Talk:Anonymity

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Rewrite[edit]

--by that great author, Anonymous

The article as written left a lot to be desired. I've attempted a rewrite using most of the information in the previous article. I think it's a lot better now. Hope you all agree. --Golfhaus 21:53, 18 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

hi@Beland 2400:AC40:709:E88D:D5CB:32AF:5C8E:F3C9 (talk) 16:36, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice if the "Anonymity and the Internet" section would discuss the actual anonimity of IP addresses. People believe they are untraceable on the Internet, and that is rapidly becoming untrue. Converting IP addresses into physical locations is becoming increasingly precise, to the point where I will be able to get your home phone number just by knowing your IP address. Imagine no more sign up processes to receive marketing material. You've visited their website. The logs show you looked interested. Prepare to receive junk snail mail. --193.226.189.115 13:25, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Done. -- Beland 00:33, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Feature status?[edit]

This article has been improved greatly, and appropriately enough by anonymous users. Do you think we should nominate it for featured article status? Haakon 17:32, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think quite yet. For instance, I wonder if there should be a section about newspapers having an anonymous comments service, whereby someone sends an e-mail or calls a number (hooked to voicemail) to voice their opinion without giving their name. This is as opposed to a letter to the editor, an opinion piece that would be signed by its author. Many newspapers – including the Des Moines Register ("Your 2¢ Worth") and the Moline Daily Dispatch ("Speak Out") have such "anonymous comments" features.
That said, two things:
* There needs to be the obvious criticism included (e.g., it allows someone to anonymously tear down or make questionable claims about a subject, business, etc.).
* Some newspapers are replacing this with printing opinions submitted through a newspaper's online site.
Anyway, whataya think? [[Briguy52748 15:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)]][reply]

Incoming redirects[edit]

I recently redirected anonymous speech and anonymous publication to this article since they overlapped and could easily be covered here as well. There may or may not be some information that needs merged from those articles. Peyna 17:58, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's how information got lost. This article still doesn't cover what anonymous speech means. --Abdull (talk) 01:14, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote link[edit]

The link to wikiquote points to a page of anonymous quotes, not quotes on anonymity. Does wikiquote have such a list? --BigChicken 10:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Charity[edit]

There ought to be more about charity. All the article says about charity at present is:

Many acts of charity are performed anonymously, as well, as benefactors do not wish, for whatever reason, to be acknowledged for their action.

The phrases do not wish... to be acknowledged and for whatever reason can carry much implied POV I fear. "Whatever reason" may suggest that the usual reasons are likely to be so idiosyncratic or secret that it's no use generalizing about them. To the contrary, anonymous charity has long been a widespread and durable moral precept of many ethical and religious systems, as well as being in practice a widespread human activity. The present text seems oblivious to this fact.

Indeed the text is biased as to the uses of anonymity -- mainly it seems to only regard anonymity negatively as a shield, or means of avoiding harm for those who fear it. The article neglects anonymity as a positive tool to practice, demonstrate and promote various virtues both civic and personal (e.g. humility, unselfishness, commonweal, foresight, kindness, etc.), or to starve certain personal and societal vices of appetite, (e.g. pride, vanity, greed, etc), or to achieve benign and practical goals that might otherwise be impossible.

"To be acknowledged" implies a POV that benign action normally should be humanly acknowledged, an egotistical and controversial tenet. For saints and holy men all human actions are immediately (though perhaps inscrutably) acknowledged before eyes that miss nothing, compared to which mere human favor means little. For the pragmatic benefactor anonymous good deeds avoid potentially fatal dangers of class distinction, prejudice, personal suspicions of venal interest, while tending to promote a general goodwill or mindshare, etc.

Which is not to say that the present text about wiley crooks, spies and malevolent forces isn't interesting and appropriate to the topic -- just that taken alone it's incomplete to an extreme. --AC 08:00, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Advertising?[edit]

I just think it is odd someone has added a link to the article:

"If you need to get anonymous proxy you can get one here : www.proxygeneration.com"

After looking at the site--which has only a meager 300 registered users--I'm fairly certain that the article was edited by either an administrator of the site, or someone who nonetheless wanted to attract more people to the website. With that in mind, I'm removing this sentence from the article--of which it should also be noted is out of place in the article: the line preceeding it states "There are many reasons why a person might ... become anonymous." ; After the advertisement, the section then continues to state possible reasons to do this, rather than a method.

Bonekhan 17:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I found another advertising link in the politics section and removed it. Perhaps this page's association with "Anonymous" is drawing a little more attention than usual 108.29.95.114 (talk) 14:40, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Who the heck are Brittney Carrington and Kevin Webb?[edit]

Brittney Carrington and Kevin Webb are a few people in the military that have anonymous means of working.

Vandalism? Or just someone thinking that everyone knows who they mean? Kay Dekker (talk) 21:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Probably vandalism. I took it out; if someone has a source and can express the thought comprehensibly, they can restore it.--Kineticman (talk) 23:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Name change[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. 05:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Let's be honest: Wikipedia is for the common man. What kind of common man would search for "anonymity" as opposed to Hidden Identity? When considered carefully, its a good choice. Rrrr5 (talk) 00:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose The ignorance of the common Joe is not a valid reason to execute the move. More importantly, I'd argue that "anonymity" and "hidden identity", while in the same vein, are not the same thing. JPG-GR (talk) 02:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I don't think the current term is unnecessarily erudite or just for smart folks, either. Dekimasuよ! 11:32, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per JPG-GR. FlagSteward (talk) 15:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose The term anonymity is widely used which is not the case for "hidden identity". Just compare the number of google hits: 10 500 000 for anonymity, 65 800 for "hidden identity". And I'd like to recall that Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia. Cenarium (talk) 23:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose i agree that "anonymity" is a 100% normal term, and the right name for the article. Sssoul (talk) 00:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose "hidden identity" is NOT more obvious than anonymity. Not by a long shot. Bssc81 (talk) 07:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Not only is anonymity a widespread term...'Hidden Identity' is a clumsy phrase for people to be looking for. Narson (talk) 14:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy close - hidden identity? EJF (talk) 18:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Superheroes[edit]

The article could as well include the anonymity of superheroes and the why and what about it. Just a thought. 145.18.110.193 (talk) 13:18, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"theory"[edit]

internet + anonymity. It ought to be mentioned (or at least linked) in this article. --24.21.148.155 (talk) 00:04, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On 'Mathematics of anonymity'[edit]

1.) This, the last part of the article ends with the sentence "The authorities could then proceed to beat Alice and Bob until one of them owns up to the crime."

Well, it's a well-known fact that if you beat people up, they're eligable to confess every crime known to man, from burning down Rome some 2,000 years ago to being the one who sold Jimi Hendrix heroin. Therefore, I don't think the "mathematics of anonymity" works on this here example, since there's an X factor that can't be computed exactly.

2.) This very same article assumes that either Bob, Carol or Alice emptied the safe, because they had the only keys; "An example: Suppose that only Alice, Bob, and Carol have the keys to a bank safe and that, one day, the contents of the safe are missing (without the lock being violated)."

How do we know there wasn't an old - or illegally made - copy circulating that someone else (Ted, for instance) had access to, and that HE is the perpetrator (see "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_%26_Carol_%26_Ted_%26_Alice")?

Besserwissern (talk) 01:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]


I could be wrong, but the current formulation of the probability outcomes for {Alice, Bob, Carol} sounds a lot like the Monty Hall problem. Should the probabilities actually increase to 1/2 for Alice and Bob if Carol has an alibi? Or do the probabilities remain at 1/3? Or can someone produce a reference...?

--207.239.115.78 (talk) 16:14, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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sections lacking references[edit]

The first several sections of the article have either no references cited or only one or two. Considering some of these sections contain substantial amounts of information, it should be cited. --MooCow1 (talk) 05:49, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymity + Charity[edit]

I think the page can benefit on expanding more on the anonymity + charity section, perhaps by including popular crowdfunding websites like Youcaring or Gofundme. Xkwhvzde (talk) 09:22, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Set theory issue[edit]

All things named anonymous, belong to the set (or group) of anonymity which has many subsets exist (signed as anonymous, not signed as anonymous, trackable anonymous, partially trsckable, non-trackable anonymous which reveals behavioural patterns, non-trackable anonymous which doesn't reveal behavioural patterns).

  • The purest form of anonymity, is the one you missed to categorize (we shouldn't use you in an encyclopedia). The purest form of anonymity, is the one that escaped categorization (for various reasons).
  • and this is a practical category and a non-innately descriptive one
    • the hypernymy and hyponymy of a set, is also a generic and innate issue in set theory
      According to some rules, a hyponym may become a hypernym and vice versa. This isn't always the case, but certainly it might occur.
      • go and study at MIT, then write some books and teach others

Books and their authors[edit]

When a book's author is not known, is the property of "anonymity" best applied to the book or to its author? Many of the Wikipedia articles on the various chapters of John's Gospel state in the lede that "the author of the book containing this chapter is anonymous", whereas in several of the articles on the chapters of Luke's Gospel and other New Testament works, the statement is made that "the book containing this chapter is anonymous". Which is the better or more correct usage? BobKilcoyne (talk) 05:25, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

JOSÉ DANIEL[edit]

deseo entrar ala Deep web necesitó comprar un carnet de identidad 213.173.36.101 (talk) 01:27, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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