Closed Anonymity

Summary

• The downside of using real names is the constant need for consideration, which is inherently burdensome.
  • This makes it challenging to focus on essential discussions.
  • While psychological safety is emphasized, building and maintaining it is daunting and often insufficient on its own.
• This is where "closed anonymity" comes into play.
  • While we want to use anonymity to avoid the inherent burden of real names, we also want to ensure governance.
  • Thus, "being anonymous within a specific organizational scope" is the balance we aim for.

Background

Are You Still Using Real Names?

Even today, we work under our real names.

Needless to say, using real names is burdensome. This is because, with clear visibility of ourselves and others, we must constantly be considerate in our speech and actions. We could say there is a constant heavy informational load, especially non-verbal. This may be acceptable in private or entertainment settings, but we are engineers, here to work. Just how long will we be engrossed in primitive non-verbal communication?

Ideally, we would want to revolutionize non-verbal communication itself, but that's a long journey, and we'll skip it this time. Instead, this article presents the concept of not using real names—in other words, anonymity.

The Power of Anonymity

The benefit of anonymous communication is the lack of necessary consideration. Or rather, you can't be considerate. Because you can't see the specific person on the other side, there's nothing to consider. Of course, one should maintain a basic level of courtesy as a human being, but as long as that minimum line is cleared, you're free to do as you wish.

Think about why the internet has developed to this extent. It's thanks to anonymity. Or perhaps thanks to virtual personas like handles or avatars, but in any case, real names are seldom used. This applies to open-source, which you all use without thinking. It was precisely because we could develop anonymously, or with similar virtual personas, that we have progressed so much. We didn't have to engage in unnecessary considerations and could spend that time on discussions and development.

We want to harness this lightness of anonymity.

Closed Anonymity

What Is It?

Closed Anonymity is the introduction of anonymity within a unit of organization.

Consider channels in Slack or Teams. Suppose there are seven people in a channel. Introducing closed anonymity here would make all statements within the channel anonymous. However, even though it's anonymous, it's clear it's one of those seven people. This is what closed anonymity is. Because it's only anonymous within a limited scope, every member within that scope becomes a potential contributor.

"Is That It?"

"Is that it?"

You might think. But this is surprisingly powerful.

As mentioned earlier, real names are burdensome. Anonymity is non-burdensome. Not low-burden. Non-burdened. It's "non-existent."

It might seem like a small difference, but as engineers, you should understand the power that a small difference can make. It's the same with generative AI. Those using AI coding assistants know how it feels to be told, "It's no different from copying and pasting into ChatGPT." You would think, "Not at all." It's simply copying and pasting, yet not just copying and pasting. A small difference in the effort of copying and pasting makes a massive impact.

The same idea applies to the concept of real names. See? Simple, right?

...... Don't be disheartened if you don't understand. Understanding concepts is challenging. This is precisely why there's a category like Knowledging, and why knowledge architects like me exist. Leave the development and enlightenment of concepts to us. All you need to take away is the concept of closed anonymity.

Give It a Try

Try implementing closed anonymity in the communication tools you use regularly.

To keep it simple, try using forms, like Google Forms or Microsoft Forms. Create a form with just one comment section. Set it to not collect names (making it anonymous). Share this not only with the form itself but also with a link or sheet to view responses gathered in the form. This allows everyone to post anonymously while also viewing the results. We call this an Anonymous Comment Form (ACF). We abbreviate it as ACF.

Use ACF to have casual discussions or consultations. Even chatting is fine. A few first penguins might be needed, but you should be able to experience the ease and enjoyment of posting, which is quite different from using real names.

When you hear ACF, it might sound primitive, but that's how it is. The concept of anonymity, particularly the idea of using it for work, might be entirely foreign. It's challenging to achieve with existing tools, and ACF seems to be the simplest option.

Conclusion

While anonymity can resolve the disadvantages of real names, anonymity alone is cumbersome to use. Hence, we introduced the idea of being anonymous within organizational units, presenting it as "closed anonymity."

Communication is always a bottleneck. Real names are too. That's precisely why you should utilize closed anonymity to break through. Until next time.