Convincing people the value of anonymity...

[wayner@cs.cornell.edu (Peter Wayner)]

I would think that many people who hang out on technical
newsgroups would be very familiar with the anonymous review
procedures practiced by academic journals. There is some value
when a reviewer can speak their mind about a paper without
worry of revenge. Of course everyone assures me that the system is never
really anonymous because there are alwys only three or four people qualified
to review each paper. :-) 

Perhaps we should go out of our way to make anonymous, technical
comments about papers and ideas in the newsgroups to fascilitate
the development of an anonymous commenting culture in cypberspace.

-Peter Wayner