“Many revolutions start with one small spark, President Obama has set this one off with his presser with the children and his use of the executive orders. The question is, is this the revolution that he had in mind? Time will tell.”

These are examples of comments the authors count as uncivil. They advocate for using real names so that people will not (dare?) post such things. I am of the contrary opinion. I think it is important that such opinions are posted and debated.

The criteria they used: "A three item index was developed to determine whether or not online comments violated standards of democratic discourse as defined above. If a comment 1) verbalized a threat to democracy (e.g. proposed to overthrow a democratic government by force), 2) assigned stereotypes (e.g. associate person with a group using labels), or 3) threatened other individuals’ rights (e.g. personal freedom, freedom to speak), it was coded as uncivil and the type of incivility was noted."

They also, separately studied impoliteness, which I assume we can all be in favour of.

Interestingly, they found civility increased, while impoliteness did not "However, unlike incivility, both [anonymous] Website and Facebook comments contained a similar amount of impoliteness."

Thus I would argue that the conclusion would be that using real names lowers the quality of debate.

It's when they parade out the idea that "real names = better quality" as the reason for a change - without citing it. Especially since it's such a cross-product change that effects literally every single one of their products.