David Gerard wrote:
On 29/07/07, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
Rather than discuss the merits of this particular "outing," I think it would be more productive to discuss ways of encouraging people to edit under their own names rather than anonymously.
I started editing under my name rather than a net nickname because it felt like I was working on a serious project. I notice a few editors have switched from using nicknames to using their real names. That is, there's a force we could harness towards this.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I've considered it at various points. I've already quite deliberately stuck my picture on my userpage and used my real name on this list; and so now that Brandt has me on Hivemind, I couldn't care less. He's "outing" information that's already long-since "out".
I don't think there's an inherent lack of seriousness to contributing with a nickname, though. A lot of people I've worked with have had nicknames (either ones developed at the job or ones they just used in general), and it never made them worse or less serious workers. But the attack-site thing in general does strike me as a bit silly. Google's pretty unforgiving, whatever we do. I don't know or care who SlimVirgin is, but someone determined enough might have found out. Or this may be a total load from a paranoid lunatic. By totally ignoring it, or by as many of us as can do it safely just using our real names, we reduce, not increase, the power it has over anyone. By making a huge deal over it, we do exactly what the trolls were hoping-create drama and alienate people.