Anon shitposting is used to fan the flames of arguments between normal posters, prolonging nasty arguments between normal posters (e.g. you can see that the latest mfx/otp beef has been embellished and enhanced with some strategically applied anonery, giving the whole thing more oxygen.)

The other use for anon posting is spam.

The actual, valid anon posts that are not shitposts or spam are so rare that I don't think there can be any defence of the anon posting feature. It has been suggested by myself and others that perhaps allowing anon posting only in GA would quarantine the problem to that one thread, whilst also preserving an outlet for the 0.000001% of anon posting cases where an anon who is not a spammer or a shitposter has to post something really important otherwise the world will literally explode or whatever.

I'm not trying to make func suddenly incredibly active again, that's for a totally different discussion and it's not the purpose of this idea -I'm just saying here's a really simple way to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

#TF is also for serious mapping chat with some great discussions about the subject and various mapping help / promotion sub-forums.

Yes I agree shums, sorry if it looked like I was saying otherwise. 

I am saying that the problem is on the signal, there is not enough, and the discussion about improving the place is getting distracted with a part of the noise.

On the noise, while i think the otp/mfx thing was done mainly between them, there was more than enough support to it through members to not blame its continuity on anons, even less counting that there was at least two decent anons, from memory, on that part. More importantly, the ball is always on our side for falling to not follow the basic Internet rule of not feed the troll, be it anon or not. 

Cocerello, is there a significant benefit of anon posting that needs to be protected?

It's true that we _could_ worry about human nature and training everyone around here to be better internet citizens. While that's going on, can we also just disable anon posting? 

Exactly.

I try not to spend too much time thinking about grand long-term projects to evolve func into a popular, vibrant forum where everyone is nice to each other, living in harmony with the anon spammers and shitposters who for some reason are still allowed to post.

I prefer just to point out what I call "simple no-brainers" that would probably take a very small amount of time/work to fix and would have an obvious positive effect. 

Fuck that noise. Anon posting needs to go. 

It is about putting the food where the mouth is, while what i said could sound like what you both say, it is not going in that direction. Not openly supporting ourselves member flaming and trolling would do wonders, no need to educate people or even be nice.

@Johnny Law, i could return it to you in the same way. Is anon posting so bad that it needs to be the first priority for making the site better? Focusing on anon is wasting the time.

Using Kinn's example on otp/mfx: that was around 60 posts, and even if i count the deleted posts, it is less than 10 anon posts, and we need to count there was a few posts by good anons. So, where was the reason that it lasted so long? On a few anon posts or on the other few dozens of posts supporting/trolling/flaming on it? And most cases here are the same. Anon posting is a very small part of the site

There was people with more good reasons for leaving anon posting like it is on previous discussions, so i will not copy them. 

I'd like to debunk all of them again. 

There is one and only one valid reason for anonery. You're posting from a different PC or device and you don't have your login details.

But in reality this accounts for such a miniscule % of anon posts, that it's ludicrous to let in all the spam and shitposting just to pander to this one case. Besides, allowing anons in GA only would solve the problem where you don't have your login but have to say something REALLY IMPORTANT LIVES ARE AT STAKE OH MY GOD. 

Or perhaps the one thread where we allow anons should be the beef thread. That would stop GA from just becoming the focal point of all the drivel, whilst having no real impact on the beef thread - it's already a pretty spicy thread. 

Rename the beef thread "Beef / Drunk / Anonymous". Stop anon posting in all but this one. Sticky it, move on, and everyone can ignore it at their leisure.

...

and make it so spy can only post in that one. 

 

I do not see what that will change, if previous times this discussion popped-up none was able to do that. It will be a waste of time, like all the previous save the first. 

I think anon spam (e.g. ads for Delhi escorts) is a UX issue. We have a system to flag the posts, moderators get to it fairly quickly, but right now the flagged posts are not fully invisible to users. E.g. the "new x" count still includes them.

Shitposting seems to not be limited to anons -- I feel like I see more flamey, or spammy, stuff from registered users. Are you guys saying that these registered users are provoked by anons and wouldn't do it otherwise?

Probably the solution to registered shitposting is clearer guidelines and moderator tools to flag bad posts (i mean, we can flag them as spam right now, but might be better to have some clear guidelines to back up why we are flagging them.)

I could also imagine automatic temp bans for people or IP addresses that post too much of if any of their recent posts get flagged, this would automatically lift after X hours. 

Sow hole I agree it won‘t solve the problem of shitposting and flaming entirely, it would help and there‘s no reason not to do it. 

I'd vastly prefer it if there was a system to stop the spam posts before they even appear. Like not allowing them (anon posts) at all. 

I know people say that it's easy to make an account, but there are a lot of messageboards where I didn't consider that worth it to register just to post one reply on a thread that I found from a google search, so I didn't post whatever bit of info I might have been able to offer that community.

Even boards where I lurk I often don't bother making an account, I don't want to have to keep track of another login/password for another site that might not be that important in my life. For a long time i didn't post on I3D because of that. I finally made an account, after a year or two. 

...the latest amount of posts, ummm... 

anyway, seems like a pretty unanimous voice telling me people don't think it's worth all this spam just to let some people post anonymously, so I will look into restricting anonymous posts, maybe to a few threads like suggested above.

However, i did some database queries tonight to get real numbers about the problem, just for future reference:

Out of 2874 total posts from january 1 2019 to today:
230 anonymous spam posts
415 anonymous non-spam posts
97 registered user spam posts
2132 registered user non-spam posts

This means:
70% of all spam posts come from anons (30% from registered users)
16% of all non-spam posts comes from anons (84% from registered users)

36% of all posts from anons are spam posts (64% are not spam)
4% of all posts from registered users are spam posts (96% are not spam)
11% of all posts are spam

So, by blocking anons, we would reduce spam by 70%, and reduce regular activity by 16% -- assuming those people don't create accounts as a result of this change. Some of them probably will.

Also: spam accounts are a thing.

There are 1508 registered users, 80 of them are spammer accounts, or 5%. These are accounts that have been manually flagged by me due to their posting activity being all spam. When I flag them it bans them from posting and they disappear from the "people" page. Problem solved.

But there are also accounts that have never posted and never logged in again, but have a URL. Some of these are probably spam URLs. There are about 200 of these. I don't have a good system for dealing with these because I don't notice them unless I really dig. They also don't annoy users that much so, not as big a problem. 

Well, I've just been silently following the conversation, and I'm in favour of anon posting, due to my history at func.

Of course, it's easy for me to say, since I don't have to moderate the spam, but I started posting here through anon posting, and when I realized I have more here to say than just one or two initial posts, I decided to register. I don't know if I would've registered if it weren't for anon posting, which certainly lowered the bar to register eventually.

So I'm a living example of a (probably rare) case that I think was mentioned during the conversation at one point. So make what you will of that. 

I think that may be one of the reasons I haven't joined the Discord channels either.

Well, the primary reason probably is, because I don't really like online real-time discussion that much, like chats, let alone via voice. I prefer forum-like discussion, where it's less hectic and you have more time to think about what you write.

But the other reason, which is more related to the current topic, is that there's not a public viewing possibility, let alone posting possibility, in the Discord channels without signing up first. 

415 anonymous non-spam posts

Can we get a statistic saying how many of those 415 were actually useful posts, and how many were inflammatory shitposts from a handful of people with a long-time grudge against func? 

you can check in the previous discussions about this topic.

Simply the people in favor have long grown tired of it, turned into lurkers or have been kicked out by the toxic atmosphere.

@onetruepurple That depends on the point of view of each: for example the people that are stoned because not adhering to the current beliefs of the loud parts of Func are being seen by many as spammers or trolls. 

going back to publish the IP but let non registered still post? We had not even half the complainers about anon back then. 

for example the people that are stoned because not adhering to the current beliefs of the loud parts of Func are being seen by many as spammers or trolls.

Examples? 

"Can we get a statistic saying how many of those 415 were actually useful posts, and how many were inflammatory shitposts from a handful of people with a long-time grudge against func? "

And yeah, one might argue that there are some inflammatory shitposts from registered users - 95% of which are from spy of course - BUT as discussed before, registered beefers are accountable and can have their posts put into context, anon trolls can't.

So the stats say that removing anon posting will remove 70% of the spam. Great. Do it. Will be refreshing to come onto func, see some new posts, and not have to mark the whole fucking lot as spam.