Posted by Jonah (64.114.149.212) on July 26, 2003 at 15:23:03:

In Reply to: "Love Thy Enemy" posted by Stuart Gilman on July 26, 2003 at 07:29:29:

Regarding disharmony: as far as I'm concerned, people are welcome to advocate or practice disharmony. But I prefer not to have it part of my life.

Regarding identities: people are WELCOME to use a pseudonym, or to post as "Anonymous." We must be cautious with our identity online, and especially must keep our email addresses hidden.

However, using muliple pseudonyms or posting under a pseudonym and/or one's real name and/or under "Anonymous" can have no effect other than to indicate that multiple people are using the multiple pseudonyms. If that is incorrect, i.e. if all the postings are by one and the same person, then I'm going to deem this deceptive for purposes of this bulletin board and disallow it. This is my own call, not any statement of Baha'i or editorial principles.

Obviously, I will often have no way of knowing if one person is using muliple pseudonyms, and in those cases there's nothing I can do. But there are also times that I can and do know the identify of the people posting, and when those people attempt to portray themselves as more than one person, I will remove their postings. But this has generally not been a problem. In the six years of running this bulletin board there has been only one person (to my knowledge) who has attempted to do this. This person has been quite egregious, in fact, using upwards of two dozen names and multiple IP addresses. The collaborative sleuthing of no less than five people, both inside and outside the Baha'i Institutions, allowed me to identify and delete many of these deceptive postings, after sending multiple explanatory (and then warning) emails to the pseudonym email addresses given.

-Jonah

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