As I suggested a few weeks ago, there might be a lot to gain if e-participation systems offered “more flexible ways of dealing with identity” than the one-size-fits-all approach that’s currently predominant:
- By giving participants better overall control of how much information they want to reveal about themselves (vis-a-vis the application as well as other participants)
- By offering more fine-grained identity and anonymity options at the activity or process level (not just the project level)
- Default identity setting: This would be defined by the convener/facilitator, a user’s identity is either shown or not shown along with the idea they submit (anonymous idea)
- Default override option: Here, the user either has the option to change whatever the default setting is (i.e. reveal her identity when the default is set to anonymous and vice versa), or the user doesn’t have that option
- Identity revelation: For anonymous contributions, this setting defines if the identity will be revealed during or at the end of the process: always (all anonymous ideas will be revealed at the end), never (all anonymous ideas stay anonymous and can’t be revealed), or optional (the user decides if and when to reveal their identity)
- Default: user identity is shown
- Override: yes, user can choose to post questions anonymously
- Revelation: no (the identity of the post remains hidden and can’t be revealed; however, the user can choose to post publicly in the comments)
2. User checks option “add question anonymously”
3. Anonymous question appears (user identity not shown)
4. User chooses to reveal identity
Technically, this applies to the comment section, not the original question. But you can see how the same would apply if the user were to reveal the authorship of her original question.
5. Posting appears with user identified
Again, in the case of Quora this applies to the comment section, not the original question.
It’s obvious how this could be useful. In brainstorming, it is crucial to suspend judgment during the ideation process. Allowing participants to post anonymously would invite participation from those who are otherwise too afraid to post half-baked ideas. Requiring all participants to post anonymously might serve as a nice equalizer in cases where a lot of strong voices are dominating the discussions.
Related posts:
{ 2 trackbacks }