Debate about anon posts

For those interested, there has been an active debate on the Usenet
newsgroup news.admin.policy about whether anonymous posting should be
allowed on technical newsgroups.  Johan Helsingius's anonymous server at
anon.penet.fi is being widely attacked for allowing this function.  Several
questionable messages have been posted to various groups using this server
and some of these are being used as examples of why anonymous posting should
not be allowed.
 
There have been about 50 messages on the topic, with probably 40+ being
generally opposed to anonymous posting on the non-"personal" groups, and
only a few being in favor.
 
I don't really know how much influence that newsgroup has on the Usenet
anarchy but there certainly does seem to be a lot of opposition to anonymity.
Since it is an important part of our Cypherpunk ideals I think we need to
give some thought to how to "sell" the idea of anonymous mail and postings
to the net community.
 
Hal Finney
74076.1041@compuserve.com

More important than anonymity in a public forum such as Usenet is
pseudonymity.  A strictly anonymous posting might well be ignored, and
in cases should be.  An alternate identity, however, can be more
easily believed if it has said useful things in the past.

After all, most of the people I know on the net are as good as
pseudonyms to me.  I've never met them, have never even had voice
contact, and am unlikely to ever.  This is the case for everyone.  We
rely on the human net of familiarity to assure us that these are real
people.

But a pseudonym on the net looks to us like "someone else's friend."
We can't verify everyone personally, but we assume that someone has.
Therefore pseudonyms will always be possible on the net.

Indeed, they are already mostly with us.

Eric