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Comment by dionidium | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad I didn't use my real name when I was first on the net at age 14. Why would I want a public record of ideas I now realize were (at best) half-baked? There's no upside to such a record, especially since an undiscerning reader might mistake those comments for something I said last week and not the rantings of an adolescent who hasn't exist for 15+ years.

As an adult, I attach my real name to just about everything (it's on my HN user page). I might not want to own everything I said as a teenager, but if you won't own what you say at 30, then when will you?

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Pseudonyms allow a person to own what they say* without opening themselves up to retribution from people who misunderstand either the content or the context of what is said, or who take advantage of power imbalances to advance an agenda. People should not feel pressured into putting everything on the line merely for the right to speak freely.

* Maybe not in the sense you mean but in a sense that I think is sufficient -- that statements from that persona can be challenged and measured against other statements in the same context for consistency.

Another way of looking at it is: why does a comment from a 'real name' have any more weight than from a pseudonym? Once you've built up a body of commentary you've built up a reputation under that handle anyway.

Just recently I witnessed a heated debate between pseudonyms and the weaker of the two debaters finally said "I am Dave Foo from Sometown, Oregon - are you going to hide or man up?". The response was "I am Bill Bar from Othertown, California - what of it? You still haven't answered the questions I asked". Real names add little in terms of content of validity.

Real names aren't necessary, but if you want a reputation, you'll need to be consistent with the name you pick.

"Growing up on the internet is like walking around for the rest of your life with your baby pictures stapled to your forehead."

I actually like having an archive of stuff I wrote when I was 13 (and having an archive of thoughts is a prime motivator for a blog). I don't really care what people think of my 13-year-old self, especially if my current self isn't going to ever interact with them to update their beliefs. I think it was Gandhi who said "If you see a contradiction between pieces of my writing, assume I currently believe the most recent one."

Real names attached to unpopular commentary = danger.

For example, if you're in a conservative town and you're using your real name while arguing for civil rights for homosexuals, you might draw nutcases tracking you down and harrassing you for your simple viewpoints instead of engaging you in the medium you participated in. This isn't a matter of not owning what you say, but a matter of putting a layer of insulation between yourself and immature idiots.

Another issue with real names comes from identity theft - using real names makes the process a little easier. Real name + known site hack = half the job done.

Pseudonyms aren't just about trolling, they're also a social firewall.

Pseudonyms may be a social firewall, but they also cheapen discourse because there is no consequence attached to speech. It may "put a layer of insulation between yourself and immature idiots", but it also is what allows those immature idiots to flourish in the first place. Communities like HN are far and away a minority on the net and a quick bounce through 4chan will show you just what speech without consequences looks like.

A true "psuedonym" would provide you with insulation, but would follow you everywhere and you would only get one.

If you don't have speech without consequences then there will always be things that need to be said that can't be.

4chan has many boards, /b/ is the only one that is obnoxious. The other boards also have anonymity, yet they don't have the same level of obnoxiousness. This is because 4chan started out as a board with a bunch of obnoxious idiots on it, and /b/ was the place were they were 'allowed' the let loose. As the site gained in popularity, this obviously 'blossomed' as more and more people joined and participated in the pre-existing culture.

To say that anonymity breeds obnoxiousness baseless, especially since there is anonymity all over the web, yet 4chan is the example that everyone loves to use. Where are the other examples? What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futaba_Channel or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2channel (4chan's inspiration)? It also provides anonymity.

The benefits to pseudonyms /far/ outwiegh the penalties.

As pyre has already said, 4chan's b channel is a force unto itself, but there are plenty of other places with no consequences where the speech is fine and isn't the devolved miasma you make it out to be.

Pseudonyms also protect people against unwarranted discrimination. I speak as a white male with a white male name that it's fucking awesome being a white male. But I have observed those who aren't white males get subtley (and sometimes not so) discriminated against online. Check out /any/ tech post where a commenter with an Indian name takes part. Unless the Indian is well known, there's bias against their comments. Same goes for women - if the discussion is outside the 'women's sphere', watch the subtleties as some of the men close ranks. Get an openly-declared woman involved in a discussion on physics in a general forum and she won't be treated as an equal.

People should be judged on what they say, not how their name slips hints about their background. To that end, a pseudonym greatly levels the playing field.

A name, pseudonym or otherwise, merely defines a body of work, and humans are complex creatures with interests in different areas. Why should we throw away the awesome things pseduonyms do for us simply because of internet trolls - which have other effective ways of dealing with them anyway (user moderation >>> unprovable 'real name' requirement)

4chan doesn't really use pseudonyms, it's all anon. This means the speech itself is all you can go by and not the (pseudo)name of the poster. The idea itself gets judged without the bias of past posts or who actually made the post.

> A true "psuedonym" would provide you with insulation, but would follow you everywhere and you would only get one.

I don't see a big advantage to this, or at least, prefer communities where it's unnecessary. Why do you need information about how someone conducts themselves elsewhere on the net? Imo, if an online community (like any community) is functioning well, its members develop a familiarity with each other based on internal interactions.

For example, in its heydey, I knew all the regular kuro5hin posters by their k5 pseudonyms, and had positive and negative impressions of them based entirely on their k5 posting. Same with the mailing lists I'm on, the smaller (non-Reddit-sized) forums I post on, etc. Knowing external information about what they post on Slashdot or LKML or Usenet doesn't really seem necessary, and tracking people cross-websites like that even seems a bit creepy/stalkerish (unless they themselves link to their own activity elsewhere). Heck, I didn't even care if someone was a troll on Slashdot, so long as their posting on k5 was interesting.

I sort of like that one-reputation-per-community model. It does require communities that are actually communities, though, and have regulars who recognize each other. Gigantic communities with tens of thousands of transient commenters aren't really communities, so run into more problems.

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