Doc Searls stated not long ago in an article, that “identity without anonimity is like mathematics without the zero”. And in Internet math, the matter of “being anonymous” has always been a part of the possibilities of expression. We all know that, in the end, no one is an anonymous being in the Internet; that if someone has the means to it, he could track you down easily -IPs are stored in any server that routes our connection. Of course, there are ways to make this tracking harder, but they’re not perfect.

Why is anonimity part of the expression rules of the Internet? Because in many cases, it’s impossible to declare politic opinions without suffering the consequences of it. There’s a huge number of countries all over the world that obsessively control what their citizens declare, and exert a direct censorship over those who cross the line. Anonimity is here one condition to the appearing of disagreements in a frame that guarantees the possibility to express opinion without being sanctioned for it.

Of course, there’s also a darker side; for example, the use of anonimity in the Internet to insult or vandalize contents, as it happens at wikis. But those are the risks of a mean that doesn’t tolerate the strict forms of contents regulation like the ones television or radio has.

The recent changes in Wikipedia show again this tension between anonimity and the possibilities to build knowledge. Should we let anyone modify the contents or should we at least force them to register to create new articles? By going for the second option, we’d be enforcing the “need” of limiting -at least a little- the possibilities of the users anonimity to contribute to the Wikipedia -although, those who wished to add text to an existing article could still do it like the have until now.

Opening spaces of participation in the Net implies not only to obtain its benefits -that our readers help us build better contents- but also its negative parts -perjurious or vandalic attacks. In many cases, certain criteria ends up operating by restricting certain possibilities of expression, but also imposing certain controls based on common sense. In my case, I think one of the things that someone who has opened a space of participation in the Net, like a phorum or a blog, has to take care of is to proved a space of participation that supports the discussion of ideas. If our best readers don’t feel encouraged to participate because every idea they express is brutally attacked by some troll, we’re doing very little to take care of that space.

Besides the fact that trolls are part of the Net’s floklore back from the newsgroups times, the important thing is to encourage the discussion of ideas, or provide a platform for that.

The internet usually is a sort of bitter place on this; there’s always someone who, instead of focusing on the arguments, attacks the messenger -an old retoric trap- or someone who just insults around. Much before blogs, there already were labels when managing discussions on mail lists and newsgroups, such as the famous “off topic”. That is: the one who went out the discussion topic was sanctioned. If he wanted to talk about something else, he could open a new line and period. Not to mention the role of phorum and mailing lists moderators; there was always someone watching for certain rules to be respected. In the end, it’s almost a common sense decision: “I don’t like censorship, but something has to be done in order to prevent this space to become a insult board”. Or to prevent the contents from be vandalized or openly manipulated, such is the case of Wikipedia.

So much for Web 2.0, but we end up discussing the same topics furiously debated in newsgroups and phorums in the early 90’s. And the worst thing is that it seems like we’re going backwards in the debate level of the topic.