I think my favorite, horrible quote on this is from Facebook's marketing directory, Randi Zuckerberg:
...People hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want
Well, how dare people say what they want.
...People hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want
Well, how dare people say what they want.
People seem to think that anonymity is a license to act like an asshole. That's not conducive to producing a fairly pleasant, troll-free environment.
She.
To be honest, I generally prefer to be an asshole openly.
Next problem: Asking for legal looking names doesn't solve the problem of anonymity. If I am able to change my name to Bob Smith without hitting a filter (at least for a while) I still can be an asshole without any connection to my 'real name'. The _only_ thing the policy right now _can_ do is prohibiting people from using an obvious pseudonym. I cannot be darklajid, but I can be Bob Smith. Both are not my real names, the former is my handle ~everywhere~ online. One is me, one is crap.
No way around that unless you're going to verify papers/ids, and now feel free to throw "Papiere bitte" references at me.
So the whole 'we need real names' and 'we hope that this improves our community' is crap. But the most idiotic thing is to make exceptions. Forget about the standard samples like 'Lady Gaga' and '50 Cent': We already hat a couple of threads here about people that used their pseudonym, were suspended and (by bullying, rounding up the media, having contacts inside of Google) got an exception.
What? Why? They are allowed to be different, because...? Bottom line: The current rule is
- useless
- arbitrary (I'd like to put this up as 'discriminating', but yeah.. G+ is not a right, yadda yadda)
Ben, suspended on G+ ;)
1: https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/VJoZMS8z...
You're making an assumption without any proof: Pseudonyms lead to bad behavior.
In my world that's not connected to the names used and is merely a function of the 'quality' of the people in your community. Also - you don't solve issues between people with rules about their 'alias', you have to invent/support/hand out some decent tools to block idiots from your online life.
I certainly now manage a semi-new pseudonym (based on an old irl joke between me and a few friends) that looks like a boring, unnotable real name. I'm not sure how it will keep me from being an asshole on the internet.
This topic has recently become the subject of much discussion here in Norway, as recent events have brought more attention to the anonymous racist comments (and harassment) that are quite often found on public forums (such newspaper websites, etc.) There are some who claim that expecting people to sign their real names to their comments would raise the level of discourse, as people would have to take some responsibility for their speech.