Dmitri the troll versus Dmitri the source

One of the issues of being online is anonymity. The net lets you do as you please, but it also gives your mind the permission to act like a Dungeon Siege pack mule, if you understand the reference. One effect of this distinction is that it’s harder to accept an anonymous source online with a good point to make if he’s also known by the asshattery of his actions within games.

The character known as Dmitri is a case in point. He’s been banned from playing Star Wars Galaxies because of his trolling activities, such as calling out lesbians during an in-game commitment the “scum of society,” and a “bunch of liberal, hippie, homo lovin’ scum” and many others. Upon his banishment from SWG, he was even noted as saying that SOE had “no room for individuals to have more conservative, traditional leanings.”

At the same time, he’s also been featured in a point-counterpoint article on “Computer Games” magazine. In it, he talks about gaming from the conservative standpoint while Joseph DeLappe, a liberal who enters games in America’s Army and writes the names of soldiers who died in Iraq as part of his “Dead in Iraq” project, offers the other side of the viewpoints raised.

The question is, how do you rely on an anonymous source online, especially one who has also garnered a particularly nasty reputation? In the real world, journalists are willing to use an anonymous source as a lead, but only until someone is ready to go on record.

The problem in the online world is that the “anonymouses” of this world, with their screen names and handles gain an identity of his own online. Where can lines be drawn? News tippers to our site don’t necessarily acquire the same kind of rep as opposed to Dmitri, and we usually don’t acquire statements from anonymous sources. Would you, however, take the word of a source who gives an informed and intelligent opinion when you know his “anonymity” to be that of a pack mule’s?

One of the issues of being online is anonymity. The net lets you do as you please, but it also gives your mind the permission to act like a Dungeon Siege pack mule, if you understand the reference. One effect of this distinction is that it’s harder to accept an anonymous source online with a good point to make if he’s also known by the asshattery of his actions within games.

The character known as Dmitri is a case in point. He’s been banned from playing Star Wars Galaxies because of his trolling activities, such as calling out lesbians during an in-game commitment the “scum of society,” and a “bunch of liberal, hippie, homo lovin’ scum” and many others. Upon his banishment from SWG, he was even noted as saying that SOE had “no room for individuals to have more conservative, traditional leanings.”

At the same time, he’s also been featured in a point-counterpoint article on “Computer Games” magazine. In it, he talks about gaming from the conservative standpoint while Joseph DeLappe, a liberal who enters games in America’s Army and writes the names of soldiers who died in Iraq as part of his “Dead in Iraq” project, offers the other side of the viewpoints raised.

The question is, how do you rely on an anonymous source online, especially one who has also garnered a particularly nasty reputation? In the real world, journalists are willing to use an anonymous source as a lead, but only until someone is ready to go on record.

The problem in the online world is that the “anonymouses” of this world, with their screen names and handles gain an identity of his own online. Where can lines be drawn? News tippers to our site don’t necessarily acquire the same kind of rep as opposed to Dmitri, and we usually don’t acquire statements from anonymous sources. Would you, however, take the word of a source who gives an informed and intelligent opinion when you know his “anonymity” to be that of a pack mule’s?