C4 Blog by Fishbowl Solutions

Anonymity doesn’t belong in Enterprise 2.0 technology. It *does* belong in Web 2.0 technology but not when it is used in the workplace by employees for employees. Why? Several reasons.1. You are already a known entity in the workplace. You were hired to do a job, to influence, to solve, to produce. You Johny Q. So you’re already known. Start with that. There is no reasonable expectation of electronic anonymity when you are doing your job (most HR and corporate tech policies outline this already). Furthermore in phone calls, face to face interactions and email interactions (again, colleague to colleague B2B and E2E not B2C or C2C) your identity is not hidden. It is an asset. An email from Sam in R&D carries a certain gravitas especially when talking about code or performance or bugs where as an email from Patricia at the front desk on the same topic does not carry the same weight. It’s not that Patricia’s ideas on bug solutions are not valuable, but they are subject to a greater burden of proof. I want to know the proverbial “says who?”

2. Not being anonymous is not the same as being known. Take wiki technology. In order to edit a wiki I have to log in with my user name. It’s not anonymous. But neither is my name plastered all over the entries I create or edit. They are buried in some log file somewhere mainly so that if I write something stupid or criminal I can be held responsible. But here is the key: the internal culture is such that there is no “chilling effect” on me (that I am aware of anyway) that keeps me from saying what I know is true and appropriate. I suspect the same is true of *most* places that have an enterprise wiki. So corporate culture is key, but if you are working in a repressive “YES-MAN” kind of a job my guess is that you’re probably not allowed to read this blog either so we can chat in 5 years when your business catches up with the rest of us.

3. Outliers get rightfully marginalized as more users participate. In the work environment, if Billy tags a document with the word “ass” it’s probably an outlier. It will become statistically and influentially marginalized as a tag (or useful search term or accurate metadata) as more users tag the document more accurately. This gets to the core of the good behavior argument I hear so often about Enterprise 2.0 technology. “What if someone posts a picture of their XXXXXX on our intranet?” Sorry, not a new kind of question. The scenario and technology has changed, the core issue has not. And the reality is that there are already mechanisms in place to deal with poor behavior in most work places. Anonymity in this case is an invitation for more not less misbehavior because of the lack of enforcable oversight.

4. Going anonymous is bad for business. It gives up huge amounts of potential in business intelligence, efficiency, prediction markets and expert systems. Take a simple thing like a 5 star rating system for a web site or document or picture or product idea or whatever. There are times when it is vital that everybody gets one vote. But what if votes were weighted based on expertise which was determined by the votes of others who interact (produce/consume) with similar information?

5. there are still times when anonymity is important but it’s probably still tied to web 1.0 technology like organizational surveys. And if you’re the kind of person who can only say the truth behind a shield of “ANON” then you should think about taking some conflict communications classes or looking for another job. I think it is incumbent upon us as employees to be in a constant feedback cycle with our immediate bosses and constituents to provide constructive feedback not “you’re an idiot” feedback in the “do you have anything else to add” section of a survey sent out by HR once a year.

So the point is that, as public facing Web 2.0 systems face angry users who find that their drunken pictures and silly activity streams are not completely private, organizations should be able to dodge or deflect this bullet.  Check your corporate computer usage policies – I’m sure its already covered.