Philosophy

In the authorism vs communalism spectrum, I lean heavily communalism.

But I go further than that. Not only should someone's personality be unimportant in mainspace, but it should also be unimportant on talk pages as well. The problems of ad hominem and appeal to authority are closely related — they both suggest that the messenger is more important than the message. I believe the logical reaction is to consider the message in a vacuum, separate from the author, messenger, or anyone mentioned within the message.

While reputation can be a useful thing, I think that wikipolitics gets out of hand sometimes, and anonymity is a clear way to reduce wikipolitics.

Groups who agree with this philosophy generally:

• the Japanese Wikipedia, where ~60% of edits are submitted by unregistered users
• Alcoholics Anonymous, which believes that:
  "Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities."

Implementation

The downside of the ja.wikipedia.org approach is that other people get to know your IP address, which can have some privacy implications (who your employer is, for instance).

Rather, I prefer something like the "serial monogamy" take on sock-puppets. That is, at some point, I abandon anold account, and start over with a new account, once the old account accumulates too much reputation baggage. I believe this approach should be accepted, maybe even encouraged.

NOTE: I agree with 85% of what's mentioned in Wikipedia:Sock puppetry, and believe that anyone who takes my approach should fully understand at the very least the intent of that page. There are MANY ways to abuse sock puppets, and even skirting the edge of abuse will be looked on harshly by the community.

In general, I believe that making a clean break between when you stop editing with one account and begin editing with another account mitigates many of the problems.

NOTE 2: I believe that "serial monogamy" is only acceptable when the old account has an almost exclusively positive reputation. If the old account is associated with notable negative issues, then abandoning it is a way to hide those problems from the community.

My accounts haven't been completely free of problems (nobody is perfect after all), but the overwhelming majority of my edits have had neutral or positive reputation. The "reputation baggage" I feel is the possibility that people could give my talk posts and edits undeserved deference.