One idea I've always thought would be neat is if you could easily generate a new account for each sub-ieddit or even each post, so other people could verify it's the same person commenting multiple times.
It would be best if these comments were not linked back to their original account, in case ieddit is hacked. One way to do that would be a cryptographically random token stored in the user's browser (a cookie, etc). If the user clears their cookies they can no longer comment under that name but that's ok.
if one were to implement this functionality, public keys could be stored server side and private keys generated on a per-account basis by a user entering a password into client-side javascript, the same way seamless pgp messaging would work.
honestly though, i think it would be far simpler to just create an alt-account for such a purpose. account generation right now is trivial.
2 other feature requests (different poster from above, but consolidating them here):
* can more threads be visible from subreddit page? Like at least 100. Something like hacker news or reddit. Have a lot less white space. * Have a user preferences setting to make the anonymous post box checked by default, so person can uncheck it if they want to post non-anonymously.
I'm not keen on idea of spewing new accounts for every post. The idea of anonymity is readers can't tell if comments are coming from the same person or multiple. If there is a username (even a temporary one) connecting comments together, that is pseudonymity rather than anonymity.
Maybe add another box for pseudonymous posts that generates a random tripcode for identification? It could show up like "Anon [XXXX]" XXXX would be the random tripcode. You could obviously use css for boxes, color, and whatnot to make it look good. Edit: by doing so you could also improve the anonymous function by making it actually anonymous and giving a warning that you won't be able to delete or edit the post maybe after a set amount of time where the db trace to your account is erased.
/u/cc-d, I agree with above. I notice I can find all my anonymous posts by clicking on my profile icon. That's bad, the idea of anonymity is that association between the post and the person is destroyed. If you have to retain it to deal with abuse, then fine, though I hope you can discard it after a short while (24 hours, or 1 week, or whatever). But either way, users (including the poster) should not be able to access it after a short editing period.
I've made 1000s of anon posts on slashdot and it is a feature, not a bug, that I have no way to find out which ones they were. Think of the US state department now asking to see all of people's social media posts. If you have a way to get all your anon posts they can make you turn them over. So you should have no way to get them.
Added: the "edited" asterisk shouldn't show up for edits made in the first 5 minutes after original post, like on reddit. (On reddit it's 3 minutes but whatever).
It would be best if these comments were not linked back to their original account, in case ieddit is hacked. One way to do that would be a cryptographically random token stored in the user's browser (a cookie, etc). If the user clears their cookies they can no longer comment under that name but that's ok.