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It seems to me that the whole purpose of Dakka (or one of them) is to be able to anonymously talk to other gamers about gaming issues. For example:

You think your friend pulling something over on you during games, and you need to be able to check up on him without offending him? Dakka

You suspect your local gaming store tournament organizer made a questionable call during a game? Dakka

You feel the need to vent and you don't want your venting to make more problems? Dakka

You trying to find a hard to find model for a friend...or want to show up at a local tournie with something new with the element of surprise? Dakka


So why then do people find out your dakka avatar and stalk you on Dakka, peeping at what your saying...taking offense, or just plain being nosey. Who actually goes by their real name on Dakka? Obviously if I wanted to confront you, or include you, I would have talked to you face to face. If I wanted to just vent, or find out if I'm the one in the wrong afterall...why can't I have that chance? If there no more privacy in the world?

There was some drama at my local store...and a friend of mine wanted to find the best possible way to deal with that sort of situation diplomatically, causing the least amount of tension and bullcrap. So some people from the store find his post, and the next thing you know it's spreading like wildfire. Everyone who goes to the store reads it. And while he posted no names, people are getting offended, and apologizing, and even more drama is created. People who posted their honest opinion anonymously are now being called out.

I try to find things for one of my friends related to 40k. I can't use the best source, Dakka, cuz he's always spying on all my posts.

If someone is reading this and is offended....well then quit reading my posts!!! I post anonymously for a reason! If I wanted to talk to you...you'd hear my voice. Until then, quit cyberstalking!

Anyone have a similar situation?

Sounds like they iz in your interwebz, spahin your postz.

This, however, is why I play with friends and not the LFGS.

I do not share such a problem. my advice is simply let them. the more you let it effect you, the more you attach yourself to the situation and the worse it gets.

I have never heard of this happening before, though I'm not common at my local gaming store. How did people link him to his avatar?

I don't think it would matter from a gaming perspective... my dice are rubbish anyway.
But from a venting perspective you would have to be careful... especially if you knew the person you were on about was on the same site.

Personally I have never had a situation like this come up, but then again I take steps to avoid it as well as the store where I play.

Step 1: I never bash people I know or don't know, using names, anonymously, or screenames, on dakka...EVER.

Step 2: The guy who runs the store where I play is very proffesional about how he runs it. If he ever suspected drama or suspected someone of causing drama those people would be kicked out.

Step 3: I avoid confrontation. If you don't like how someone is playing, how someone interprets the rules, or just plain don't like someone then don't play them. If I don't like someones army or attitude I just don't play them even if they want to play me.

I suggest the people at your store or the people who are having trouble at your store follow these steps. Also, The owner of the store should step in and tell them to cool it and apologize or get out.

I hope your situation at the store gets better. No one wants drama with their 40K.

Haven't had this problem either and I've let several friends know about my account. The thing is to remember that you are not in fact anonymous due to the fact that we all have to have a unique username.

In a sense the account is more of a mask.

Mr Nobody wrote:I have never heard of this happening before, though I'm not common at my local gaming store. How did people link him to his avatar?

I'm not really sure to be honest with you. I think he advertised for the store on Dakka, maybe, to spark interest in a tournament.

None of my friends use Dakka as far as I know (and I outright asked them or tried to get them to join) so I never get this kind of drama. I however have done some cyberstalking on FB, but then again all my friends are FB stalkers so we really dont care (and actually expect people to stalk us).

Sanguinis wrote:Personally I have never had a situation like this come up, but then again I take steps to avoid it as well as the store where I play.

Step 1: I never bash people I know or don't know, using names, anonymously, or screenames, on dakka...EVER.

Step 2: The guy who runs the store where I play is very proffesional about how he runs it. If he ever suspected drama or suspected someone of causing drama those people would be kicked out.

Step 3: I avoid confrontation. If you don't like how someone is playing, how someone interprets the rules, or just plain don't like someone then don't play them. If I don't like someones army or attitude I just don't play them even if they want to play me.

I suggest the people at your store or the people who are having trouble at your store follow these steps. Also, The owner of the store should step in and tell them to cool it and apologize or get out.

I hope your situation at the store gets better. No one wants drama with their 40K.

Step 1...he wasn't really bashing anyone...he was asking advice on what to do if someone who's not playing, but there with someone who is playing, confronts him and makes him uncomfortable.
Step 2...the storeowner is great...but at the same time the economy is rough and I can understand not wanting to throw customers out. Also, the guy wasn't yelling...I was there and didn't hear it myself.
Step 3...My friend was trying to avoid confrontation by asking for advice anonymously on Dakka. He loves to play, but can't enjoy himself if people are being overly aggressive...and he was asking how to deal with it.

I guess it would be nice if people could post on dakka WITHOUT their signatures...I look at topics...but obviously some people are looking at authors.

FWIW, I don't think anonymity is the purpose of Dakka or the wider internet. That's an interesting assumption, however.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:None of my friends use Dakka as far as I know (and I outright asked them or tried to get them to join) so I never get this kind of drama. I however have done some cyberstalking on FB, but then again all my friends are FB stalkers so we really dont care (and actually expect people to stalk us).

Facebook is ALOT less anonymous...heck you're expected to post pictures and status update your whole life for the world to see.

The fact that dakka is thriving tells me that people need an outlet outside of their friends and local gaming stores.


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Manchu wrote:FWIW, I don't think anonymity is the purpose of Dakka or the wider internet. That's an interesting assumption, however.

I don't think anonymity is the purpose of the internet or dakka either...I'm just saying if some stuff happened at the store and someone seeks advice about it on dakka, then why do people from the store get worked up? Obviously if my friend wanted a confrontation he wouldnt be on dakka.

I just think people are generally too nosey...and you can't even express an opinion anymore without offending someone. If you can't do it on a post under a pseudonym....where can you?

Never heard of this happening before. I think some of the people at the FLGS may be on here but I have no idea what their screen names are and would not be interested in looking up what they had to say unless they specifically asked me to look at a topic.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:None of my friends use Dakka as far as I know (and I outright asked them or tried to get them to join) so I never get this kind of drama. I however have done some cyberstalking on FB, but then again all my friends are FB stalkers so we really dont care (and actually expect people to stalk us).

..... I thought that's what facebook was for.

my friends take FB stalking to a whole new level ;D

Which is why I dont have my real name or really any real info past my birthday on there.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:my friends take FB stalking to a whole new level ;D

Which is why I dont have my real name or really any real info past my birthday on there.

I'm 102 years old on Facebook...have a dragon as my pic...but people know its me and I know people know its me.

I just didn't expect to be called out or my friends called out for asking for advice to a situtation on dakka without naming names...gheesh.

We usually refer to RelicNews for ruling (Dakka YMDC tends to get really.....confusing) that's outside of the FAQs. Dakka is where I use as a creative outlet and chatting with people about warhammer in general.

I come to Dakka to ask questions of the collective wisdom regarding what to do with my game, and I can occasionally contribute something. I have never had drama from my gaming, and that's going over 30 years all told.

Manchu wrote:FWIW, I don't think anonymity is the purpose of Dakka or the wider internet. That's an interesting assumption, however.

If you want to say that Dakka has a purpose, it's that it let's people talk about gaming with a much wider crowd than they could ever know in person.

I'm pretty much the same person on Dakka that I am "irl" and I think that the people who know me in both contexts would agree.

With that in mind, I don't say anything on this forum to or about other users or people that I wouldn't say to their faces. It's a pretty good rule of thumb on and off message boards, really.

Portugal Jones wrote:

Manchu wrote:FWIW, I don't think anonymity is the purpose of Dakka or the wider internet. That's an interesting assumption, however.

If you want to say that Dakka has a purpose, it's that it let's people talk about gaming with a much wider crowd than they could ever know in person.

Yeah, that's more accurate IMO.

The underlying question I have lies in how the anonymity was lost. First off, nothing you do on the internet is anonymous. Hard to track down? Sure. Impossible? Not a chance. Let's call it psuedo-anonymity.

First off, I seriously doubt the point of Dakka is to be anonymous. I've not treated it like it is. Which is not to say that the point of Dakka is to NOT be anonymous. Dakka really appears to be neutral to the entire concept, at least, at a public level. I think that the issue here lies in that your friend messed up on the fundamentals of "how not to be found."

If you don't want to be found in an online community, you:
1. Provide as little information about yourself and location as possible (or false information)
2. Use a unique alias, unlike any other you've used before.
3. Use a unique (or no) avatar, unlike any other you've used before.
4. In the case of Dakka, you would have to not post any pictures of any highly unique models/terrain/whatever, or any battle reports for that matter.

For sufficent levels of paranoia, you'd also need:
5. A trusted proxy or alternate IP address
6. Possibly a public or otherwise non-personal computer.

You mentioned "find out your dakka avatar"... that violates rule 3. It could be the other party in question WAS a Dakka user or just stumbled onto the post by sheer luck. It could be possible that your friend made the mistake of providing too much detail into the situation. It could even be that the other guy came here to vent as well.



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Monster Rain wrote:I'm pretty much the same person on Dakka that I am "irl" and I think that the people who know me in both contexts would agree.

With that in mind, I don't say anything on this forum to or about other users or people that I wouldn't say to their faces. It's a pretty good rule of thumb on and off message boards, really.

This. My handle is publicly known amongst people, I have unique models posted, and my old Avatar was the standard in my CCS. But I keep that in mind when I post stuff.

Yup. As a rule, you are not really anonymous, and it's best not to post anything you wouldn't be comfortable saying to a person's face.

If you REALLY want to be anonymous, you need to take extra steps, like Daedalus outlined.

I know at least 10 posters IRL, and also know that a number of folks that frequent my FLGS also post (and read!) on DakkaDakka.
I have been recognized at tourneys by at least 2 other folks because of DakkaDakka as well.

Good stuff.

If nothing else, it helps keep things in perspective. At least twice I have been called out on one of my Dakka rants by someone I game with.

I know some of the people that have accounts here, but then again this is a forum on the internet, next to anything can happen. It seems like I don't know the whole story, but OP, the people in question need to just grow up.

Anonymous? I hand out images of myself with every post and my profile has several items of my contact information.

Dakka is like a wargaming family to me rather than just some anonymous board to talk on.

That's why you generally add elements to your posts online to make it so one could not link the author to real world situations.

This type of stuff has happened way before the internet, IE: printed media.

There was this magazine article in college I read about an author using social media to essentially stalk someone, but she admitted that she changed names in order so people could not find the people she mentioned or actually link the author to any crimes.

Shenra wrote:It seems to me that the whole purpose of Dakka (or one of them) is to be able to anonymously talk to other gamers about gaming issues.

I do not quite understand where you get the idea that the purpose of dakka (or any other online community) is anonymity. All the examples you list sound as if you were living in a world of permanent danger.

I use dakka for looking at pictures of miniatures and talking about them, the rules and the fluff - with a larger number of people than I could otherwise. And I can choose what I talk about much better, since there is much more variety of topics as opposed to the number of topics discussed at any hobby club or wargame store at any given time. Not to mention I can do it from home. Anonymity does not play into it at all.

So I guess the reason you are disappointed is that you came to dakka with expectations it was not made to fulfil.

If you left out the word marked in red, the quoted sentence makes complete sense to me, but with it, it does not.

Skylifter wrote:

Shenra wrote:It seems to me that the whole purpose of Dakka (or one of them) is to be able to anonymously talk to other gamers about gaming issues.

I do not quite understand where you get the idea that the purpose of dakka (or any other online community) is anonymity. All the examples you list sound as if you were living in a world of permanent danger.

I use dakka for looking at pictures of miniatures and talking about them, the rules and the fluff - with a larger number of people than I could otherwise. And I can choose what I talk about much better, since there is much more variety of topics as opposed to the number of topics discussed at any hobby club or wargame store at any given time. Not to mention I can do it from home. Anonymity does not play into it at all.

So I guess the reason you are disappointed is that you came to dakka with expectations it was not made to fulfil.

If you left out the word marked in red, the quoted sentence makes complete sense to me, but with it, it does not.

Many dakkaites, myself included, often come to dakka to have gray area rules clarified, because they are unsatisfied with the ruling which occurred at a local game or with a friend. Oftentimes many find out that their friend has been deliberately cheating, or that their TO is clueless or using an older edition.

Othertimes, dakkaites, myself included, run into a touchy situation and would like objective advice on how to deal with said touchy situations. Or maybe sometimes dakkaites just want to vent because something pissed them off, but they don't want to do it in front of their friends or during a tournament and ruin it for other people or cause grudges.

So they can come to Dakka, where many users are unknown to others, and from areas far from their own, and vent or seek advice. I guess as I have been anonymous up until just recently, that I did not like it when others began "investigations" to find out who I am. It's not like I told people my username.

And if you don't tell anyone who you are, or leave identifiers, then yes, I do think you can expect anonymity within an online community.

You did not list any of my reasons for using dakka. But I, and others, do use dakka for things such as those I listed. So my original complaint was that when people try to "connect the dots" instead of just allowing you your anonymity and vent, they shouldn't. I noticed no one on here put that they try to find out who posters are in real life.

Im not sure the point of this thread (no offense).
Someone posted a query/rant on dakka and someone else decided to cyber-track him down and tell others what he had done?

Uhm thats the internet Im afraid. Anything you post becomes public domain/knowledge and depending on what it was, can and does get tracked down/"exposed".

I take your point that your friend just wanted some anonomous advice but as posted above if you truely want anonimity you need to take very careful precautions.

Sure as you said people shouldnt "connect the dots" but they do. Some people are petty/malicious/bitter. That is life.

Therefore in the future there are three options:
do not post on dakka/websits/forums
post and be prepared to face the consequences if one of the above petty people decided to "investigate"
post but take extremely careful measures to make sure you arent tracked down.