Early on, victims could agree to a trusted individual to reveal their identities to (it can be one of the complainants or a third party) and verify identities in order to prevent abusers/harassers from getting in the conversations and identifying complainants or otherwise interfering. I think it would be easy for an abuser/harasser to identify complainants based on their descriptions of the events, since they should also know the events.
This would also get around individuals making multiple accounts.
OTOH, the abuser/harasser could have someone else enter the conversations on their behalf as a fake accuser. If this is a serious worry, it may be better for the complainants not to know each others’ identities at all and to either discuss directly with a trusted individual who summarizes back to them without any identifying info, or to share very little about the events in their pseudonymous discussions, which may limit their usefulness.
For the EA community in particular, if I recall correctly, Julia Wise at CEA already acts as this trusted individual, although it could be good to have more options.
Early on, victims could agree to a trusted individual to reveal their identities to (it can be one of the complainants or a third party) and verify identities in order to prevent abusers/harassers from getting in the conversations and identifying complainants or otherwise interfering. I think it would be easy for an abuser/harasser to identify complainants based on their descriptions of the events, since they should also know the events.
This would also get around individuals making multiple accounts.
OTOH, the abuser/harasser could have someone else enter the conversations on their behalf as a fake accuser. If this is a serious worry, it may be better for the complainants not to know each others’ identities at all and to either discuss directly with a trusted individual who summarizes back to them without any identifying info, or to share very little about the events in their pseudonymous discussions, which may limit their usefulness.
For the EA community in particular, if I recall correctly, Julia Wise at CEA already acts as this trusted individual, although it could be good to have more options.