I honestly believe...

[_Yoda]

If you can't stand behind the things you say,

I can, so the rest of your comments are irrelavent. I make similar arguments when I walk around outside with people I know even when those people disagree with me. Maybe, just maybe, I'm not hiding behind anonymity because I'm embarassed. Maybe, just maybe I use anonymity because the situation is a bit different when I am onlline than when I am hanging around people I know outside. Similarly, sometimes it is appropriate to wear nothing more than a swimsuit and sometimes that is highly inappropriate.

Furthermore, if I were truly libeling anyone, you could demand that Shades provide you with my IP address, contact my ISP / work, and then sue me. If you have a legitimate complaint, you can find me. If you're an anonymous vigilante coward who plans to burn down my home while I sleep, you're gonna have to work harder. I do not post anonymously to gain the upper hand in debates nor to avoid accountability.

Abman makes a good point here, Bob.

I'm not trying to hide anything here, either. My family knows I post here. And I say things similaly to members that I say here. But I have been the victim of an Internet stalker, and it's scary business. You, yourself, have been a victim. I don't understand why you have no compassion and/or can continue to blatantly obtuse about this issue.

Granted, I'm sure that there ARE those who are posting anonymously so Church leaders or family won't find out, but to say that everyone fits into this one category is extremely short-sighted.

[_rcrocket]

Rapists try to protect themselves from retributive justice by doing their deeds in the dark, with a mask or anonymously.

Are you SERIOUSLY comparing us posting on a mostly insignificant message board to a rapist????

A rapist robs a person of her virtue or physical security. You rob good people of their reputations.

They don't need anyone to do that for them when they're perfectly capable of doing it all by themselves... like you have, for instance.

Name one "real" person whose reputation I have maligned. I have never taken a personal shot at any of the real posters on this board -- personal in such a way as to damage their ability to make a living or have the respect of their friends.

[_rcrocket]

Abman makes a good point here, Bob.

I'm not trying to hide anything here, either. My family knows I post here. And I say things similaly to members that I say here. But I have been the victim of an Internet stalker, and it's scary business. You, yourself, have been a victim. I don't understand why you have no compassion and/or can continue to blatantly obtuse about this issue.

Granted, I'm sure that there ARE those who are posting anonymously so Church leaders or family won't find out, but to say that everyone fits into this one category is extremely short-sighted.

The editorial page of the Church News recently and briefly commented unfavorably upon anonymous posts on internet boards. I wish I could recall the quote, but it was something along the lines of "God knows who you are if you anonymously attack other people on internet boards."

You, Liz, just don't get it. You explain that security justifies anonymity, but I tell you that anonymity is inherently evil and hypocritical in the first place if it attacks other people or their religion. It is an evil heaped upon other evils. You do not justify your evil deeds by an even more heinous evil deed.

And you, Liz are a facilitator of all this by your role as moderator. You hand the paint cans to the thugs who are about to post anti-Semitic slogans on the local synagogue. For the very same reason I think the moderators of MAD facilitate evil anonymous hypocritical attacks on other people, so I condemn you.

For what its worth. I could be wrong.

[_Chap]

The main reason I post anonymously is that I would not like any of my colleagues to know that I spend any of my time talking about the beliefs and practices of the CoJCoLDS, a topic whose peculiar features of interest they might fail to grasp. That apart, like asbestosman, I do not wish to be stalked by obsessional nut jobs who might take offence at what I say and pester me with stupid emails and phone calls. I have had a couple of those (not LDS linked) in my normal professional life already, and they were pretty hard to shake off.

I don't think I have said anything to anyone on this board that I would not say to them face to face and in front of witnesses, assuming that the preceding discussion had been the same (which it might well not be, because I am a kind hearted chap who does not like to look people in the eye and give them an answer which might take them out of their comfort zone).

There are quite a few people on this board who, if they were willing to state fully who and what they are, could gain considerable advantages in some aspects of our discussions, even without the special protections given to self-identified posters such as Daniel Peterson on the MAD board. But it is a good discipline to have to make good your arguments on the page, and for those arguments to have to stand for what they are worth alone.

By the way, so far as I am concerned rcrocket is anonymous to all intents and purposes: I have no interest in knowing his personal details, and indeed find it more palatable to assume he is some kind of sock puppet put up by someone with a grudge against lawyers. You see all the lawyers I know are such clear-thinking, wryly sceptical and subtle people ...

[_Scottie]

I'm not trying to hide anything here, either. My family knows I post here. And I say things similaly to members that I say here. But I have been the victim of an Internet stalker, and it's scary business. You, yourself, have been a victim. I don't understand why you have no compassion and/or can continue to blatantly obtuse about this issue.

Read the OP...

[Guest]

Rapists try to protect themselves from retributive justice by doing their deeds in the dark, with a mask or anonymously.

Are you SERIOUSLY comparing us posting on a mostly insignificant message board to a rapist????

A rapist robs a person of her virtue or physical security. You rob good people of their reputations.

They don't need anyone to do that for them when they're perfectly capable of doing it all by themselves... like you have, for instance.

Name one "real" person whose reputation I have maligned. I have never taken a personal shot at any of the real posters on this board -- personal in such a way as to damage their ability to make a living or have the respect of their friends.

I believe Schmo implied that you robbed yourself of your own reputation, Crockett. Perhaps thoughtlessly posting information that you later realized was professionally inappropriate and doing it using your true identity wasn't a great idea? Yes, you deleted it, but not before it was read by several posters.

You claim many of us are "thinly read", but it seems to me that your lawyerly skills may be a bit on the thin side. I'm certainly as qualified to judge your professional skills as you are to judge how well read the folks are on this board.

Thinly skilled lawyer, you're off my radar. Not that you were ever on it...

KA

[_beastie]

You all are wasting your time. Bob is impervious to reason. Experts on internet safety routinely caution people not to use their real names, for very obvious reasons.

Some of his other assertions are equally insipid. I like this one in particular:

If you lose your cool, you lose.

You lose what? Some secret game that only bob knows about? Certainly no sane person would believe that losing one's cool automatically equates losing the argument.

[_Coca Cola]

Then, my position is that you shouldn't be posting at all. Rapists try to protect themselves from retributive justice by doing their deeds in the dark, with a mask or anonymously. Libelers protect themselves from angry injured parties by saying wrong things on boards like this.

If you can't stand behind the things you say, and you have to hide behind a telephone pole or a building to use a bullhorn to say things that might hurt, might attack, or might even disparage a religious belief (anonymously throwing turds on the roof of the synagogue because you don't like the Jewish faith), then you are a weak and immoral coward. God knows who you are. And, if there is a God in heaven, I believe that someday you'll be made to pay -- the grief of your parents, wife, children and descendants.

That's one of the great things about the internet: so much freedom, not much control. People are free to say what they like about the touchiest subjects imaginable - religion, politics - under the protection of anonymity and without fear of reprisal from those who would like to control the conversation. Such as Bob.

[_Trevor]

"God knows who you are if you anonymously attack other people on internet boards."

Otherwise, we're off her radar.

[_Yoda]

For the very same reason I think the moderators of MAD facilitate evil anonymous hypocritical attacks on other people, so I condemn you.

For what its worth. I could be wrong.

Bob, my friend, your comment here made me smile. I've got to hand it to you. At least you don't elevate MAD over us. According to you, we're all going to hell. I absolutely love it! ;)

Let me give you a few things to think about, Bob.

You have stated repeatedly that the reason you come here is for "entertainment purposes". So, if you compare me, as a Moderator to "handling out paint cans to thugs", then I compare you to someone who, "for entertainment purposes" observes those very thugs spray paint the synagogues. You, sir, for "entertainment purposes", watch the rapists pillage the villages. You, Bob, for "entertainment purposes", observe the verbal mud-slinging of the religion you supposedly hold dear.

You said that you could be wrong. Well, if, indeed, you're right, Bob, I submit to you that if I'm going to hell, you're going with me. Maybe if you're nice, I'll save you a glass of ice water. ;)