren't sophisticated enough to be using an open proxy, they're mostly just kids fucking around. Whereas spammers are running bots and doing this to a lot of different sites. Delldot 16:40, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
- After thinking about it i no longer block IP if it's been used only once, also i've noticed that spammers change their IPs while vandals tend to use their own ones. ~ User:Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) 2007 May 16 10:35 (UTC)
- With the spammer thing, I guess the question is how often are they reusing that IP? If one IP is consistently spamming/vandalizing, sure it makes sense to block. But if a spambot is using a new IP each time anyway, then I say it's a waste of time to block them and the (admittedly quite small) chance that someone legitimate would want to edit from it would make it not worth it. Therefore I propose that we look at the user's contribs before blocking them. If they only have one or two edits, consider not blocking or keeping the block short. Beta, I know that in newer versions of the software there's an option to allow editing from registerred users from an IP you're blocking, but I think it's a new feature and we'd have to update the software to get it. I think autoblocking still exists here. Delldot 04:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Search question
When I put in terms for as yet uncreated articles, why does the "Sorry cannot find *whatever* have a colon in front and a question after, with quotes around?
"anarchopedia" btw should auto-redirect to Anarchopedia.
- You could have been bold and did the redirect yourself. q;-) ~ User:Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) 2007 June 19 04:06 (UTC)
Hi everyone, I'm new here. Hope I can be useful. However, I have something to ask; as I am a member of Italian anarchopedia too, we have a problem with an idiot who likes o cancel our pages; if you have or if you had the same problem, how are you fighting it or how did you stop it?
Case sensitivity
Why the case sensitivity and why do people create articles with lower-case letters, even the first one? --Popperipopp 20:12, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
- Because it is usual encyclopedic manner (to write a title as it would be written if it is in the middle of sentence). Wikipedia doesn't follow this. --Millosh 22:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
- BTW, if you need a bot for making redirects, please let me know and I'll make one. --Millosh 22:44, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
- Oh, I didn't know that. Sure, but I can't say that I have fully understood how one control those bots. --Popperipopp 23:19, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
General Strike
I have been propagandizing the General Strike for 9/11/2007 in several places, and I thought I could also comment about it here. I intended linking strike action elsewhere when I mention the strike, but I'm seeing it's still full of red links. Then I thought of proposing cleaning it up, but you would probably tell me to do it myself (at least it's what I would say). So... well, are you planning to help with the strike somehow? I see it as a step in the right direction, even if the results are small, as they will be; I feel general strikes in the USA, and moreover arising from grassroots movements as this one should be happily celebrated by anarchists.
- Yes, you do need to do something yourself, but i will take a look at that article and see if i can do something (at least create some worthy stubs). ~ User:Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) 2007 August 20 04:48 (UTC)
Notes/questions by a new user
- Nice project
- How does one become an administrator (that is, one with blocking powers)?
- Can any logged-in user protect and delete?
- We should get cascade-protection working, it's a lot better than Template:Deletedpage
- We ought to get rid of those annoying spambots, how does Wikipedia handle them?
Koekje 18:52, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
- Hello Koekje... I'll try to answer again...
- 2) The consensus here appears to be that every contributor should have administrator status. Still I think that real anarchistic management is impossible with a client server-model such as the one used by Mediawiki. We would need a distributed database and peer-to-peer software. What is your view in the matter?
- 3) I think that is enabled automatically 3 days since the first edit.
- 4) I'm not sure about what cascade protection is. Will look into it.
- Cascade protection looks like this, was implemented in January 2007 for Wikipedia and it is used there to list pages that are protected against re-creation in one page (see [1]), which is in turn 'cascade-protected' so that they cannot be re-created. If cascade-protection doesn't work, we have to use something like Template:deletedpage, and then the page does technically exist (you can find it by using Special:Random, it shows up in page creation logs, etc). Koekje 16:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
- 5) They are very annoying.., I would think most are handled by the "recent-changes patrollers". But it is also possible to tag certain urls as spam so spammers cannot post them (see meta:Spam blacklist)
- Hope to continue seeing you in Anarchopedia. ~Rev 22 13:13, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
envirowiki interlinking
hey hey. I have set up all the anachopedia interlinks for each language in envirowiki. The full list is here: http://en.envirowiki.info/Envirowiki:Interwiki_links. the page also includes all the envirowiki interlinks for each of our languages, not hard to do a find+replace and change them all to eg. "en-envirowiki", etc.. If someone's up for it.--Naught101 20:51, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Important Pages Missing?
I know that I should be just be doing it myself rather than talking here, but writing is my one weak point. There are certain ideas and practices of anarchists that mainstream media has stereotyped and misrepresented. It seems an anarchist wikipedia should be one of the places that explains the alternative view on these, however, these areas are lacking or nonexistent. "Vandalism" is two sentences long. Shouldn't this page be explaining various anarchist interpretations (Buildings are vandalism of Nature, all property should be public, etc.)? "Graffiti" doesn't even have a page, and isn't even really touched on on art. Now, vanadalism and graffiti isn't what anarchy is really about, but you know that many people believe thats the definition of anarchism.
Guidelines
I know that this is an anarchist wiki, so "policies" (by which I mean "rules") should be avoided (unless something really clever like the wikipedia "ignore all rules" element is added), but shouldn't this wiki at least have a few guidelines? Something to tell people what to do, how to do it, advice on managing conflict, etc etc etc. Just a suggestion... 82.0.206.215 21:21, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- This has been discussed in the meta:Ideas_for_the_4th_General_Meeting and currently i am copiling the proposal that is accessible if you go to meta:Anarchopedia:Policies. Anarchism doesn't actually means lack of rules, it does mean lack of oppression, so there is nothing wrong with creating rules which stop the oppression of the project by some person or group, you do have a point that the policies will have to be fluid to disallow somebody from gaining an advantage on another person by using legal manoeuvring. ~ User:Beta_M (VolodyA! V Anarhist) 2008 February 20 15:58 (UTC)
Creation of Anarchopedia:Inter-projects
After the discussions of the 4th general meeting, I finally created the page Inter-projects on Meta. All the projects and participating persons are invited to participate to this activity that is about developping more links between projects. - samarre
Uri Gordon
Hi can someone publish this article (everything's locked), I'm from the french encyclopedia and someone did wrote that in english.
Uri Gordon
Uri Gordon (b. 30 Aug 1976) is an Israeli activist and academic. He is the author of Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto Press). While completing his doctoral research in Oxford he organized with community initiatives and anti-capitalist networks including Dissent!, Indymedia and Anarchists Against the Wall. He has also published articles in the journals Anarchist Studies and Refractions. Gordon now teaches environmental politics and ethics at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, which brings together Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian and International students. His research continues to focus on grassroots sustainability, radical peace-making and anarchist politics. He is also active as a facilitator, trainer and translator.
Thanks
Anarchopedia in spanish
hello. since you were successful in keeping neoliberals or as they like to call themselves "anarchocapitalists" out of here, i wondered if you could help us in anarchopedia in spanish since seems these people are already trying to take over ther. in wikipedia in spanish they already almost took over through a user called Nihilo who also is active in wikipedia in english with the name Nihilo 01. In wikipedia in spanish right now theres a big trouble over this and in wikipedia in english hes been already blocked a couple of times for trying to eliminate inclusive democracy from the article anarchist economics. anyway. i wonder if anyone could help us.
- Hi everyone, I'm an administrator of italian anarchopedia, we recently found out what the previous user has already written. Spanish Anarchopedia is ruled by anarchocapitalists! We know this very big problem has been reported by the french anarchopedia and by an user in spa.anarchopedia. I and the others admin in ita.anarchopedia think we all shall unite and raise against those pseudo-anarchists! You can visit us at [2]--Roinmc 18:41, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
- Please visit also here and join in the discussion.Thanks.--Altipiani azionanti 19:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Anarchopedia is becoming authoritarian
Please, completely deregulate Anarchopedia. As an anarchy on the World Wide Web, we should not stop people from making new pages. If you believe the project fundamentally flawed, start a new one. Anarchopedia doesn't claim slips can't happen (or don't). Many criticisms of Wikipedia, generally apply to sites built on the same software and customs.
Anarchists are getting a bad name in Toronto
2010 G-20 Toronto summit, 2010 G-20 Toronto summit protests, and Black Bloc. There was stuff about this "Southern Ontario Anarchists".70.54.181.70 20:12, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
What's the difference between AP and Wikipedia?
70.54.181.70 20:16, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
- All the time I might spend telling you something you can easily see for yourself, I could spend making the distinction more profound. Anarchangel 23:08, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
Should I be private (anonymous-pseudonymous) or public?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this question: for the past several years in fact.
I’m in a unique position, insofar that I have been (in my view) quite inconsequential in life, and relative to my contemporaries—I’m in my mid-40’s—have achieved little—indeed even many of those 20 years younger than I have achieved (at least statistically) more than I.
I’m a high school drop-out, with no significant work history. Not only am I unmarried, I’ve never had sex (at least with a person). I have no photo ID. I haven’t traveled internationally in +25 years, and even then it was only crossing the Canada-US border, never had a drivers licence, and never needed an age of majority card. Though I’m Canadian, I haven’t been to a doctor in +20 years, nor have had a check-up in +25 years.
I have a computer in my bachelor apartment (government housing at that), but I’ve never been on the internet with it—my internet access is wholly by other computers—most of them such as libraries (using no library card either) and employment centres. I haven’t even had a functioning phone in over 4 years, land line in almost 10 years, a landline in my name in almost 15 years.
With very rare exceptions, I’ve never used my name in emails and the like. Indeed, if I sent a regular mail letter, over half the time, I used a pseudonym (one I’ve been using for so many years, if he was a real person, he could not only legally drink in the US , but maybe have gotten a BA. :-). I only googled myself this year, and while my name is somewhat unique to (most) North Americans, I didn’t show up, but strangely 2 others with my first and last name did—both by the way having PhD’s and seemingly well-paying jobs (though I suppose others with our common name, but less eminent than those two, might also no online presence (at least with their real names) due to inconsequentiality).
Again, I feel that I’m in a unique position.
I could be wrong, but if someone did a background check on me, they’d likely find very little.
Given all of this, and a bit more to be mentioned, I have two choices. Either one would involve a cessation of much of this pondering and soul-searching.
Publicity or Privacy.
In the latter, I could create a pseudonymous identity, or more aptly, more identities, and following some protocols (use other internet access; maybe, just maybe, use proxy servers; tell few, if any, online my real identity, or those I know personally about my online identities). I can post all sorts of things to my heart’s desire, and if I get in trouble with such posts, they will, at worse, be removed, and maybe I create a new identity if any one that I’m using becomes unusable.
True, I’ve done this already, but the newer identities would be better organized, coordinated, stable, and longer-termed (at least they are intended as long term).
With some use of anonymous and pseudonymous postings, I have been able to post some outrageous things—though not typical of my postings—with neither police visits, or getting my ass kicked.
I could take the route of anonymity-pseudonymity—at least outside of my employment or whatever-passes-for-business concerns of mine—and even then, I might practice a fair degree of online privacy. While I’m far from an expert on these matters, I have, over the decade, given a few 100’s of hours of thought on how I’d do it. I occasionally flatter myself that I have ideas that even the Mafia or Al Qaeda, if they came across such, would find interesting.
At the very least, there is likely little online about me, that some super computer could cross-reference with any of my varying identities, to create a profile (or significant profile at least) of my real identity.
So in this, I would be a free man of international mystery—or so I flatter myself.
On the other hand, why spend so much time and so much work at maintaining anonymity-psuedonymity? Mark Twain said something like “The nice thing about telling the truth is that you don’t have to remember what you said,†and Sloan sung “It’s a hard life living a lieâ€: though it’s not so that I’d be living a lie, but rather a life of (mostly) online anonymity or pseudonymity; and if all, or pretty well all, know it’s pseudonymous, then it’s not really a lie, as it would be for, say an ID based on a fake name—such as a first and last name randomly taken from the phone book. For example, if I called myself “AceButchChipSpike†most would figure it’s a fake name—so I’m not really deceiving anyone, or at least most. However, if I called myself, say, “Rob Millerâ€, it sounds like a real name, though I simply took Rob Ford’s first name and Dave Miller’s last, combined them, and wa-la, a fake name I can use to deceive.
However, I could forgo the whole (or much of) the anonymity-pseudonymity thing and go public, and if I did, I could get internet access for my apartment. I could start to use my real name and even photos. I could register on Facebook, Yahoo! Answers, Youtube, etc, and truthfully give my name. As much of what I would post, or search, would not be (all that) controversial, I doubt I’d get into much trouble. Much of that which would be controversial would at least be legal, or at least semi-legal. As for a few of the illegal activities (mostly hardcore porn downloads and file sharing—with Stephen Harper as our PM, and Ignatieff as his deferential “Opposition†such could indeed get quite illegal): many do it—possible safety in numbers, there is likely support from a community, I’m not too afraid of talking to police, and maybe, I’d just do those particular things anonymously—though likely saying that I do so in the pages of my public identity (like someone admitting to smoking pot, but not naming their dealer(s) and/or if they grow it); but if the issue is not of legality or insignificance, I’d post it—even if I’d otherwise be shy, embarrassed, or even a little afraid to do so—credibility would demand as much.
Unlike others, I don’t have to be worried (at least as much) about offending people: As I have no wife, children, employer, or co-workers, I’d have no wife, children, employer, or co-workers to worry about offending. Ditto my distant relatives—if they are so offended that they’d never write to me again—and that’s not entirely certain, then so what: in +10 years we’ve exchanged little more than greeting cards (they being perhaps as distant from me personally as they are physically). There’s also the possibility that 1% of my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins might take a great and quick liking to me.
My father’s been dead for over 10 years, my mother’s in a nursing home with possible senile dementia, and I’m estranged from my brother. The church I go to for a weekly meal and food bank purposes know well that I’m a liberal left-wing (somewhat) atheist—and yet we maintain a fair degree of amicability and even respect.
As I live in a big city, in a public housing complex, filled with sad stories, I have little concern about what my neighbours think.
So, in my view, I’m in a wonderful position to start this.
In exchange for being public:
(1) there would be far less energy and time diverted in maintaining anonymity-pseudonymity;
(2) along those lines, I could use just one identity, and fuse some of my older ones.
(3) as well as acquiring opponents, I’d get supporters
(4) less time and energy (and worry) about the relationship between my online and real world contacts
(7) I could use the internet from home. This means I’d have the convenience of 24/7 access in any state I’m in, or weather. It also work well with multi-tasking (such as baking a cake while using the internet, drying off after a shower, watching TV (or listening to it), listening to music out of speakers, doing laundry (the time interval when the machine’s in use, et), while waiting on hold, for a response from the agency that considers my call so important, doing something boring and monotonous while thinking of a good response to post, etc).
As an anonymous-pseudonymous account, I’d have to forgo these. My choices would be limited to:
(a) using a computer at home, but it wouldn’t be connected, and thus my online time (on another computer) would be limited, and spent on fast downloads for latter perusals, or fast uploading content that I hope would be still relevant;
(b) waste lots of time in uni-tasking;
(c) rent another apartment—a bit over $600 a month—in another name, for the sole purpose of anonymous-pseudonymous internet use and multitasking;
(d) or figure out a way of somewhat connecting to the internet from my current apartment where the traffic isn’t associated with my real name or address, or even close to my address (currently I’m thinking very strong wii signals, satellite connections, stringing my own cable from a place at least 300 yards from where I live).
(8) I’d be nice to be able to use email for real life contacts, instead of writing letters, sending packages, and hoping that they would respond the same (though I suppose with so many people getting so many emails, so much spam, and it being deletable, letters and packages would be more noticeable).
(9) By fusing my online identities and aspects of my real life identities, such as me as the person, me as the small businessman, me as the founder (or co-founder) of small organizations, me as the amateur artist and musician, contacts in one of these might be able to help in another.
For instance, 10 applicants are looking for a job. One is less qualified than most of the others, but he manages to get into a chat with the employer about their mutual love of soccer. Guess who gets hired. He has his own website with links to profile pages. Women online find a page of his while googling. They then check out his site and profiles on other sites. For a split second, some think of a sexual relationship with him. Most are disgusted at the thought—a few even retch. More still aren’t as visceral, but still figure it’s undesirable. But a few might like the idea. No lies, little time wasted.
(10) I could join varying sites that require to members to give names and the like. True, I could lie for such membership already, but I like to be a truthful as possible—either give them the info or not join (or come up with a justification for lying that was based on several 10’s of hours soul-searching, perusing the Terms of Service/Use, or if the entity really ‘’deserves’’ my truth).
(11) Travel and access the sites I currently access. So even if there was a way that I’d be making a trail insofar that a super-computer could cross-reference the places where my pages were access and perhaps modified, and then to my entry and exits of a country, it wouldn’t matter.
My questions here are
(1) Do I have a good assessment of the situation?
(2) What course would you advise—particularly given that there is on one hand, little on the internet about me—at least my real name; while on the other, no one close to me would be terribly offended by my posts if I started to generate content on the internet that would be associated with me, and some which would be controversial.
(3) Points, tips, and insights?
(4) Anybody who was in my situation, or something like it, who made a choice, and if so, what was it, and how did it turn out?
(5) Are things revocable? For instance, while people may be haunted by stuff they post, there may be, if you will, an evanescence (it ain’t just the name of a band ïŠ) of memory—or at least its relevance.
For instance, if there are, say, 10 billion security cameras, each with over, say, 6 000 hours of video a year, for a creation of, say, 60 trillion hours of video, how many full time employees would it require to monitor and analyze the contents for criminals, perverts, or those engaged in un-patriotic and/or counter-revolutionary (or those considered to be) activities?
The way I figure it, if computers could squish it 1 000 fold, it’d still be 60 billion hours. Pay them $10/hr, and it’d be $0.6 trillion. If each monitor worked 2 000 hours a year, you’d need 30 million of them. If as little as 1% of them were corrupt, it’d be 300 000 of them.
Mind you, analyses of text would likely be quicker—I suppose.
Would the DEA be interested that I smoked marijuana 26 years ago.
Once “outted†could I go back into the closet? (No, I’m not gay, but arguably as perverted as one—at least a contemporary of mine, such as Sarah Palin, might think so :-)
Thank you for any help and comments, and for reading this long post.
To increase my chances at good responses, I’ve posted the same question in a few other places. Wikipedia's Reference Desk,
RationalWiki's Saloon Bar and
Libertapedia. As per the protocols for cross-posting, the posting in the Wikipedia Reference desk will be the main posting, though I will, of course, read and consider all. If there are objections to my cross-posting, please let me know.
70.54.181.70 20:17, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
User Block request for Advertising Bot
Special:Contributions/79.142.67.120 is a spam bot for some online pharmaceutical outlet. Please block, and investigate the IP. It may well already be policy to do so, but I would block the source as well if it could be determined it was a commercial source and not a shared one such as an educational facility or a cyber cafe. Anarchangel 23:08, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
- Also Special:Contributions/59.57.14.91 , who has made in total, 14 edits to 3 articles, all of them advertising spam. The content is not the issue with this editor, as they always delete their previous edit content, it is the spamming of the edit history, which ends up consuming a great deal of bytes itself (See Wikipedia:User:Anarchangel#How many bytes does an edit take up?) Anarchangel 22:49, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
Viaduct not Veritas
My new soundbite slogan for what Categories could be, on AP. On WP everyone gets het up about labelling something with a Category, because it is supposed to be Truth that that Category Is That Article. You will pardon my rhetorical use of capitals; I don't have anything against declaring something to be Truth, unless it gets in the way of the usefulness of something. What else would we be doing on this mudball if not looking, in one way or another, for Truth and Goodness, but dodging other people's hapless or twisted definitions of those. Categories are incredibly useful at linking to not just one article, but masses of articles. They are an intuitive and fast Navigation tool if they are inclusive. That is to say, Propaganda of the Deed links to Category:Terrorism, even tho' it is not terrorism, because it is thought by some that it is, whence one can find Security services using membership in Tablighi Jamaat as a rationale for anti-terrorist action, with the category Religion, which leads to Discordianism, which is categorized as both a Religion and a Fictional religion. In other words, one can surf, and potentially see more articles with each click than is practical to include in any See Also section.
So Categories are navigational tools, thus Viaduct, Latin for 'via' for road and 'ducere' to lead something, and not (necessarily) Veritas, Truth. Pretty slick, eh? Anarchangel 01:47, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Solved
I just figured out the way to get around the blocking IPs problem (internet cafes and school computers, etc). If the IP is blocked, but not registered users using that IP, then it at least slows that IP down from just spamming bad edits, because they would have to create users again and again. Bona fide users using that same IP, who are not in any danger of being blocked on the basis of their edits, would be able to create a user name and edit ad infinitum. Anarchangel 15:58, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
My religion
Can I create an article here about my religion. Or would that not be allowed? I don't want to do anything which violates this place's community norms, which is why I am enquiring before-hand. I don't suppose it has anything particularly to do with anarchism - on the other hand, I would have thought that anarchists being tolerant of a variety of viewpoints, they would be accepting of articles in an "Anarchopedia" on non-mainstream viewpoints. (Unlike Wikipedia, where everyone would scream "not notable!" and delete it straight away.) --Maratrean 10:08, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
- I'd sort of rather you didn't, but I don't suppose I would stop you, either. I am envious of the chemicals in your brain; religious conversion is said to be quite an experience. I doubt very much whether you can inspire such a transformation in others, especially with a wiki page, and there is no telling what the other users here think about the whole thing. We tend to be skeptics and/or already believe in something. Anyways, merry meet merry part. Anarchangel 03:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Try this LGBT-positive group. ;-) 205.189.194.208 17:54, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- Here is a photo if their Clitoraid event. ;-) 205.189.194.208 18:12, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
- Try this LGBT-positive group. ;-) 205.189.194.208 17:54, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Can one defend anarcho-capitalism in Anarchopedia?
Granted, from pages such as Talk:Anarcho-Capitalism and An Anarchist FAQ - Is "anarcho"-capitalism a type of anarchism?, I take it that most people here and likely the administrator(s) aren't exactly enamoured with the idea of anarcho-capitalism. But can one support it critically and in edits? I'm not talking about insisting on an A-C POV article here, but would defending it be barred? I believe that I read somewhere that defending A-C here isn't allowed. I mean it's one thing to bash A-C here--Conservapedia bashes liberals with articles such as "Liberal denial" (to be fair they are a bit nicer to you guys Anarchopedia), but when liberals try to defend themselves, they get blocked. (Newcomer's Guide).
Views would be appreciate. Thanks. :-) 206.130.174.29 19:38, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
- I'm sure you shouldn't write anti-libertarian socialist statements. --XXPowerMexicoXx 18:23, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
- Which conversely sounds like one should have only NPOV or pro-"libertarian socialist" statements. Hmmmm. Does this mean that only explicitly anti-LS statements are out i.e. "they're a buncha idiots," or statements which could be construed as anti-LS. "A-C's positions are contrary to what is considered to be LS'ism insofar that they defend A, B, and C, while LS'ist oppose such. However, A-C's defend A, B, and C for the following reasons. They are..." . Would such, ie the latter, be permitted?205.189.194.208 23:05, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
- Here's Wikinfo's view. ;-) 205.189.194.208 23:18, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
- Which conversely sounds like one should have only NPOV or pro-"libertarian socialist" statements. Hmmmm. Does this mean that only explicitly anti-LS statements are out i.e. "they're a buncha idiots," or statements which could be construed as anti-LS. "A-C's positions are contrary to what is considered to be LS'ism insofar that they defend A, B, and C, while LS'ist oppose such. However, A-C's defend A, B, and C for the following reasons. They are..." . Would such, ie the latter, be permitted?205.189.194.208 23:05, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
The caterpillar
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