Forced anonymity is bad because, while it can isolate information from context
and while it protects the poster, it removes all traces of identity. Some sense
of identity is needed for discussions to be able to be followed. Saying "Hello,
I'm the person from two posts ago" becomes hard for people to follow and can be
easily faked. If forced anonymity is in place, although the user is protected,
discussion is meaningless.

However, identity-based discussion isn't always the right way to go, either.
Reputation is harmful because someone providing accurate information early on
will be assumed to post accurate information in the future and can pass things on
as being legitimate with nothing but their name supporting them. And if a user
makes a mistake early on, he will either have to discard his identity for a new
one or have his negative reputation follow him where he goes. Reputation is often
bound to a username, and that user can be harmed if he uses the same username on
a different site or can have his reputation harmed by someone mimicking him by
means of copying his username. So user-submitted identification is bad because of
reputation.

I believe that the solution to the problem of identity on the internet is simple:
identities should be maintained only within the discussion that they're relevant
to, and should be randomly assigned within that discussion. There should also be
an option for anonymity available, but it should not be the default option.

Implementing this kind of a system would be easy to do. Upon entering the forums,
a username enters their personal identification phrase, or their password. This
is half of the user's ID. The other half is a random (and hidden) code generated
upon a thread's creation. In combination of the two, the user has a unique
identification that's independent of the computer submitting the data and the
time of submission as well as limited only to that person's role within a
discussion thread. I believe that a system like this would overcome the
weaknesses of completely anonymous discussion as well as common identification
based discussion while combining the strengths of both. While not necessary, I
think that there should be an option for a post to be made anonymously, but this
should be highly discouraged. This would be similar to the heaven ID on 2ch.

Another benefit of using a system where a user could kind of login using a
passphrase is that he could have features such as thread watching/bookmarking,
highlighting of his own posts, post ignoring of IDs within a thread, and other
various features that are available in normal forums that anonymous forums lack
due to their account-free nature.

>>3
4-ch's system uses one's IP address to generate IDs. I'm suggesting a system a
system that's password based instead. 420chan's system generates random names,
but like 4-ch's system, it's IP based, and it's also just a name, so anyone can
imitate it. Like 420chan's, though, the meaningless name would be the default
rather than being anonymous (like on most boards).

>>4
On larger boards, Anonymity without some form of ID can lead to problems. If
you look at that one imageboard, you'll see a lot of people talking to
themselves, whether to troll people or bump up their threads or any other thing
like that. Additionally, in a lot of threads, you'll see people saying "Hey,
it's that guy from this post again!"

A lot of people know how to use tripcodes but don't use them for what some
people feel as being their correct purposes, or just use them for attention.
Tripcodes can also be hacked if given enough time (and occasionally are). A
forced-tripcode system would get rid of the people that talk to themselves as
well as help people maintain positions in a discussion. IDs would also be
thread-specific; you see user LOOKATME!Ep8pui8Vw or whatever all the time on
normal boards. In this system, he'd be Ep8pui8Vw in one thread and TcT.PTG1.2 in
another.

I don't think that someone maintaining an identity by default in a thread would
really lead to any problems unless you were a troll and pretending to be other
people. As long as your identity is basically stuck in one thread, you're still
basically anonymous. You could post all about how you have this horrible
medical condition in one thread and then post about your day to day life in
another thread, and, like our pre-existing anonymous boards, only the
administrator or moderators would know that you were both people. And if you
really did say some horrible, shocking thing in an earlier in a longer thread
and don't want to be linked to it again later down the road, you could just
enter a different password and have the program spit out a different randomized
ID.