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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?
