From: Alfred Huger (ah@securityfocus.com)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 13:51:16 EDT
On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Stan Hanks wrote:
> Maybe a good middle ground is to allow semi-anonymous "'nyms" for people,
> but require that they use the same one, rather than using random different
> ones. And to prove to you, somehow, that there's a real human being behind
> "hackmaster153@hotmail.com"....
>
This speaks to the central issue of concern for me. Accountability. There
are two sets of concerns here that need to be taken into account. One is
obviously those concerns held by the poster but the other side of the coin
is the vendor or author of the software in question. Posting not only
affects the poster but it also affects the other party and in some cases
that affect can be dramatic.
So while I need to balance the needs of the poster I cant forget that
someone on the other side is being impacted at the same time. I know from
experience that having an anonymous party review your product can be
harmful to sales. Also from experience Ive seen this all too often abused
by people with an axe to grind or with a commercial agenda. People seem to
think that their anonymity should be guaranteed to them by some unwritten
rule of the Internet. I think there is merit in that, for some things. But
I do think its situational and you need to be accountable for your actions
when affecting the livelihood of others. I like the idea of rating the
credibility of posters (although I imagine setting criteria will be
thorny) but I still am leery about purely anonymous posters.
-al
Alfred Huger
Symantec Corp.
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