

How to Incent Good User Behavior: Use Real Identity (ala LinkedIn, FB) - dell9000
http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2010/02/21/key-to-trust-is-real-identity/

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xiaoma
Public identification discourages dishonesty and rude behavior, but it also
discourages unpopular views, political dissent, whistle-blowing and other
valuable speech. On the balance, the positives of public ID outweigh the
negatives on some sorts of sites, such as LinkedIn, but it would be a grave
mistake to assume the same would be true on every sort of forum.

~~~
_delirium
In fact, you might take LinkedIn and Facebook as good counterexamples: do we
want an internet where the only discussion is the kind of conscious-of-being-
public pablum you get at Facebook and LinkedIn?

There's plenty of things that go into discussions working versus not working,
but I don't think real names have much to do with it. If anything, my
impression is that real names are usually a net negative, outside a very
narrow range of sites intended to foster IRL activity. It doesn't even require
being particularly politically controversial to stifle participation if real
names were attached--- the threshold at which it has a chilling effect is far
lower than "gay-rights activist in Saudi Arabia"; people quickly start
dropping out of discussions if their name would be associated with them at a
much lower threshold of, basically, anything they wouldn't want their mother
or boss to see.

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jrockway
I will not use any service that requires me to use LinkedIn or Facebook. I
don't care about my anonymity (it's easy to guess who I am), but I don't use
those services and don't want to.

And for what it's worth, I will still be excessively disagreeable even if I
have to use my real name. It doesn't matter to me what people on the Internet
think of me. I don't know them, they don't know me, so who cares what name I
use?

~~~
derwiki
As long as you're not an asshole, you can call yourself Shamu T. Whale for all
I care. The more anonymous you feel online, the less you think about the
ramifications of your actions. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case for
you, but it's true for a lot of people (and the internet is full of examples
of this).

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ryanelkins
This seems pretty obvious. I think most people realize that "bad behavior"
comes from being anonymous. This is why people who seem nice in person can be
total a-holes online behind a cloak of anonymity. I'd like to see some
solutions that could work without requiring people to give up their personal
information.

~~~
SapphireSun
It's not about people being anonymous or not that causes the good behavior,
it's that when people use their real name, they have risked something of value
- their reputation. The way to ensure good behavior is to require that people
take some sort of risk with something they value when they participate in your
site. This might be in the form of a deposit, using their real name, or the
loss of a potential reward.

~~~
_delirium
I agree _some_ stake is useful, but reputation is one with poor properties.
For one thing, it's not clear to me that the damage suffered is actually well
correlated with behaving well versus poorly in the forum; rather, a dominating
effect is simply what kinds of forums you choose. You will suffer a negative
effect to your reputation if you participate in a hentai forum; whether you
participate there as a troll or a valued user will not cause much additional
effect either way.

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voidpointer
The inverse of the assertion made in this article (i.e. anonymity leads to bad
behavior) has already been theoretically predicted in "John Gabriel's Greater
Internet Dickwad Theory": <http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pat070381.html>

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dell9000
Very relevant article just went up on TechCrunch as well:
[http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/21/why-you-should-confess-
ever...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/21/why-you-should-confess-everything-
before-you-get-caught/)

