Though I'm also a bit curious if that is an actual issue right now.

But I want to note that these are mostly my philosophical thoughts on anonymization — is this occurring frequently enough to be an actual issue on the site?

Edit: Since this is a change to the anonymization procedure, I would expect that it wouldn't apply retroactively. (In other words, I think we'd have to continue re-attribution for articles anonymized before this change.)

Im not a fan of making the entire process one way. I can see scenarios where someone puts actual thought into anonymity, and then months or years down the line they change their mind. Yes, it would mean less work for staff since reversing it is one less job to do, but if someone put real and actual thought into anonymizing their work then it’s likely that they are putting thought into reversing that as well. Id personally be more comfortable backing waiting periods for reversing the anonymization process rather than banning it outright. For example, maybe it must be a period of 3 months after a work is anonymized for requests to reattribute it to be considered.

Hello everybody

Recently admins discussed potential use and misuse of the anonymization and de-anonymization of metadata.

One concern raised is that currently a user could flipflop between requesting anonymization and re-attributing of their articles which could become an excessive ask for staff, but currently we don't have any real stance to tell an author no.

Sometimes anonymization is done with a significant amount of forethought behind it and left as is, and that's more than okay. There have however been instances where this was decided in the heat of the moment, and shortly thereafter regretted at which point staff was asked to fix matters.

I'm putting this up to discuss some potential solutions to this issue.

One that we would like to implement is a mandatory, unskippable waiting period of a week between requesting the anonymization of metadata, and the metadata actually being anonymized.

(This applies to works which were previously attributed to their respective authors, rather than works submitted anonymously through the Curation Team)

The user could then retract their request at any time during this week long period.

Another solution that we would like to implement is to no longer allow users to have their anonymous works re-attributed.

This would apply for ALL works attributed as anonymous.

(Users can of course publically reveal they wrote the work, but the metadata will not be changed)

With both of these added stipulations, we expect that anonymization will only occur when a user is absolutely certain they wish to do so, which would be better for users, and better for staff.

Leaving this discussion open for a week.