Lambda the Ultimate

The protection from accountability is exactly the problem with anonymity, and part of the reason why Usenet often brings out the worst in people. This site has a good history of civility and I think it's completely reasonable to require people to use their real names.

Ehud, you might consider enforcing the use of real names using email addresses: I don't remember if the sign-up process required a real email address, but you can always verify the address the way mailing lists do, and then if you find people using pseudonyms you can send them warnings to their email address and ultimately delete their account.

I guess if that's too harsh, I guess you can just delete someone's account if they start becoming belligerent.

Ehud, you might consider enforcing the use of real names using email addresses: I don't remember if the sign-up process required a real email address, but you can always verify the address the way mailing lists do, and then if you find people using pseudonyms you can send them warnings to their email address and ultimately delete their account.

This kind of rule doesn't forbid people who want to use fake names/pseudonyms. I use my real name here, but who could confirm that it's my real name and not some fake persona?


I agree with Ehud's post. IMO we have nothing to hide around here so no benefit from using pseudonyms, but we shouldn't force this view on people (which Ehud acknowledges in his post).

aren't you putting the cart before the horse? if this forum is civillised already then what is the justification for making real names compulsory?

people lose their jobs for posting comments with real names. there was a recent example where someone had done nothing more than happens here - discuss language choice for projects (information that was public, not confidential).

i have always used my own name, but i'm the kind of idiot prepared to walk out of a job if encessary for the right to do so. i don't expect others to feel as i do and i certainly don't want to force them.

i should also add that i've posted some quite stupid and agressive things in various places over the years - having my name there didn't stop me, unfortunately.

Couldn't agree more. I have seen Usenet posts from the eighties (note, that _is_ twenty years ago) some authors must regret by now.

I wouldn't like all my telephone calls to be taped, neither do I like a discussion to be logged virtually forever. Do I really want my kids to read all of my digital horsedung twenty years from now?

Btw, a former collegue of me used to work in a military datacenter in the Netherlands. Cross-correlation tools are used substantially by all nations who can afford it since the late nineties. Now, I have nothing to hide, but I am not inclined to give them anything to discover ;-)

Anyway, apart from the paranoia, I want to read about _ideas_ on a forum like this, not _people_. (Which is a very outdated unacademic proposition, maybe)

Cheers,
Marco

PS: You see, five paragraphs of no-information and even with my first name. And now it is here, cut in stone, forever. ;-)

Oh, I see you found my college Usenet postings!

Seriously, pseudonymity, consisting of a public key by which we are each identified and a private key with which we sign all of our posts, and some kind of rating mechanism for posts/authors so that our pseudonyms have a persistent "reputation" would combine the best qualities of privacy and accountability. This is standard cypherpunk/cryptoanarchist philosophy, with which I find myself strongly agreeing: I believe it to be the future of civil society.

OTOH, I know that I, at least, have benefitted greatly from, e.g. Tim Sweeney's willingness to come here and say "I'm Tim Sweeney, the Unreal guy." That allows me to immediately infer some things about his knowledge, background, and experience that are helpful when reading his posts. OTOOH, if we had Nyms and Reputation Servers in the world at large, as opposed to just on the web, we'd have (potentially) the same benefit as knowing someone's "True Name."

Oh, I see you found my college Usenet postings!

Nah, but I am tempted to go look for them now ;-).

I like your idea about Nyms, but I guess it is actually already "realized" by people who use one pseudonym consistently. (As I normally do, well - one of five I guess. Hmm, maybe I should do that - Marco is so... uhm ... boring... I guess).

I am not sure if knowing someones "true name" actually is that interesting: there are too many names to keep track of in that case; are there even authors who get a reference to an article on LtU every year? And on the other hand, great people consistently have stupid ideas and stupid people consistently have great ideas every day. What's the value of a name?

Anyway, nyms and reputation servers are present in the world at large. Servers are called wifes, friends, family and collegues. The nyms they call people you don't want to know about ;-).

But whatever, no I didn't read your Usenet posts but know what, I am not saying you are wrong, but I'll bet you one bottle of wine that in ten to fifteen years from now I can type in the name "Paul Snively" on some googlelikesearchthingy and get some nice graphical "concept diagram" of all Pauls, posts of a specific Paul, Pauls age, all articles by that Paul, Pauls Usenet posts ;-), Pauls wedding announcement, Paul on kuro5hin, opinions of some Mary on Paul, maybe even an automated psychological profile of named Paul, etc, etc.

Cheers,
Marco

PS: hmm, maybe I should get rid of that gmail account. they might start profiling me ;-)))
PPS: whoops, I did it again - getting off-topic I mean ;-)

I tried using my real name as login, but unfortunately it was rejected for containing non-ascii characters.
Is using a nick, and providing the real name in the user profile acceptable?

Just speaking as sysadmin, and avoiding the thorny issue of global privacy and anonymity on the internet:

The underlying platform, Drupal, uses UTF-8, and I see it accepts non-ASCII characters on the profile page. So, I'm guessing for some reason there's a deliberate restriction on usernames. I have no idea why. I'll take a look over the weekend.

Same here, I registered under my real name, but my login is my usual internet pseudonym. I use shapr on irc.freenode.net #haskell channel for example.

For that matter, most of my CS community connections are probably associated with shapr rather than Shae Matijs Erisson.
So maybe I really am using my real name if you want to know about my CS background. :-)
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Shae Erisson - http://www.ScannedInAvian.org/

I agree. In fact, I feel quite strongly against these techniques as they are currently implemented. I'd rather go elsewhere than participate in sites that implement rating mechanisms.