How would it be like to have a selfless forum

[bluedragon]

I'm posting here cause this is related to pride and altruism.
I was inspired by the thread about senior members getting banned and how the ego pushes some people to "go kittywompus".
I was thinking how would it be like to create a forum where nobody had a username, nor a signature. Everybody would just interact for the purpose of helping and getting help, not for showing others that they know enough to help others, or that they are an interesting person for having an interesting question or problem. You would never be able to guess who posted something. Not only would you not know who the forum members are, and which of them started a thread - you wouldn't even be able to guess when 2 posts belong to the same person, unless his style was so original and showed so much in what he wrote in that post that you were able to recognize him. Any attempt of a member to identify himself or to claim authorship of any previous post would result in his post being put on hold until he edits it to say the same thing but without suggesting any revealing information about his identity.
Do you think it could work?

[Annabelle]

Yes, I think it would be a good idea.

[Ralph]

hard to hold members from exposing themselves.

Also, why annonymous? Identity is a good thing. One of the primary forum functions is socializing. You can't build relationships with nameless posts

[Brutha]

Under anonymity people are misbehave more rather than less.
4chan doesn't happen to be a good example of an ego less message board.

[bluedragon]

Has it been tried ? Except for that example with 4chan which I'm having trouble understanding what it is. As far as I understand, the forum is highly liberal and allows user to post anything. Not a suitable example.
Why would someone want to promote his ego, if nobody would be able to recognize him the next time he posts something?
As for misbehaving, moderators could ban someone's ip, just like on any other forum. So the user, although anonymous for other members, could not log in because of his ip, which will not be anonymous to the servers

[ruchirkc]

It would make a very boring, personality-less forum.

As for the ip-ban thing, it's very easy to circumvent that.

[Brutha]

Except for that example with 4chan which I'm having trouble understanding what it is.

It's one of the places where the group Anonymous formed which at the moment happens to see itself at war with Scientology.

Why would someone want to promote his ego, if nobody would be able to recognize him the next time he posts something?

The ego wants to be right and beat others.
It doesn't really matter whether others would recognize him.
Someone who participates in the comments of a youtube video also doesn't expect to be recognized another time by the people he speaks with.
As a result youtube commands provide one of the worst experiences in terms of having good discussions.
Trolls don't need to feel recognized but are quite content with driving other people insane.

As for misbehaving, moderators could ban someone's ip, just like on any other forum.

Most people don't have a static IP these days. Moderation is about detecting patterns which needs information.

[bluedragon]

Trolls don't need to feel recognized but are quite content with driving other people insane.

I must agree here, as with the Youtube thing. The comments there drive me insane even without participating. Especially when a great singer does a mistake or sings poorly, and some people start criticizing him ruthlessly.
I guess a selfless forum isn't such a good idea after all.
However, a forum like this one also lead to people taking pride in themselves, especially with the "junior/senior member" and number of posts. I can't say I feel the same now as I did when I wrote my first post. Hm... maybe it is not the time and the place to get rid of our egos yet

[Rose of Cairo]

Originally Posted by bluedragon

However, a forum like this one also lead to people taking pride in themselves, especially with the "junior/senior member" and number of posts.

Really? But the junior/senior thing only depends on the number of posts. It's not difficult to write a lot of posts, that's nothing to be particularly proud of. I have lots of posts but many of them are pretty useless lines like "Haha hilarious ". I also spent many posts with ranting, venting, flirting or socializing randomly, without contrbuting much. So, just spend a lot of times on the boards and write lots of comments and you'll be a top member soon.

As for your original question, I think such a forum definitely is realizable. However, it really helps me to know someone's background when I try to help them. If I reply to someone that I know is female, broke up with her boyfriend two months ago, holds the limiting belief that she's dumb and has issues with overweight, then I won't do it the same way as if it's someone I know absolutely nothing about. If we weren't able to recognize each other, I guess we wouldn't be able to support each other in such a personalized way.

Plus, we'd try to guess who the other one is all the time. At least that's definitely what I'd do "Hmm, now he's talking about meditating.. is this the guy who said he'd meditate every day one week ago??"

[SimonaRich]

I think it is better to know whom you talk to and leaving a signature lets others contact you. That is a good thing because you can help even more people this way.

[ladee]

Good grief!!! Ya'll would know it was me because I use the southern term Ya'll