On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:13:52 -0700, "Peter Duniho"
wrote in
::

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
.. .
[...]
There is a long history about the emergence of Usenet anonymity dating
from the early '80s. As I recall, it was generally frowned upon.

For better or worse, there is a lot of behavior on Usenet that was generally
frowned upon historically, but which is now accepted practice.

It's only 'accepted practice' if we accept it. Granted, that ever
since the 'September that never ended' there has been an influx of
less than netiquette aware Usenet participants. But that's no reason
to accept their disregard for netiquette. I'm sure, that even you
wouldn't condone accepting the posting of spam articles on Usenet just
because it occurs.

IMHO, the main person anonymity hurts is the person being anonymous.
Without a real name, there's less credibility.

I would characterize the issue of anonymity as being more about
accountability than credibility, although they go hand in hand.

I agree that using assumed or partial names is foolish, and perhaps it is
even a sign of cowardice. But each person has their own reasons, and I
think it's poor policy for other individuals to ignore those reasons,
however foolish or cowardly they might be, without good cause (ie there's
some very important reason the identity of the person needs to be known).

We disagree. I think it's poor policy to permit anonymous Usenet
posting. I would even assert that it tends to degrade the
signal-to-noise ratio of Usenet.

Usenet is inherently anonymous.

Virtually all TCP/IP traffic is traceable.

I see no good reason to harass (and I use that word carelessly)

There was no intent to harass anyone; I posted publicly available
information (adequately anonymized), and asked a question.

those who choose to extend that anonymity a little bit by choosing to not
use a full name to post.

We disagree about Usenet anonymity.


There's some information about the controversial issue of munging
e-mail addresses he

http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/mungfaq.html

ct: 4. Actions

4a. Why should I mung my address?

- It is an effective way to avoid junk email.

Junk emailers "harvest" email addresses from Usenet posts.
Most address harvesting software used by junk emailers does not
discriminate; anything with an '@' sign is considered an
address.
By changing what appears in the From: and/or Reply-To: headers
of Usenet posts, the amount of unsolicited bulk/commercial
email (UBE/UCE) received drops considerably.

- It is easy to do compared to other methods of avoiding UBE/UCE.

- It lowers the percentage of good addresses harvested by the
address thieves.

4b. Why should I NOT mung my address?

- It breaks the automated 'reply by email' feature found in most
newsreaders, forcing people to manually de-mung the address in
order to email topical replies to your posts.

- If you use the same software for Usenet and email, you will
have to change the address regularly, to avoid sending regular
email with a munged address.

- It violates RFCs, the rules upon which Usenet is built.

(It should also be noted that munging does not automatically
cause messages to bounce back to junk emailers; if you are
considering munging for this reason, you would not accomplish
your goal. Also, depending on what and where you post, a
junkster *may* take the time to manually de-mung your address,
just for spite.)