There’s an old Java programming site out there called JavaRanch that looks straight out of the 1990s that used to crop up all of the time in searches for programming issues. They have a strict “real name” policy–no vetting, but if you have a funny sounding name a moderator will call you out on it. The moderating activity was intrusive and annoying. After all, it’s a cutesy place called JavaRanch with an Old-West theme, moderaters called sheriffs and such.
Thankfully, Stack Overflow has dominated the tech problem solving landscape for many years now, so JavaRanch is but a memory.
I don’t mind having my real name out there, just not as my in-your-face username. My wife and I have dozens of YouTube videos out there where we perform Christian music on piano/bass, and they are all carefully documented with copyright notices for the music, our CCLI license, and our real names, so it’s not like I’m hiding from the world.
I understand that in some cultures there is no such thing as “first name and last name” - there is just one name. If you are one of these people, I would like to humbly ask you to sacrifice a piece of your culture to help me build this culture. In the past, permitting single names has inspired less wholesome “creative” aliases. The job of keeping names professional grew exponentially. The result is that exceptions to the naming rule are no longer permitted.
I have two accounts on Twitter. One has my real name. I mainly use it to lurk. Very rarely post something, always something innocuous. The other account has a pseudonym. That’s the account I use when I feel I must engage in a conversation, or if I want to say something even a tiny bit controversial.
Mr. Cathode! I had no idea you weren’t a real doctor.
To address the OP, yes, I would quit/not join in the first place any general discussion board that required me to use my real name. Mangetout has countered the arguments that it should be required very well already.
On this board, if someone had an insane desire to dox me, there is plenty of info here with which it could be easily done. I don’t really care; if I did I wouldn’t have posted potentially identifying details in the first place. I’m not so conceited or paranoid that I think anyone would bother to track me down, and if they did, I am pretty sure it would be for benign reasons.
Nonetheless, there is a huge difference between my CHOICE to reveal personal details and being REQUIRED to provide them. The latter offends me.
Looking around the JavaRanch rules and FAQs, it’s quite comically absurd - they have this rule they decided would make everyone more ‘professional’ (despite that the entire site has a theme that is basically Woody’s Roundup), but it’s also clear that their insistence on this rule has caused them numerous problems - such as:
If someone used their real name for their account, it can happen that some time later they no longer want it to be displayed in public, since it can easily be found using search engines. In that case just change it to some fictional -although real-sounding- name.
However, they then go on to say this will be worthless because that won’t change all the instances where someone else addressed you by name in a thread, and therefore:
The end result is that there does not appear to be an automatic way of removing all traces of a user from our system. And if it is not automatic, then it is not likely to be done (as an example, imagine if I were to leave: could you imagine asking a volunteer to go through 1000+ posts and determine what can be deleted totally and what needs to be edited - I cannot imagine a single volunteer who would agree to that (and 1000 posts is not unusual - there are users with more than 10,000 posts)).
Why would anyone believe this? People who aren’t simply trolls are more likely to lie about their beliefs when unanonymized due to preference falsification. Social pressure is real and people are not going to be totally forthcoming on anything remotely controversial–or at least anything which might result in ostracization from their social group.
Trolls of course lie just to get a rise out of people. But they’re also going to lie about their real name, so any such rules won’t apply to them in the first place.
I’d start by getting a Cairo phone book and looking through all the Carols. (Just to be safe, I’d have to check both Cairo, Egypt and Cairo, Illinois.)
For me, it would depend on the site. Generally, I prefer online anonymity; however, if it were a well-vetted, well-moderated membership site that I trust, I would have no problem listing my real name and perhaps my general location, such as city or state.
BTW @Mangetout, if you post your name and address, I’ll send you some info on effective treatments for those bulbous, weeping warts that are growing in and around your anus.
There have been some very bad actors on here over the years. It’s a non starter. Someone with enough time on their hands could probably find me but I have never been a target.
I help moderate a few Facebook music related groups. One is a singles group and for that one we require real names. A lot of people have pseudonyms on FB. I general, I don’t see how it would realistically improve things.
We do have to consistently use the same name. I think that sufficiently serves the purpose. (I can also see how, for boards discussing some subjects, even that may be too much; but such boards also need really good moderation to be effective.)
Yeah. I’ve used my real name in the past on a couple of email groups (remember those? I still occasionally hear from one) which were specifically about aspects of farming.
But I’m also an example of one of the multiple reasons why a flat out requirement for “real name” is a problem – my “real name”, in the sense of the name that most people IRL know me by, and my legal name are two different things. People being stalked, of course, have a much worse problem.
– I do use versions of the name I use here in a couple of other places. I don’t, in any case, want the name I use here to get a terrible reputation, any more than I want either of my “real” names to do so. By now, it also feels like one of my “real names”. But anybody can read these boards, even without signing in; and I don’t want to be super easy for anyone who gets overly ticked off at a post to find. (Impossible to find is something that I think one gives up, these days, by using an online computer.)
It’s also a pain for writers under a pen name, I’ll add. Social media is pretty much mandatory if you’re to generate an audience. Being forced to use your real name for your books can land you in all sorts of trouble if some people decide to brigade your work or your kid finds out you’re writing smut or your employer wants to read your stuff. In the wrong circumstances it can make a harassment and stalking campaign extremely easy.
Then there are trans people who go by a different name than their dead name. Facebook had a big problem with that.
I’m not even sure how requiring real names could be enforced. As my moniker her implies, I fairly old for this group. I’ve had email accounts going back before AOL. AOL names were limited to 8 characters. My email address there was not my real name, but looked enough like a real name it would pass. So using that email address I could presumably confirm “my identity”.
I have internet service through Comcast. The allow (I think) 5 email. I have one in something close to my real name and one in nothing like my real name, but very much like a real name. Why? Because most sites require an email address. Then many of them spam you. So my alternate email address changes when the spam gets to be too much.
If I used that as an email address, I don’t think it could be determined it wasn’t real me.
