An Element of Anonymity: Wikipedia

Obscured in Plain Sight

My name is not Nerdette. If you know my personality and a little bit about my life you could probably figure out who I am, but for anyone other than my direct circle of family, friends and peers, I retain my separation from the title Nerdette. No one out there who casually reads my blog can find my address or my phone number or my picture on Google Streetview and to be honest, I kind of like it that way. Anonymity certainly has its charms and benefits.

Advocates for anonymity cite examples of sensitive topics that the general population needs or wants to discuss but is either too embarassed to do so without anonymity or feels threatened by attaching his or her name to the comment. Topics like suicide or addiction are private matters. By allowing visitors to post messages anonymously, a safe space is created in which people seeking help can receive it with a minimal amount of discomfort. Furthermore, being anonymous on the Internet protects freedom of speech, something that we, as citizens of a free country, value very strongly. With anonymity comes the power to state any opinion regardless of its source, hurtfulness or truth.

Clearly, being able to speak freely on the Internet without being able to be traced has its benefits, but what happens when more and more trust is placed on anonymously posted information? This question is exactly what many critics of Wikipedia are asking, and the issue has been open for debate for many years. I found passionate blogs and heated articles from as early as 2002 and as late as a couple of months ago. With Wikipedia gaining more and more popularity as an initial go-to source for information, questions about its credability and reliability are at the forefront of many minds.

How Does Anonymity Hinder Wikipedia?

When visitors are looking for help or expressing an opinion, their credibility is not as important, but when that same visitor becomes a contributors, the stakes change. Now someone is relying on that person – trusting that nameless, faceless void to tell the truth about whatever it is they are writing. If in real life if an unknown individual came up to you on the street with a paper bag over their head and a name tag that said “127.0.0.1” and told you a random piece of information, the odds of you believing that individual are pretty slim (at least for me). Yet, that exact situation is duplicated on Wikipedia, where anyone who can locate the edit icon can make changes to the information on the page. Some members of the Internet community question the credibility of articles that can be changed by literally anyone. Surprisingly, Youtube does not have a whole lot of great material in the way of Wikipedia videos, but one video in particular stands out as a comedic commentary on some of the issues surrounding anonymity on the living encyclopedia.

Anonymity makes page vandalism and removal wars possible. There is nothing to hold people accountable for their actions except themselves. Companies can edit the pages of their opponents or themselves, political candidates can edit pages that portray them in a bad light and people can post damaging falsities without being punished.

The problem is further compounded by attempts to thwart such practices. On Wikipedia, when a contributor edits a page, there is no name recorded, but there is an IP address recorded for the computer from which the change was made. If particular addresses continually show up as posting problematic entries, the IP can be banned. The plan sounds good in theory, but in practice it doesn't always work out so well. When one member of a company abuses Wikipedia privileges, the whole company could be banned from contributing to the living encyclopedia. In one particular instance, an entire community was blocked from editing the site because of the postings of one man. Pages that are known for vandalism and abuse by contributors can be locked, preventing even well-meaning members of the Wikipedia community who choose to post anonymously from posting anything at all because the topic they chose happened to be spoiled by some of the less responsible citizens.

Posting without signing in is also not uncommon. Many users around the globe contribute without ever making an account, as shown by this by-the-hour representation of anonymous postings. You can see that anonymous posting is not something that only a few bored University students are doing in their “spare time”.

What is Can be Done to Address These Problems?

Anonymity continues to be a subject of debate amongst Wikipedians. Since the site was founded on the principles of anonymous contributions and good faith of the masses to report accurate information, the site's founder is reluctant to remove anonymity as an aspect of the site. A forum style article on Wikipedia discusses the issue and potential solutions. Bloggers on the Internet also contribute ideas and opinions on the issue of anonymity and membership. Some of the examples that are suggested are described below.

Mixing Registered and Unregistered Posting: Members with accounts agree to perform a certain amount of edits that they would normally do logged in anonymously. i.e. A registered member should make at least one good edit a week anonymously. The theory behind this method is that having registered and trusted members making anonymous contributions will raise the level of trust readers place in anonymous comments since there is a good chance that it originated from a registered user. This method is also thought to encourage anonymous users to post responsibly by setting a good example of anonymous editing.

Encourage Anonymity: Contributors are all encouraged to edit the site anonymously and membership is discouraged. In this less popular method, individuals are all held accountable to all their peers and there is not defined structure to editting pages. The idea is that everyone will feel more comfortable sharing their own knowledge and experience if they see that anonymous posting is encouraged. When people feel comfortable, they are more likely to want to preserve the good will of the site than destroy it.

Encourage Membership: Visitors who wish to edit the site are all required to make an account prior to doing so. At the other end of the spectrum, individuals are held accontable by other members in an identifiable way. Supporters of this view point out that making membership mandatory will deter many would-be vandals who don't want to be inconvenienced. It would also make blocking vandals easier and page content more reliable. People are not as likely to write poor quality articles if they have their name and reputation attached to their writing.

Tiered Membership: Members have a variety of different “account” levels. Casual editors are required to supply only a valid email address or other identifying piece of information to Wikipedia but are not required to disclose it to the rest of the community. More regular contributors have accounts that can be logged into with more information displayed for the community to see. Moderators and Administration have even higher privileges and more visibility.

Anonymity Tagging: Contributions made by anonymous users will be tagged as such so that anyone visiting the site can see which edits were made by trusted sources and which ones aren't. This method attempts to make anonymous posting less common by drawing attention to the volume of posts contributed by non-identified sources.

Limitted-Time Anonymity: Visitors may make edits anonymously for a period of one month, and then any edits afterward must be made with a logged in account. While the idea may sound like a good one, the problem becomes tracking who has posted for a month and who hasn't. People live in the same house, people use different computers and change IP addresses. This method's loopholes would make it extremely difficult to implement.

What is Wikipedia Doing?

The response to the situation by Wikipedia is a smart one. Instead of dealing with the issue of anonymity as a social issue (Whether or not people should be held responsible by a body of people or only themselves) the community has chosen to address the effect of anonymity instead. Anonymity deters from credibility, and it is precisely the ability to rely on Wikipedia's information, that the company has chosen to handle.

A new editing system is proposed to be implemented on many pages that have vandalism problems that Wikipedia hopes will curb the problem. The new editing system will save changes that anonymous users make separately from the rest of the page. Visitors wishing to comment or vote on the validity of potential changes can do so and only after review will the changes be saved to the page. Potential edits that have not been committed to the main body of information are visible only if a user chooses to review them, otherwise they are completely excluded from the article, preventing vandals from editing pages in inappropriate ways. While the service has not been implemented on any pages I have seen, there is a Wikipedia article available with the details of the proposed system outlined.

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While the proposed potential edit solution does not actually take a stand on whether or not anonymity should be allowed on the internet, it certainly would take preventative steps to protect Wikipedia's credibility. Personally, as a member of both the blogging community and some forum communities, I support membership.

For the most part, displaying a member name or handle is anonymous within the community. As I mentioned before, my name is not Nerdette, but that is the name that readers know me by. Identifying information is required to post, for sure, but that information is not available to the public. People disagreeing with my opinions cannot track me down or spam my email inbox with rude comments. I may not be truly anonymous, but I feel that I retain my personal identity enough that I am confident enough to write my true opinions.

Furthermore, membership does not require a lot of time, effort or even information to complete. Registration requires an email address, a password and a username (when your email is not your username). So why not do it? Membership simultaneously gives me credit for my work, and security in my personal life. Many places do not require my name or other identifying information like a phone number or home address.

Bringing the topic back to Wikipedia, I personally am of the opinion that Wikipedia made a good decision to address the effect and not the issue of anonymity. By creating safety nets for the information posted, they have allowed both supporters and critics of anonymity to come to a compromise in this particular instance.

P.S. I decided to edit Wikipedia anonymously, but was completely baffled by the fact that they chose to have their “edit” link at the top of the article and not the bottom. I realize that it is a small usability issue, but seriously...people read the article then edit not the other way around. The first time I clicked on the edit button, I was surprised to be greeted by completely unexpected content. The “edit” link makes more sense at the end of the article.

P.P.S. This article about German criminals who served their time in jail and were re-introduced into society demonstrates that everyone's value of anonymity is different, and that as a people we tend to place different values on the anonymity of different individuals.