I've been posting on Bettermost for just a couple of months, and I'm a total newbie to the Tremblayer group. So as something of an outsider it's hard to know how to respond. At the same time, it does give me some distance with which to comment.
<snip>I think David has a point, a very strong point. The freedom to post in privacy is a feature some people would prefer. I for one. If I could have figured out how to work the thing, I would have posted only incognito, for my own reasons, the first being I happen to live with the board's namesake.
What surprised me most though, was the apathy with which I heard so many say they "couldn't care either way". David is talking about the right to privacy on a public forum. This is not small potatoes. I know most of you are big L liberals and that is why the reaction surprised me so much. Maybe the fact I am Canadian has something to do with the fact that the removal of this personal freedom (yeah, yeah, it's only a privacy function on a fun movie forum) is for me not a small thing. The acceptance of phone tapping, surveillance cameras, and other blatant abuses of our rights and freedoms in the guise of our protection from terror is frightening. David has every right to be dramatic and maybe it's time people become a hell of a lot more dramatic in the light of this Brave New World we are shaping.
On one level, it's a technical issue as much as a privacy issue. Some, maybe many, posters have no clue how to post while invisible, and might not understand why someone would do that. You gave a good example of why you might. Basically it comes down to keeping one's identity private. Given the stress that so many Tremblayers have experienced from trolls on other boards who used that kind of anonymity to be destructive, I can understand why there would be apprehension about the same thing happening here. I know I stopped reading and posting on IMDb for the same reason.
Most people have the utmost faith in Phillip to be able to deal with people who use the hidden feature abusively. Hopefully there won't be much need for him to even have to deal with trolls. On another level, though, it seems like there's other stuff brewing within the Tremplay group, and resulting from their move to Bettermost. (I'm a social worker so I sometimes look at stuff like that from the perspective of group dynamics).
Studduck's post does have good points about the need to not further, or voluntarily restrict privacy "for the larger good". I can get that, and you reiterated it well. But his announcement was also in the form of a kind of 'kiss off', and it followed closely after a similar thread from someone else...Stud? No, Surf. Both threads seemed to be kind of hostile, and probably had stuff carrying over from TOB (someone had to explain to me what that acronym means!)
So it's not just about privacy issues. Groups that are uprooted and then find themselves becoming part of a larger group go through that kind of transition, and unfortunately sometimes it's too much for some in the group. To me, some of these growing pains are normal for what they're going through. That's my .02 cents, with interest.
I find this to be a pretty great group of people: supportive, funny, thoughtful, passionate, and, as evident from the 'what-do-we-look-like' thread, sexy. I find it all very exciting, spunk talk included, LOL, and hope to get to know folks even more.
Juan
