Freeversation
Productivity
anonymous group discussion
SHOW HN2011
Freeversation
Can anonymous chat within identified groups create better discussions?
freeversation.com#anonymous discussion#group chat#anonymous feedback#employee feedback
165points
104comments
#46of 1,097 in 2011
Top 5%of 2011 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
10 positive, 32 neutral or asking, 7 mixed, 16 critical, out of 65 comments about the project. Thread score -0.08.
Idea: 10 for, 8 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 7 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Anonymous discussion of sensitive topics is useful and fills a real gap.
From 3 comments
A forum was recently launched at work which allows anonymous posts and comments. It has been both good and bad. The good: Open discussions about sensitive topics with fear being…
varikin on HNI await the results of this experiment with interest. My gut feeling is that: A) To first order this won't really work. You can't really be anonymous in a closed group. In a…
mechanical_fish on HNI think it's a cool idea, kinda like LikeALittle but for organizational stuff. To pre-select the group of people who can participate, you might want to look at a model like…
athst on HN
Interesting idea worth watching.
From 3 comments
I love this kind of attempt at innovation. I hope you are able to stick with this enough to find a userbase for it.
eavc on HNNeat, I had thought about putting this same concept into action, though it seemed like anonymity would be really difficult until you had a large enough user base. Otherwise, you…
nowarninglabel on HNThis looks really cool, I like the layout. I have been working on something similar, (http://mobilethread.com), which lets you setup/join anonymous chat threads and is designed…
mtdev on HN
Objections
Writing style makes authors easy to identify in small groups.
From 4 comments
Possibly. However, I've found that it's fairly easy to identify who is saying what based on writing style, grammar and punctuation habits. Any HR person will tell you that's how…
spking on HNThis immediately strikes me as a "why didn't I think of that" idea, but in practice (in my workplace at least) everyone would figure out who was who based on the writing style…
highace on HNTo lend some credence to the "it's easy to tell who's writing what", we recently used Rypple as a team review aid for team members to anonymously ask for feedback from the rest…
ryan_brunner on HNI suppose it depends on the size of the company, but I can't imagine any HR person at a co with >20 ee's that could identify someone based on their writing style unless it was…
hammock on HN
Anonymity is weak against the operator and small-group inference; privacy concerns.
From 4 comments
This is a good point. To date I have not had an anonymous survey in a small group that hasn't bitten me in the ass afterwards. I also find some anonymous surveys interesting when…
bugsy on HNI've worked in environments where it would be trivial to get an email of your SSN the moment you visit an HR online survey, let alone complete it. It's possible to promise…
qjz on HNYou'd think a service revolving around privacy (i.e. anonymity) would go to greater lengths to use SSL across the entire site. Otherwise, fantastic idea. Can't say I haven't…
windexh8er on HNIs everyone anonymous or pseudo-anonymous (My messages are attributed to anonymous35 or something)? If so, as people leave and email/anonymous names disappear you can identify…
drivebyacct2 on HN
Anonymous forums get dominated by trolls and negativity without moderation.
From 2 comments
A forum was recently launched at work which allows anonymous posts and comments. It has been both good and bad. The good: Open discussions about sensitive topics with fear being…
varikin on HNTried, failed miserably. Look up bored at butler. The general course of events is: Person A will make a comment about person B, person B will complain (under some misguided…
veyron on HN
Requests
Obfuscate writing style, e.g. stripping punctuation or translating text.
From 3 comments
Perhaps you could run each message through Google translate or something similar (e.g. English -> French -> English) to obfuscate the writing style. Otherwise, as others have…
scrrr on HNYou could probably strip all punctuation and capitalization from any user input so that the style remains fairly obfuscated. IMO it's punctuation and capitalization that usually…
jabo on HNPerhaps you can try translating the message to another language and back. Then present the resulting text to the user for corrections. The resulting grammar and punctuation could…
terio on HN
Add moderation, voting or thresholds for comments.
From 2 comments
How does moderation work? I could see the bad seeds, who contribute nothing to a discussion, being filtered out by community moderation? Even taking an approach similar to HN…
j79 on HNWe're planning to implement a rating system for comments. In terms of participants who contribute nothing to the discussion, keep in mind that whoever starts the conversation…
dbs11 on HN
Add markdown support.
From 1 comment
very nice idea. I had an idea similar to this but it didn't involve the anonymous aspect you bring in. It would be good if you included markdown
Omnipresent on HN
Questions
How does this differ from IRC or regular forums?
From 2 comments
Could someone explain how this is different from a regular web forum, IRC, Usenet, or pretty much any other form of communication that doesn't require you to reveal your real…
gnosis on HNHow many times does irc need to be re-invented before it's considered fully invented?
jpr on HN
How does moderation work?
From 1 comment
How does moderation work? I could see the bad seeds, who contribute nothing to a discussion, being filtered out by community moderation? Even taking an approach similar to HN…
j79 on HN
Alternatives named
IRC
From 3 comments
Could someone explain how this is different from a regular web forum, IRC, Usenet, or pretty much any other form of communication that doesn't require you to reveal your real…
gnosis on HNFor the bigger picture of use case mentioned here, what's wrong with IRC. And for the specific use case mentioned in the blog as in School/College, I don't understand how hiding…
uast23 on HNHow many times does irc need to be re-invented before it's considered fully invented?
jpr on HN
Chatham House Rule
From 1 comment
real world analogue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule
bxc on HN
Yammer
From 1 comment
I think it's a cool idea, kinda like LikeALittle but for organizational stuff. To pre-select the group of people who can participate, you might want to look at a model like…
athst on HN
Delphi method
From 1 comment
There's a technique to create forecasts based on this concept. The Delphi method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method If I recall it correctly, it's an iterative process:…
jvandenbroeck on HN