Amazulu

Except for a few exceptions (Whirlpool springs to mind), Forums have withered in the face of the social media juggernaut. On Facebook alone, there are more migration groups than you can shake a stick at. Social media is changing - like it or not - how we interact with each other and old tech like forums are paying the price

cresta57

I agree, fb has monopolized most groups/forums. I do like the BE concept but fb groups seem to be plentiful.
I'm over your side of the continent at the moment visiting my son. Went to the aquarium in Hillary's yesterday and am currently sitting in Chipmonks entertaining 4 kids under 7. If only they sold Guinness and Valium cocktails I'd be happy.

Jerseygirl

I assure you fake ids are certainly not allowed, mods included. If mods detect anyone with more than one username, the new account is deleted.

Gordon Barlow

Well, no disrespect, but if "Jersey Girl" isn't a fake identity, what is it? I don't imagine it's the name on your driving licence.

Jerseygirl

Ah I see what you mean. IMO anyone revealing their real name needs their head examining.

Dreamy

Why on earth do you think that moderators should post under their actual name?

Gordon Barlow

If they want to be free to bad-mouth others on the threads, yes. But this thread is exploring why The Barbie went to the dogs, and one poster blamed the decline on too much back-biting. Now, nothing encourages back-biting and insults like the guarantee of anonymity - and we see that on a great many BE threads. Would the foul-mouthed yobs and "too-rights" be as bold if they signed their own names? Almost certainly not. So one of the things the mods could do to revive the fortunes of The Barbie is to discourage anonymity. That especially applies to the mods, whose exalted office requires them to chastise us peasants. For them to hide behind aliases is not really kosher, in my book. It's just too scaredy-cat by half.

I have examined my head, and I approve of that message.

Dreamy

Back in the olde days when an ISP provided your portal to the dark, dastardly world of the WWW, I frequented AOL message boards. On AOL, your screen name was also your email address. Back then (I dunno, perhaps around 2000), no one really understood the ramifications of giving too much personal information online. One female member used her real name to post and wouldn't heed any advice to change it. Another member, to demonstrate the inherent dangers, was able to use that and the details she revealed about herself and her family, to send her (via personal message!!) her address, date of birth, full names and dates of birth of her children, the school they attended, the postal address of her workplace, and telephone numbers of all. Her name was changed straightaway.

That was back at the turn of the century!! God knows what someone intent on harm could achieve today. I'll keep my Dreaminess, thank you very much.

ozzieeagle

Thats actually a good point Gordon, I can see where you are coming from, if it's good enough for people to be themselves, "For the most part" on Facebook, why not even more so on a Forum. Never thought about it before until you raised it. Forums of course have always been mostly anonymous. I just accepted it back in 1999 when I first joined them without giving it much thought.

So why are people themselves on Facebook and not on forums, the ignore function works on here as well as does blocking of PM's etc.

Must mean people act differently on Forums to Facebook eh Probably that anonamity is one of the reasons why things get more heated on forums at times as well.


I doubt it would make a difference if Mods suddenly revealed themselves though, so it's probably a moot point.

carcajou

Once again, excellent food for thought from Gordon.

The other thing anonymity causes, is it becomes difficult to assign people credibility. We are fortunate in this forum to have senior managers and people who have doctorates in their field commenting on matters in their field, but they often get challenged and argued with - aggressively so - by people outside those fields or whose knowledge is limited to something they saw on TV a week ago. It can be hard to tell the difference unless you also are in that field. The same thing happens with people who have lived in Country X for 15 years vs people who took a week's holiday there or glanced through the Lonely Planet book. In my view, anonymity adds a lot of fuel to those food fights. In recent years - lacking other ways - posters have been assigning credibility based on political viewpoints and that doesn't help either.

Gordon Barlow

Someone intent on harm to strangers, these days, would probably harass random names in the International White Pages. Check those out some time, for a collection of vulnerable names! I really can't see too many fake Nigerian princes perusing the pages of BE for victims of their scams; what do you reckon?

As for the moderators, my concern is censorship. I strongly dislike censorship of any sort, and especially when the censors hide their identities. Mods have the power to remove words from posts and indeed to remove whole posts without justifying their actions, and they exercise that power with minimal restraint or oversight, as far as we can tell. I realise BE never set out to be a beacon of free speech, and has no overt commitment to it, and it has its hallowed tradition of all-powerful and anonymous moddies. Nevertheless... Nevertheless...

Pollyana

Its not censorship. Its common sense.
Me personally - believe it or not I am a fairly private person. I have privacy controls in place on facebook to protect myself, my family and my friends. If I had to use my real name on here, which is the open internet, accessible by every weirdo and ex-husband on the planet, I would never ever have joined. I post a lot about disasters and severe weather events; I post carefully as it would not take much searching to link me to my workplace, but that small step of anonymity is what enables me topost such info.

Speaking for others - here are some examples from my mod days:
poster wants info on divorce,clearly does not want husband to be able to track them via google
poster wishes to get opinions on suburbs in a different Aussie city but does not want RL friends to know they may move so cannot use facebook for it
poster wants info on tricky medical/character issues for visa (nothing illegal) - posting under their real name makes it instantly visible to case officers (who definitely do browse the forums)
poster wants to let off steam about visiting relatives
poster wants to scream about their life in general
poster wishes to suss out opinion on prospective new employer
poster wants to let off steam about current employer
poster just wants to reach out to people for support but doesn't want to reveal their name because they are ashamed, shy,whatever

Now you have read the Barbie enough over the years Gordon to know that it is crammed full of people in those categories. People who do not want to use their real names for whatever reason. And why should they? One of the things that I dislike about Aus is the fact that everyone thinks they have the right to know your business. Being able to let off steam and know that you are able to post freely while only revealing your true identity when you wish, to who you wish. Many people over the years have said that a reason for using BE was because they did not have to use their names. Other forums are the same, do a bt of browsing and you wil find many other forums where anonymity works as well as it does here.
And Mods have just as much right to anonymity as posters; they still post their own stuff, as well as moderating.

A final, genuine, example of why anonymity is good. A few years back I was part of a large group of BE posters who met regularly in real life. They all knew I was a Mod but they respected the idea that BE was a separate life and forum issues did not spill over into the real world. All except one. He made a pain of himself on the forum in general, he used to abuse posters, post bad language, break every rule going. With my mods hat on, and after consulting the (then) Admin, I banned him. I had to for the sake of the forum. Instantly he turned from friend to foe and sent my personal mobile a string of abuse, Abuse which continued in person. Now if someone claiming they were a friend can do tht, imagine how much worse it could get,especially these days, when its easier to find family etc.

Remove anonymity and I am first out the door, for good this time, and will advise others to follow. That really would be the death knell of the Aus forum.

Amazulu

Not knowing what Chipmunks is I just had a Google - thank f**K I'm done with those places!

I've been on here since 2003 (!) - a time way before smartphones, tablets and social media. Forums were one of the main ways to interact online - and despite a few tweaks over the years, BE today is basically as it was then. Now, there are a huge variety of ways to interact and disseminate information - too many IMO. To think that BE could stay the same and prosper and grow in the face of this reality is insane. BE is clunky compared to FB and Twitter. It's a pain to post pictures and videos on here - not so on Instagram - the complete opposite in fact. etc

There it is basically

moneypenny20

I can quite honestly say it never ever occurred to me back in 2004 when I registered with BE to use my real name. Am I a dubious character because Moneypenny20 isn't on my birth certificate or driving licence? Of course not.

Just because some people chose to use a real name (whether theirs or not) doesn't make them more honest, what complete bull.

People's usernames has diddly squat to do with how a forum operates unless it's for the better, allowing people the freedom to say what they need to without some psycho searching them out in real life.

Gordon Barlow

Ah well, I'm not going to argue with an aggressive Super Moderator with discretionary power to censor me for not toeing the official line. Not worth it. Good luck with the thread.