Anonymous posters

You'll all be pleased to see that comments have been unhidden and this blog is once again interactive.

I may post about the reasons behind this later in the week, when the results of the Male Principle Speaker election come out - I'll be holding fire until then.

I was asked by email whether I'd annoyed some feminists, which prompted me to go back through my last dozen or so posts to see what on Earth I might have said to make someone assume that - thankfully it's not the case.

Moving on, I've been trying to work out why I dislike anonymous posters so much. Here are some jumbled thoughts in the form of a bulletted list (symbolically representing other bullets that their comments conjure up for me)

• Anonymous posters almost always post something narky... leading me to believe they have deliberately posted anonymously, rather than simply being unfamiliar with the technology, or accidently logged themselves out - which is, of course, perfectly acceptable.
• In which case they are untrustworthy.
• If there was a fire - I wouldn't know if everyone had escaped the blog safely.
• How do you develop a relationship with someone who wont tell you their name?
• How do you have a proper conversation with them, or are they just here to throw around unpleasantnesses?
• If an anonymous person makes an accusation, you are unclear if this is a person with a track record of honesty / lying, do they have special knowledge or a tedious hobby horse? They may even be hypocritically accusing someone of something they do themselves.
• It's rude - and manners are very important.
• It's an ineffective way of arguing as no one takes an anonymous comment as seriously as a signed one.

Now, I've no intention of banning, through blog magic, anonymous posters, but I will make the point that if you are unable to log in / have no account or whatever just sign your name at the bottom of the post - it's not hard and at the end of the day your comment will be taken more seriously PLUS you wont be sneaking around. No one likes a sneak do they?