Anonymity and idea creation
How much does being able to post anonymously enable ideas and discussion? Much more freely than if all discussions are traceable? Several of us at work chatted about the idea. In our current work environment there is certainly a culture of slight paranoia about open discussions. Many of the technology IT systems that support collaboration have discussion tools. But all of them have embedded in them who posted what and when.
There was a discussion that early on one major idea box (a sort of discussion list) on the work portal was anonymous. Unfortunately, someone posted a question (paraphrased) “I saw a gun at work; What is security going to do about those who bring guns to work?”…. That certainly got peoples’ attention and all anonymity was removed.
We have introduced the idea of blogs at work via an experimental service. This does provide the ability to remain anonymous…. However, someone in the group asked “Can you guarantee that no post could ever be linked back to me? “ Someone with a lot of time on their hands, good access to all the major IP logs and network traffic, plus the drive to do so could discover what traffic hit the blog server at the time a specofic post was placed…. So no I could not guarantee no link back.
There was a discussion that early on one major idea box (a sort of discussion list) on the work portal was anonymous. Unfortunately, someone posted a question (paraphrased) “I saw a gun at work; What is security going to do about those who bring guns to work?”…. That certainly got peoples’ attention and all anonymity was removed.
We have introduced the idea of blogs at work via an experimental service. This does provide the ability to remain anonymous…. However, someone in the group asked “Can you guarantee that no post could ever be linked back to me? “ Someone with a lot of time on their hands, good access to all the major IP logs and network traffic, plus the drive to do so could discover what traffic hit the blog server at the time a specofic post was placed…. So no I could not guarantee no link back.
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