Debate about anon posts

[Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>]

More important than anonymity in a public forum such as Usenet is
pseudonymity.  A strictly anonymous posting might well be ignored, and
in cases should be.  An alternate identity, however, can be more
easily believed if it has said useful things in the past.

After all, most of the people I know on the net are as good as
pseudonyms to me.  I've never met them, have never even had voice
contact, and am unlikely to ever.  This is the case for everyone.  We
rely on the human net of familiarity to assure us that these are real
people.

But a pseudonym on the net looks to us like "someone else's friend."
We can't verify everyone personally, but we assume that someone has.
Therefore pseudonyms will always be possible on the net.

Indeed, they are already mostly with us.

Eric