Want to chill debate? Just threaten to put a picture of someone’s house on your site. This is my last comment.

1. Too busy at work

2. Nothing interesting going on

3. Less posting by posters (named and pseudonymous) I have come to enjoy conversing/debating with

4. Posts hijacked by commentators I don’t particularly enjoy conversing/debating with

5. I liked the google format better (probably just because I don’t like change)

I certainly have no intention of ever outing an anonymous/pseudonymous commentator. But it strikes me as fair warning to those who wish to post anonymously/pseudonymously that it is possible that their identity will somehow be revealed. I think the wise reader should make an anonymous/pseudonymous post only if he or she is willing to run the risk of later having his or her name attached to that post. (Of course, as I’ve indicated many times, I would prefer if people posted comments under their own names but I still believe that the value of allowing anonymous posts outweighs its cost.)

Sounds to me like a threat of public identification.

As to the “threat.”

I have the luxury of not having to worry about who reads my comments. So it was that I did not take Zach’s comment to be a threat to out me or to out others for that matter. (I’m not sure I would have recommended he publish the comment regardless of peoples sensitivities. I believe I had such a discussion with one of the “personnel” off-line. The issue was well past and pretty much played out. I’m of the view that the less you respond to inappropriate comments the less they continue to appear — without an audience many don’t play.)

However, out there it is.

I took Zach’s comment to be a caution that if people wanted to continue to post vitriputive comments, there were ways to terminate a persons access to CAAFLog commenting. That’s all I took it to be. But I understand and often preach that it’s not what I say but what you think I said that matters. So in that context I do understand Anon(s) concerns.

I think I can attest to the integrity of the site “personnel” that they would NEVER knowingly disclose any information in their possession about anyone who posts to this site – to ANYONE.

If you are like me you enjoy trying to guess who the anonymous people are or who the Admiral is. But that’s not so we can turn them in. And I’ll call you disingenuous if you say you don’t also try to guess.

I think Dwight will allow me to say this. I consider him to be the kind of friend I would throw myself under a bus for. And so we often share gossip. The joke is that we consider it attorney-client. So I had no hesitation one time and asked him to confirm one of my guesses of who a particular person was masquerading as with a nom e plume on CAAFLog. He refused to tell me, the %%#(D(&W^W twit. Can you imagine, integrity over a juicy piece of gossip.

Joking aside, I anticipate Dwight will weigh in soon. I’m satisfied he will do his best to reassure commenters that their “status” will be respected. I think we’d all prefer to know who a commenter is for various reasons because knowledge allows context for the comment. However, it is not realistic for the audience to have to declare themselves because there’s always going to be some jerk who doesn’t respect open dialogue on important subjects affecting the community of military justice.

To the Anons, your concerns deserve respect. Let’s give Zach a silver bullet and move on.

Cheers all!

On the Z issue, I don’t think the intent of his post was to intimate that our policy is to track down rogue anons by IP addresses. To be honest I don’t even think you can do that with the diffuse nature of servers-this post has an IP address of where ever my mobile service provider’s computer is. We don’t make it a policy to out people here on our blog. Although, I have to say the lack of comments hasn’t been all bad, it would seem some of our more borderline anons have refrained from posting lately.

Bottom line is none of us have that kind of time to go around sleuthing out anons, we actually have day jobs.