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Give the ability to be anonymous OR remove the karma feature from threads

Last posted Mar 14, 2016 at 02:25AM EDT. Added Mar 14, 2016 at 01:42AM EDT
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I can lay out this concept real simple for you guys. I get we want a closely knit community, we want to know what we think, we want to convey how we feel about certain statements with our karma. For these reasons, we presently do NOT anonymize users and do NOT lack a karma system.

Now I want this thread to ignore whether or not the coder of KYM can do what I am about to propose, though I do believe what I am proposing is decently within the reasonable boundaries of what a coder should be able to do. James himself can respond to end all doubts if he truly cares. Or was it Brad? I forget the site coder's name ANYWAY-

Have a feature to anonymize all the users in a thread at the thread creator's discretion. This would in my mind mean labeling every user 'Anonymous' and replacing all the icons with a black square with a white question mark on it, within said thread. Points to anyone who photoshops that for me below but you can probably imagine p well in your heads. The obvious value of this is for instance, questionable sites like 4chan pride themselves on user anonymity that way users can say what they really want to; not what will keep their reputation solid and keep them from being judged for their comments because of their who they are. Being able to be anonymous here and there would be a nice feature to have for threads. Another way to perhaps apply this feature would be to have a 'post anonymously' feature where you could opt to post something without your username or icon being shown, that way if you got good or bad karma or got hate or love in replies for the post, you would at least know it is not targeting you as a user. I am sure many of you have at one time or another wished the site was for a brief moment a bit more like 4chan so you didn't have to worry about people hating you for thinking a certain way and could still speak your beliefs.

Have a feature to remove karma from a thread at the thread creator's discretion. This would look exactly the same as a normal thread but without any karma-related points or icons being displayed. The value of this would be people would be posting within the thread their thoughts not based upon whether or not they are going to get the quick and easy karma points. This feature would allow for a safe haven to post without fear of the karma-market crashing down around you for wanting to say something honestly you know will get you a lot of negative karma otherwise. I'm sure many of you have run into at one time or another such a scenario and wished you did not have to suddenly get a negative karma bomb for the honesty you were about to convey.

To ensure moderators keep the user anonymous without letting them break rules, they can simply send a warning to the anonymous user and the code of the site would automatically know who posted the anonymous message and then send the warning to said anonymous user. The added bonus to this would be a user whom received a warning while posting anonymously would likely not feel singled out by moderators for being a specific user they dislike, if such a worry existed in said paranoid user's mind.

The main downsides to this concept I believe are: without karma posters may be inclined to not desire to post in a thread, with anonymity posters may be annoyed they cannot blame a user they know and will thus feel the thread is not a true social experience, and the obvious issue: CAN THE CODER EVEN MAKE THAT -I have faith in our coder's abilities to the extent that yes, I believe he can. But that's just a guess.

So what do you guys like and/or dislike about this?

@ Anonymizying (is that even a word?) users:

We've seen what happens on 4chan and other sites what happens when users become anonymous. Doesn't seem like it could end well. And before you say "but warnings":

Your solution completely misses the point of warnings. Warnings are a way of easily keeping track of a user's history of breaking the rules. If, lets say, one user was very aggressive several times, got 1-3 warnings for it (depending on severity and length of time between them), then they get a suspension if they do it again. In this case, a user could have 3 warnings in a short period of time (the most patient any mod will be before suspending) and then be very aggressive on an anonymous thread. They get a warning, but that's not how it works – they're supposed to get a suspension.

Now here's where it gets ridiculous. All mods can see all the warnings in a handy little area dedicated to it. Thus, this system would mean that a mod would have to warn a anonymous user, go to the warnings, find the user, and then check his warnings already to see if they need to remove that warning and then suspend him. That seems a little redundant, overly complicated, and stupidly long for something that's a base practice in moderation – punishing people who break the rules several times harder than people who broke the rules.

I get it, Wyn, you feel singled out, and to be fair, you kinda are, among many. However, this doesn't mean that an overly convoluted system should be implemented which would, in the end, have a similar effects for the vast majority of users and make a moderator's job unintuitively more complicated.


@ Karma comments

Karma sucks as is. Most people agree on this. TBH, I think allowing a user to disable karma in their threads is kinda like putting a band-aid over something that needs stitches.

There's a reason 4chan's anonymous system is a brewing ground to some of the worst hate out there.

We're not 4chan. People don't use this site because they want 4chan. People use 4chan when they want 4chan, and KYM when KYM.


Now I want this thread to ignore whether or not the coder of KYM can do what I am about to propose, though I do believe what I am proposing is decently within the reasonable boundaries of what a coder should be able to do. James himself can respond to end all doubts if he truly cares. Or was it Brad? I forget the site coder’s name ANYWAY-

Doesn't need to be ignored or considered when it's not gonna happen.

Skeletor-sm

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