I kinda miss the old days of usenet, where I'd often post sarcasm or devil's advocate type comments with an
x-planation: Yes, this is sarcasm
type header.
Web forums generally don't have a way to attach metadata like that in a way that's not _normally_ seen, but is easily discoverable or demonstratable on a per-post basis.
The "Ha ha! I was only joking" defense is much more credible if you explicitly (but initially in a non-visible way) declared that up-front.
You can do this with cryptographic hash functions. Here's how:
1. Write whatever "meta" comment you want to attach to your post and add some random characters at the end.
2. Calculate the MD5 or SHA-1 hash of that comment + random characters [1] and add it to the text of your post.
3. Save the comment + random characters to a text file somewhere for future use.
Should questions arise as to whether or not you were, e.g., being sarcastic you will be able to prove your intent by presenting the original comment and letting everyone verify its hash valve. As a downside you would also have to add random hashes to every non-sarcastic post of yours to prevent sarcastic posts from being quickly detected by the presence of hash values. However, if you do so consistently and post a lot I'd wager that people would soon stop noticing them.
This may or may not be an overkill for signalling sarcasm but I have seen a few users here on HN with MD5 (or was it SHA-1?) sums in their "about" fields. I can only assume those contain their real identity should they want to prove it.
x-planation: Yes, this is sarcasm
type header.
Web forums generally don't have a way to attach metadata like that in a way that's not _normally_ seen, but is easily discoverable or demonstratable on a per-post basis.
The "Ha ha! I was only joking" defense is much more credible if you explicitly (but initially in a non-visible way) declared that up-front.