The Axioms of Online Discussion

The storm over Ed Whelan's outing of publius has moved into the cleanup phase.

---

Actually, you *are that* bad, mr. moto. But I am responding to you not for your benefit, but because a lot of new people are visiting, and it's clear you are not alone in your ignorance and confusion.

This whole blowup arose because Ed Whelan, a pro blogger, was just as ignorant of the rules of online communication as mr. moto is. Not just the rules, the *axioms* -- the principles that were worked out back in the Usenet days, before the WWW even existed.

1. No plagiarism
2. No outing
3. No sockpuppets
4. No obtaining material benefits (money, computers, lip gloss[1]) by fraud
5. No stalking
6. No deliberate spread of malicious software or links

I think that's it.

These aren't really rules of netiquette, these are the *premises*, the axioms which online communication has been found to require. These axioms aren't about politeness, they're about making communication *possible*.

This is why bloggers both left & right joined in condemning Whelan's behavior -- it wasn't that he was "too mean", it was that he broke an axiom. It was and is shocking that someone could be a paid blogger without keeping to these axioms reflexively.

And this is why mr. moto is wrong. publius' remarks might possibly have risen to the level of "flaming", though I personally would call it at most a slight scorching. But outing is not proportional retaliation, it is *breaking the whole system*, it's taking the conflict to a radically different level.

I'm not going to go into the rationale behind each of the axioms, because that would take too long -- can anyone recommend a good link? But as with any educational process, you obey the rules first, then study why we have them.

[1]Based on an actual event, I'm not kidding

Pseuds vs anons

At Rod Dreher's:

---

I second Ruth's emphasis on the crucial difference between anonymity and pseudonymity. I am frankly astonished by how many bloggers -- especially though by no means only on the right -- cannot seem to recognize that they are two different things. I find the number of anonymous/pseudonymous commenters who say they'd never read a pseudonymous blogger *hilarious*.

I've put up a description of actual anonymous blogging here. No such thing is occurring in the political blogosphere, so I cannot fathom why you-all don't seem to be able to keep your terms straight.

---

no one else is under any moral or ethical obligation to respect that pseudonymity.

It is standard netiquette -- good online manners -- to not "out" people's pseuds. One reason for this is because pseuds are the default online. Categories of people who would be prudent to use pseuds include:

1. women

2. anyone under 25

3. anyone working as a teacher who is not a tenured college professor

4. anyone who doesn't always agree with their boss

5. anyone who doesn't always agree with their clients or customers

6. anyone who doesn't always agree with their mother or father

7. anyone who is not straight

8. anyone who is divorced

9. anyone who wants to blog about personal issues

In other words, *most people*.

Saying that people "should" blog under their RL name or that it's "best" to do so is tantamount to saying, only powerful men have the right to discuss things.

Even if there were no other good reasons to respect pseuds, there's a good conservative reason: respect is the community standard. That's why so many bloggers on both right and left have joined in condemning Whelan -- so that everyone knows that there *is* a community standard.

---

At The Volokh conspiracy:

---

Count me among those befuddled by the apparent widespread confusion between "pseudonymity" and "anonymity". I am extra-befuddled by Mr. Volokh's conflation of the two, given Jonathan Alter's post here yesterday discussing their crucial differences. As he said, A pseudonym operates like a brand name, and the value of the brand is, at least in part, a function of how the pseudonymous blogger acts over time.

Actual anonymous blogging is extremely rare -- I describe one example here, mostly to illustrate how nothing current in the political blogosphere qualifies. Why, then, are so many people who are otherwise careful with language saying publius was blogging "anonymously"?

---

At Riehl World View:

---

Riehl, I am baffled by your conflation of "anonymous" and "pseudonymous", a confusion that appears to be widespread. Do you honestly not see that they are not the same thing? You aren't anonymous at all, you have a consistent pseud, just as the Federalist Papers' "publius" or "George Eliot" or "Mark Twain" did. The fact that it may be tricky to get from "Riehl" to your physical address doesn't prevent you from accumulating a reputation and building up "trust networks" with other people.

I've posted about what actual anonymous blogging looks like here:[]. What you (and publius, and most of your commenters) are doing is not what I'd call anonymous at all -- what makes you say it is?

---

I see now that I was confused -- "Dan Riehl" is not a pseud, but a RL name. My question remains, though: why are you referring to "pseudonymous" as "anonymous"? Do you truly think they are the same thing?

---

I see no practical difference in this and most cases in which a blogger chooses to remain anonymous by using a pseud

A pseud is neither anonymous nor Anonymous
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)
so I actually don't know what you mean by "remain anonymous by using a pseud".

Pseuds are social identities that can gather reputation and trust. Anyone who has to detach from a pseud has to lose the trust and reputation that identity has collected. When I say this is "not anonymity" I'm not just arguing semantics, I'm saying they function in different ways.

I believe blogging under one's real name is best
-- from this it follows that the "best" blogging is that which is detached and impersonal. Blogging about one's child-rearing experiences, for instance, by your standards cannot be the "best" blogging, because it is usually unwise to blog about one's children under a real name.

---

At The American Scene:

---

I’m asking this all over, because I am baffled. You seem to be using “anonymous” to mean “pseudonymous”, though they are two very different things, especially online. The link in my sig is to a post I made about what (rare) truly anonymous blogging looks like. What we are talking about is *pseudonymity*, a consistent internet identity. Do you not know the
difference, or do you not think it matters — and if so, why not?

---

If we were to do a complete cost/benefit analysis of the effects of pseudonymous blogging over the past decade, I have no doubt that the result has been mostly negative (the blogosphere would be a more civil place without it).

What is certainly true is that many, many fewer people would be able to blog or comment if they always had to use their RL names. As Tony rightly pointed out above, most women (for instance) would be imprudent to do so. For the majority of people (who are mostly *not* financially and personally secure men, accountable to no-one) blogging under one's RL name would be a dangerous luxury -- your standard would make a desert and call it peace.

Outing publius

The National Review's Ed Whelan, scumbucket, outed one of the Obsidian Wings bloggers.

---

Humans, why must you FAIL so hard?

I find the objections to pseudonymous blogging from flagrant pseuds hilarious, and will only address them by pointing and laughing.

I have encountered a number of people who use only RL names online and are uncomfortable with people who use pseuds, but this attitude is baffling to me. Pseuds have an extremely long history for fiction writers and political writers, and I see no reason the "nom de net" shouldn't be accepted seemlessly in those fields.

More generally, objecting to pseuds puts you on the losing side of a generation gap. As my children grew up and started going online, I carefully instructed them in the construction of suitable pseuds and in basic techniques of internet compartmentization. For young people in general and women in particular, pseudonymity online is a matter of basic security. Objecting to it marks you as a clueless fogey, or at least as highly privileged.

In another decade, it's possible that the "presumption of online pseud protection" will become a legal principle, as it already is within the "old-growth" parts of the Internet. I do not think we're there yet, and I don't think any suit by publius would have a legal leg to stand on.

---

Thanks for the explanation, Slart. I now see what you mean.

I continue to be baffled by the number of people referring to "anonymous bloggers" -- especially while using a pseudonym (LOLZ). *No-one* here is blogging anonymously, we are mostly using *pseudonyms*, which is (a) completely different and (b) part of a very, very old tradition in both politics and fiction.

Here's what an actual experiment in anonymous blogging looked like [details redacted]: a group of several hundred people with a common interest formed a community in which *every member* had admin privileges. Both posts and comments were unsigned and IP addresses were unlogged, so there was no way to connect comments and posts to each other.

I was told that the advantage was:

Because it is detached from our named selves, it allows for fluidity of identity, I think. I can be the person leaving an idiotic comment and the person chiming in against them, and then also someone taking up that comment and rehashing it further in the discussion, all while still supporting an environment where everyone is instantly comfortable with each other.

In the event, as might have been predicted, one member of the community got angry and used hir admin privileges to delete *everything*, and there was much unhappiness. What was truly surprising was that this took *3 years* (a generation in Internet time), so it probably qualified as a remarkably successful experiment.

The point of this story is to make it perfectly clear that we in the political blogosphere are *not* talking about anonymous blogging.

I will assume that anyone who persistently uses the term "anonymous" to describe pseudonymity is part of the problem. That is, people like *you* are the reason fiction and politics have a long tradition of pseuds, of which the nom de net is just the most recent version.