On Anonymity, Moderated Fora, and Usenet

I'm seeing a lot of people leaving usenet quite publicly, in favor of
a moderated forum, because the signal to noise ratio on the group has
become so poor. This is of course their right and decision. I don't
intend to follow them, and that of course is mine. I will, however,
point out some major advantages of an unmoderated, anonymous forum -
like this one - for some of the topics we discuss.

Aviation is a highly regulated activity. In fact, I can't think of
any activity undertaken primarily for personal convenience or
recreation that is regulated at anythink like the level of personal
aviaiton. Cars, boats, motorcycles, parachutes, scuba - you name it,
and the level of regulation is much, much lower. What's more, the
regulations are out of touch with reality. Many are broken on a
routine basis, especially by the more experienced pilots.

At the same time, the FAA is full of busybody inspectors, some
actually willing to follow up allegations of pilot infraction
submitted by third parties. Any forum will, unfortunately, eventually
contain a snitch - someone willing to take what is said on the forum
and pass the information on to a third party in order to hurt the
poster. It was done here, and as a result many went anonymous.

Thus any forum that lacks effective anonymity limits discussion
tremendously - it would be like a motorcycle forum where everyone had
to pretend that we all ride the speed limit or less all the time,
because if you admitted to intentionally taking those 45 mph curves at
70 or disabling your rev limiter, someone could call the highway
patrol and get you investigated, and maybe get you fined or get your
license suspended.

Here's an example: There is a saying that if the pilot survives the
accident, you will never learn what really happened. This is true -
but incomplete. I've observed several accident and one incident (in-
flight control failure not leading to an accident) investigations
where I had inside knowledge - meaning I knew the people,
organizations, and aircraft involved - and in no case did that
critical inside knowledge wind up in the report. People were covering
their asses - and understandably so. I wasn't about to say anything
tot he feds either. As a result the NTSB reports read like works of
fiction, and there was nothing useful to learn from them. With
anonymity, I can (and have) posted such details here for people to
learn from. That's not something I can reasonably do without
anonymity.

Note that what I'm talking about here is minimally effective anonymity
- not enough to really keep anyone reasonably bright from figuring out
who you are, but the sort that would give you plausible deniability
and would significantly slow down a busybody FAA inspector. That's
really all that any of the long time posters here have.

The other issue is moderation. Moderation does generally help keep
the off-topic backbiting to a minimum - but at a price. The price is
that it has a chilling effect on controversy. It only chops off a
fraction of 1% of the on-topic posts - but they're the most
controversial fraction, the ones that challenge your most fundamental
core beliefs, the ones that have the potential to teach you the most.
That's the sort of thing that gets filtered by moderation. Too
inflammatory. They're VERY hard to write, very time consuming to
research, and nobody will bother if the moderator might just decide to
kill it.

Here's an example: Imagine if being a more conservative pilot made you
more dangerous, not safer. And that most private pilots would be
safer if they were less conservative, not more. That has to be
wrong. Doesn't it? It goes against the grain. I can make a very
solid case for it being true - here. Where some moderator doesn't
decide to filter it out because it can't be right. Not on a moderated
forum. No matter what the moderation policy might say about being
only to keep the discussion on topic, there are some things you just
can't say. Check out this link for a better explanation:
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

There's no question that if all you are looking for is an online
version of the pilot's lounge, a moderated forum is the way to go. It
will be more polite, more congenial, more like a real pilot's lounge.
Only if that's your goal - why not just go hang out at the real
pilot's lounge at the airport? But hey - that's not my call to make.
It's your choice.

Michael