What is the problem with anonymous feedback?

What is the problem with anonymous complaints?

I recently got involved in the controversy of anonymous complaints to the BBB.

I had a friend who was considering whether or not to leave the service, and was asked by BBB if I would write a letter on her behalf. I was very tempted to do so, since I love my friend and she has been a huge part of my life for years, and I believe that she is at the point where she can no longer remain with the company in question.

After researching the issue of anonymous complaints, however, I concluded that it would be a great mistake for my friend to leave this service and would be a poor move on her part. As a result, I wrote a letter on her behalf, and it took a lot of work to get my story straight, but I did my best. I did not name the company, I did not give any information as to where the complaint had come from, and I did not give any information as to what happened in the situation.

My friend was satisfied with the letter, but I am not. As I was working on the letter, I asked my friend what she thought about leaving the company, and she told me that she did not want to give the company more publicity and that she wanted to stay with the company, but she is not happy with the service. I told her that I could not understand how giving the company more publicity could be detrimental to her, but she said that it could because the company had already contacted her and was accusing her of lying about the incident.

I asked my friend if she had a lawyer, and she said that she had one, and that she has never used him because she is still in good health, so he has not had to help her out yet. I don't know what to do. My friend is not happy with the service, and she feels that the service is not doing its best to remedy the situation, and yet she is afraid of giving the company more publicity because she knows that they have already contacted her about the incident, and that they will likely contact her again.

I would like to keep an open mind about what my friend should do, but I feel that I am becoming biased, since I care so much for my friend. What do you think? Am I being unreasonable in expecting my friend to leave a company when there is no apparent reason for her to do so?

What are the drawbacks of anonymous surveys?

This article is a continuation of my first attempt at answering the question posed above: which method of survey taking yields the best data, and how much does the method matter when it comes to your audience?

Before we can answer this question we first have to look at the options themselves. Which method should you use? The choices are: Anonymised/Self-Assessing. Open-Ended. Blank. Let's take each one in turn. Anonymised/self-assessing. There are two key advantages to the anon self-assessing questionnaire: You can target specific groups. You can track where those groups are coming from. Let's take an example of how this works in practice. In the chart below, you can see how my readers are responding to the question: What kind of book do you like? This isn't a scientific sample so please don't consider this an accurate representation of the world's reading habits. But it does demonstrate how easily we can target people with different interests.

By simply clicking on the question and filtering for whatever it is we want to make sure that we are only reaching people who like thrillers, mysteries, historical fiction and chick lit. We can even additional categories and restrict our questions to only those who like horror novels or romance novels. We can ensure that we only talk to people who like historical fiction by clicking on the category.

This is something that a well-known study could not have accomplished. We can also get some interesting insights into how the different demographic groups behave. So by identifying ourselves and making the question unique and more specifically targeted, we can gather more specific data. It's also interesting to compare results to surveys done through normal means: The results above show how much people will say what they like but they're also more likely to lie about what they like. There is no reason to believe that because people answer a question in one way, that they will answer it the same way again. In reality, there is an almost 80% chance that they won't.

What is the problem with anonymous feedback?

(originally posted at but I thought I'd repost it here, as the same argument might be made for a different reason.) It's simple: people have different ways of getting their thoughts across, and there is a good reason why in some situations you should pay attention to what people say -- anonymous feedback can get you more information about a problem or new product feature than you can gather yourself. But in some situations, even though you might agree with the point of someone's comment, the anonymity makes it a little hard to trust them (though trust is not always a necessary requirement). If I'm going to take someone's time to try to solve a problem or build something, then I want to make sure that I'm doing that because they would like me to do that, rather than because they're trying to screw me over or just see what I will do.

So, in those situations, I often ignore any feedback that comes in anonymously. In other situations, I try to find a way to figure out who wrote the comment, so that I can ask them to rephrase their comments so that I understand them better, or to take the comment offline, or whatever else seems appropriate. (But if you don't try to figure out the identity of the commenter, I'm probably not going to want to use their feedback.)

Why is anonymity a big problem? There are a number of problems with taking feedback from someone who writes anonymously. Here are some of the things that can be issues with anonymous feedback: 1) There's no good way to figure out the credibility of the comment. For example, what if someone writes anonymous comment and then goes to my web page and "buries" a link to a porn site? Anon feedback is very risky -- it takes a lot of trust on the part of the reader to know whether to take it seriously. So I often take such feedback offline. But it is something to be aware of.

2) The comment may be off-topic, irrelevant, or otherwise unhelpful. This is a specific version of the first point.

What are the main disadvantages of reporting a concern anonymously?

The concern will not be properly investigated.

If there is a genuine concern about safety, it will not be properly investigated. A complainant will not be contacted by the reporting party or police for follow-up. A complaint may not be registered and no action may be taken against the perpetrator. A victim may not be supported. What are the main advantages of reporting a concern anonymously? A complainant may be more likely to come forward. It may encourage others to report a concern and support each other. It may encourage people to think about safety more. It may encourage the reporting party to report a concern to the police. ? Complainants may be reluctant to come forward if they have not been contacted by police. The reporting party may not be willing to be named. A complainant may not want to tell their family or friends what has happened. The complainant may fear that their concerns will not be properly investigated. The reporting party may be reluctant to share information about the concern with the person who may have committed the crime. A complainant may be reluctant to come forward if they have not been contacted by police. A victim may not be willing to be named. The reporting party may not want to share information about the concern with the person who may have committed the crime. A complainant may fear that their concerns will not be properly investigated. Complainants may not feel comfortable telling their family or friends what has happened. A victim may not feel comfortable telling their family or friends what has happened.