史蒂文 :: Release 2.0

I'm considering allowing anyone to anonymously post on Vidyo.

Why? Well two reasons. The first is that people may have somethng interested but don't want to be identified - there may be some important local news that someone wants to put on withut everyone knowing who it was.

The second? Well, I am trying to get a new kind of person involved in my site (as well as those experienced writers) - people who maybe dont have a blog - or don't really post anything online - perhaps in a forum or two. Everyday people who just know something about the local community, but the thought of being identified makes them unsure. Trust me - this is something i get from around 50% of the people i speak with offline about this idea.

I don't think it's that they NEVER want to be identified, but there is a real belief that if you post, someone 10,000 miles away will know your house and phone number. Anonymity would help newcomers post, but not have this kind of worry.. and after a while they will become more confortable and start posting with their name signed.

The negative result is spam - as Dan Gillmor talks about.

Would being signed in, but posting anonymously work better? A lot of people probably want to post without having identified themselves in any way. I do have some thoughts on how this could be done - we'll see.

I do wonder whether a distributed P2P service - like the email equivalent of Coudmark, that allows the community to say "this is spam" resulting in a hash that can be checked against posts over the web and hence filter out the spam. Maybe one exists?