I've been involved in a pleasant private correspondence with a very controversial Internet figure who normally writes and works under a pseudonym. Wikipedia, along with many other outlets including prominent mainstream media outlets, publishes this person's real name. I have been asked to remove the real name from the Wikipedia article, but of course given recent history in which random things I post to the mailing lists make international headlines :-(, me doing something like that would likely make his name more known rather than less known. My correspondent claims that he's gotten death threats at his doorstep due to people knowing his real name (not necessarily due to our publishing it, of course). Nonetheless, my correspondent asks me an interesting question: where do we draw the line? As a practical matter, I think what we follow is a non-policy in this area, that is to say, we follow the same exact policies we follow for all sorts of information: is it verifiable, is it NPOV? I am not asking about libel. We must not libel anyone, ever. I am asking about privacy and respect. My own opinion is that in most cases we should publish real names if any mainstream media outlet has done so first. We should not (usually) regard blogs and hate sites as sufficiently reliable confirmation for real names. We never post anyone's home address (since this is just totally unencyclopedic and irrelevant to our mission anyway), though of course there could be some bizarre exceptions I suppose. Your thoughts? --Jimbo