Also it tends to shut up exactly the disadvantaged people we want to here from. Personally, I use my real name, but I'm a white heterosexual male. Change any of those and I might not feel so comfortable giving random strangers the means to find me. My fiancee for instance avoids using her real name like the plague of death.
I kid, but this is one of the best discussions sites on the web, and few, if any, use their real names here. Clearly discussion quality is much more significantly determined by other factors: site demographics, culture, subject matter, even the UX of posting in and viewing discussion threads probably all matter more than whether people use real names or pseudonyms.
Using pseudonyms has been traditional online for a very, very long time, and it's possible that some of the unique aspects of the internet as a social medium might not exist were this not the case.
Much of this discussion revolves around anonymity, but it's important to note that people who consistently use the same pseudonyms in the same communities are not anonymous within those communities. But by using pseudonyms, they're able to de-link participation in one community from their participation in other communites - including their offline relationships - and posit a context-specific persona.
The old "on the internet no one knows you're a dog" cartoon comes to mind, and not just because of your comments about being a "white heterosexual male", and that being in other categories might expose you to certain risks; you're also able to start with a blank slate in a new community, or start over in an old one, and have your identity there be shaped entirely by the value of your participation. You don't get this anywhere else in life.
I'd be surprised if most of the people posting cogent and insightful comments here on HN aren't also posting the occasional image macro on Reddit, or posting God-knows-what to 4chan, or participating in forums, IRC channels, etc. under names that keep their identities on these disparate sites quite separate, and adhering to the cultural norms of each within its own boundaries.
I use a fake name specifically because I'm a white heterosexual male. You don't seem to understand which views are verboten and punishable in this modern age.
Speaking as a white hetero male, we're the safest demographic on the web. Just because we get some static doesn't mean that other demographics are better off.
(c) stands out to me as the most problematic to me.
It is true that requiring real names reduces the amount of unwanted noise and can thus result in a higher quality discussion, but some people are just a lot more worried than others about their reputation with their peers. Lack of anonymity will cause you to second guess yourself a lot more before clicking the reply button.
my thoughts exactly. one of the best properties of online discussions is the relative anonymity towards other members. Randi Zuckerbergs statement "I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away" is bullshit, and blatantly ignores the importance an anonymous web has for the efficient distribution of information (esp. if you're living in a country which censors the internet). although real names might increase comment quality, this is at the loss of a much broader range of topics and participants within the discussion. curation of web comments has to happen via a community driven approach like flagging and downvoting.
I think you blatantly overstate the importance of the anonymous web for everyday use. Yes, there are some corner cases where anonymity is an important part of the political process. These are exceedingly rare. Anonymity is used, in virtually all cases, to disconnect speech from consequences. In other words, to be a chickenshit, 'cause you're worried someone you work with might see your hate-filled rant against the blacks.
cause you're worried someone you work with might see your hate-filled rant against the blacks.
... or your sexual orientation...
... or your religion...
... or your non-gender-standard hobby...
... or your name makes you a cultural attack target online...
... or any one of a hundred things that are personal that other people have no business knowing. Sure, using your real name is great if you're strong-willed, relatively safe, and part of the safest demographic on the web.
This argument that privacy is only important to those who have something horrible to hide should be well and truly debunked by now.
You will probably have (b) even without real names. Pseudonymity is hard enough that as we get better at interpreting this data I suspect most will be connected back to offline identities. Relying on the identity separation we have now to persist is asking for trouble.
For social purposes you usually don't need the kind of anonymity that would fool a government agency, or a private investigator, or even the Googlebot. You need plausible deniability and relative obscurity.
When someone goes looking for the most embarrassing thing you ever wrote, they often find it. But we treat them the way we'd treat someone who hired a private detective: If they don't have a good reason, we conclude that they're creepy and rude.
Personally I am not for real name policies, but I do believe that these problems should be fixed properly if possible, which is why I consider employee gagging the worst part of the Google+ nymwars.
(a) lawyers will make more money suing people for ever bad word they write
(b) you will have problems all your life for some puberty-influenced shit you wrote when 16
(c) that people who worry about their real-life reputation do not speak up when they should.
This real name wave is the worst thing happening to web culture since aol was invented.