"real" names versus names

[kalmn]

i didn't used to get why people might not want the name they use online to be easily attachable to their legal name.

due to various things going on in my life at the moment, i now totally get it.

i get it so much that i'm screening comments to this post, i tell ya.

i think that people's names, of whatever form, should be able to be traced back to them, by people in the community where they use that name. but that's different from "easily attachable to their legal name".

eta: if you're okay with me unscreening please say so.

Comments

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Yes. There's a big difference between pseudonymity, with a consistent identity, and anonymity, where every comment may as well be your first. The possibility of damaging one's reputation -- or developing a great reputation and getting people to like you -- in whatever community the pseudonym's being used in makes it just as useful as a real name in terms of allowing the social controls within that community to function.

Changing from internal-to-the-community social controls (shunning or warning newcomers or whatever) to external social controls (calling someone's boss and repeating things they may not want the boss to know) is major badness no matter how much trouble you had to go to to get the boss's name.

It's not the people who are using consistent pseudonymous identifiers who are in the wrong here.

(by all means, unscreen if you like)