Don't feed the trolls - unless you want to

I've been online now for a very very long time. I can remember when using the Net was a purely console text-based experience and can remember when the Mosaic browser appeared and I suddenly had access to pictures of Erika Eleniak in her Baywatch swim suit that I could see instantly rather than relying on a description before download. There was something else that was true too. No matter where you went, you could never really be sure that people were who they said they were. Identity belonged to the character and not necessarily to the person behind the words.

This was the rule of the game that we nerds and geeks played in our little space away from reality. It was our new frontier, our Wild West, our social rules were simple, there were to be no rules unless otherwise stated, and even then all were based on trust. If you went into a chatroom called #hot_lesbian_chat then you knew you'd be kicked out if you told them about the enormity of your manhood and your ability to 'cure' them. Reality morphed itself into role-playing in this world, just as Second Life does today in graphics.

As access grew though, so to did the voices that didn't like the world we had created. Self-styled gurus with instinctively authoritarian tendencies began questioning - especially with the rise of blogs that allow comments with the label of 'anonymous' next to them - whether the Net should be a place that allows one to mask their identity. They began bleating about honesty and bullying. The 'anonymous' comment they said was denigrating discourse and in other cases was being used to disingenuously heap praise on bloggers. The schema of understanding for these critics is clear; if you allow anonymous comments then none of your comments can be considered genuine. Pretty dumb I know, but whoever said Internet users had to have a functioning brain?

Ben Macintyre in this morning's Times has raised these questions about anonymity and wondered upon its sustainability and the fact that you can say nasty things when you're masked. He's by no means the first opinion former to do so. Yet sadly like the others, and the bloggers who seemingly dedicate much of their life online to the cause they fundamentally fail to appreciate the technological problems that go with a 'no more anonymity Net'. For a start lets think about the so-called 'anonymous' comment. It is no more or less anonymous than the pseudonym with an email attached to it. At most it is simply irritating administratively because you may have multiple comments with the same name next to them from different people. Turning the feature off will change nothing in terms of identifiably because it will still be based on trust.

That last point is worth repeating. You still have to rely on trust about who that person commenting online is, even if they have a name other than ‘anonymous’. Just the same as when you meet a stranger in a pub and they tell you they live in Aldershot and their name is Mike. You do not ask them for their driving license to confirm their identity, you accept it and carry on. So what exactly is 'identity' online anyway? Some of the pseudo-technical self-styled blogging gurus seem to think that an email address helps with this situation but it is just as easily made up. Or they think that an IP address helps, whilst failing to realise that address space is in short supply so technologies can, quite legitimately rewrite source headers to exploit one single IP used by a thousand readers quite legitimately.

What's more the globe is littered with open and anonymous proxy servers. If I wanted to I could do this post and appear to be in Uzbekistan. It's not difficult if you RTFM. Someone could use two browsers, say IE and Firefox, and be logged into different identities using proxies on different continents. Masking yourself online does not require climbing a mountain of knowledge. The important point here is that of someone wants to be anonymous then they will be, and no matter what you try to do it will continue in a network that is interconnected across legal jurisdictions that often do not have cordial political relationship with each other. A rule set in Britain on identity will be meaningless if you bounce through Zimbabwe first.

One may not like anonymity, but it is a reality of the Net and on current trends always will be. There are simple answers to the “problem” though. Firstly, don't feed the trolls just ignore them (unless you’re bored of course). Second, if you're being harassed by email, filter the email address out, don't tell them, and they’ll be deleted before you even receive it – out of sight out of mind. Third, if you've got a commenter that is harassing you turn moderation on and deny all their comments, crucially don't bother telling them, you'll only end up in another debate. Whatever you do they will go ballistic because they hate you remember – you are the Admin, don’t forget it.

Fourth if you're being harassed on a bulletin board then stop posting. If you must go back to it because of the compulsive urge that can go with such things then re-register with a new nick and don't rise to the posts by the person you have a problem with. Last, but by no means least, always, and I mean always, remember this. The anonymous flamer in the open is easy to deal with and swot away. The ones you have to watch out for are the netiquette hypocrites that scream about bullying in the open whilst carrying out campaigns of harassments in private. They exploit the very online ethics they claim to hold so dear and they are the real problem.

If you find yourself facing one of these pious liars, then how you choose to deal with it is entirely up to you. Personally I like to endlessly bait them because there is little more enjoyable than seeing a Netiquette hypocrite bite and be too stupid to realise they've just been had. Anonymity isn’t a problem; it’s the ones who show themselves who create the genuine disharmony.