How to Incent Good User Behavior: Use Real Identity (ala LinkedIn, FB) | Hacker News Reader

How to Incent Good User Behavior: Use Real Identity (ala LinkedIn, FB)

ryanspoon.com

19 pointsdell900011 comments

Public identification discourages dishonesty and rude behavior, but it also discourages unpopular views, political dissent, whistle-blowing and other valuable speech. On the balance, the positives of public ID outweigh the negatives on some sorts of sites, such as LinkedIn, but it would be a grave mistake to assume the same would be true on every sort of forum.

In fact, you might take LinkedIn and Facebook as good counterexamples: do we want an internet where the only discussion is the kind of conscious-of-being-public pablum you get at Facebook and LinkedIn?

There's plenty of things that go into discussions working versus not working, but I don't think real names have much to do with it. If anything, my impression is that real names are usually a net negative, outside a very narrow range of sites intended to foster IRL activity. It doesn't even require being particularly politically controversial to stifle participation if real names were attached--- the threshold at which it has a chilling effect is far lower than "gay-rights activist in Saudi Arabia"; people quickly start dropping out of discussions if their name would be associated with them at a much lower threshold of, basically, anything they wouldn't want their mother or boss to see.

I will not use any service that requires me to use LinkedIn or Facebook. I don't care about my anonymity (it's easy to guess who I am), but I don't use those services and don't want to.

And for what it's worth, I will still be excessively disagreeable even if I have to use my real name. It doesn't matter to me what people on the Internet think of me. I don't know them, they don't know me, so who cares what name I use?

As long as you're not an asshole, you can call yourself Shamu T. Whale for all I care. The more anonymous you feel online, the less you think about the ramifications of your actions. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case for you, but it's true for a lot of people (and the internet is full of examples of this).

This seems pretty obvious. I think most people realize that "bad behavior" comes from being anonymous. This is why people who seem nice in person can be total a-holes online behind a cloak of anonymity. I'd like to see some solutions that could work without requiring people to give up their personal information.

It's not about people being anonymous or not that causes the good behavior, it's that when people use their real name, they have risked something of value - their reputation. The way to ensure good behavior is to require that people take some sort of risk with something they value when they participate in your site. This might be in the form of a deposit, using their real name, or the loss of a potential reward.

I agree some stake is useful, but reputation is one with poor properties. For one thing, it's not clear to me that the damage suffered is actually well correlated with behaving well versus poorly in the forum; rather, a dominating effect is simply what kinds of forums you choose. You will suffer a negative effect to your reputation if you participate in a hentai forum; whether you participate there as a troll or a valued user will not cause much additional effect either way.

Of course, how is a "real name" real? I can walk into any courthouse and have a brand new "real name" in an hour. I could just tell people my "real name" is something else. I could make a fake ID card, too.

The point is, "name" is a meaningless concept. The only way to know someone is through your own interactions with them. The only way to know who you're interacting with is by being there in person. (Or with pre-arranged crypto... but I digress...)

Just as important is how people react to various presented identities.

As a simple example, if Tim Bond thinks my investments are positioned poorly, I'll listen intently to his feedback and think long and hard about how best to react to it. If, on the other hand, gurglesplat123@somesite thinks I'm positioned poorly, I'll pay very little attention.

The inverse of the assertion made in this article (i.e. anonymity leads to bad behavior) has already been theoretically predicted in "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory": http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pat070381.html

Very relevant article just went up on TechCrunch as well: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/21/why-you-should-confess-ever...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com