

Disqus Research: Pseudonyms Drive Communities - simanyay
http://disqus.com/research/pseudonyms/

======
sunir
They did nothing to demonstrate non-Facebook logins are actually pseudonymous.
I use my real name without using Facebook. I believe many do as well. Even if
not true it could be true and they haven't shown otherwise.

They presumed the effect they are trying to measure. It is easy to draw a
conclusion when you start with it as a premise!

~~~
tikhonj
I think it's more useful to think of pseudonyms as a superset of read
identities--they're names that do not _have_ to be your real name, but they do
not have to not be your name either.

Since most sites would not proscribe using your real name as a username, this
definition makes the most sense.

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sirclueless
I think the conclusions this infographic draws are absurd. Let me explain by
way of analogy:

Reddit and HackerNews are two sites on the internet, each with their own
community of commenters. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Reddit
users enjoy inane off-topic humor in their comment threads, and HackerNews
users enjoy thoughtful posts with occasional dry wit. Let us also assume that
Reddit users can post on HackerNews using their Reddit credentials, and vice
versa.

After some analysis of their comment threads, Reddit makes the following
claim: Reddit users drive communities! After all, nearly all of the comments
on the site are inane banter from Reddit users. People from HackerNews rarely
comment on the site, and Reddit's indicators of comment quality show that
Reddit users generally post higher quality comments. They get so many upvotes!

But on the other hand, HackerNews claims that HN users drive communities!
After all, nearly all of the comments are thoughtful and insightful posts from
HackerNews users. People from Reddit hardly ever comment on HN articles, and
Paul Graham's indicators of quality show that HN users generally post higher
quality comments. Reddit comments tend to get downvoted to oblivion.

Anyways, I just wanted to show by this example that if you take a service that
caters to a particular demographic, and ask its users to rate each other, of
course you will find that the demographic comes out in a positive light.

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chrisbroadfoot
I too think this page is too light on details.

I can see one major bias (albeit inferred) - they consider anyone posting
using Facebook to be using a "real name" - and assuming that anyone posting
using a "real-like" name outside of Facebook is a pseudonym.

If this is true, they're really only measuring and comparing the quality and
quantity of Facebook-identified commenters vs other commenters.

~~~
thedz
Only Facebook commenters have "enforced" real names, in that their Facebook
name is used. Signing in with a Disqus account or Twitter uses the names that
a user chose on that service, which typically is not a real name but some sort
of pseudonym.

So while it's true that it's basiaclly comparing Facebook-identified
commenters to other commenters, only Facebook-identified commenters are
required (assuming they sign in with their actual account) to have a real
name.

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waqf
This page seems long on cute fuzzy pictures and short on content. They don't
say what discussion forums they sampled: most likely, their own. They don't
describe their methodology in detail (I looked in vain for a link to or
citation of a proper experimental writeup.) And what did they learn?

As far as I can tell, they learned that people who bother to sign up for forum
accounts ("pseudonyms", in their terminology) make more return
visits/contributions than people who use least-effort ways of logging in
(existing Facebook account, or anonymous contribution).

Well, that's a surprise.

~~~
ro_gupta
We're going to blog about it which should shed more light on methodology -- TC
just linked to the infographic. But yeah this was across the entire Disqus
network, ~600 MM monthly UVs and ~60 MM commenters, and I believe "pseudonyms"
include proprietary site logins + social media handles besides FB.

The major insight was that pseudonyms yield significantly more quantity and
quality on the network. May seem obvious to you but wasn't so for many,
including a number of us who've been with Disqus for years. The conventional
wisdom was that anonymous comments would rank highest in quantity and FB
comments would score highest in quality.

~~~
pavel_lishin
If I may offer a suggestion, perhaps mention that pseudonyms generally tend to
be long-held identities - a lot of people think that pseudonyms are just
throw-away identities used to gossip about your employer safely, instead of
identities that persist for months, years or even decades. (A lot of people
would recognize the handle CmdrTaco, but how many know his real name?)

(p.s. your backyard is awesome)

~~~
sabret00the
"pseudonyms generally tend to be long-held identities - a lot of people think
that pseudonyms are just throw-away identities used to gossip about your
employer safely, instead of identities that persist for months, years or even
decades."

A fact too often forgotten. This is the same ignorance that keeps me from
using Google+ while I'm prolific on Twitter.

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SpikeGronim
The data presented in this post doesn't support the conclusion. The data do
not show that pseudonyms are the cause of more quantity and higher quality,
they just show a correlation. I hope that the full blog post that's been
promised addresses this.

~~~
zerostar07
How would you go about showing causation?

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jqueryin
TLDR; people are more likely to comment when their true identity is masked.

This is, IMO, likely due to the fact that people can't be held accountable for
their comments if nobody knows their true identity.

Personally, I have made it a goal to only use alias variations including my
name for the sole purpose of being held accountable for my actions online;
good or bad. It's a better moral compass than acting on behalf of some made up
"pseudonym" (i.e. alter-ego). If I wouldn't say it in public, odds are I
shouldn't be saying it online.

 _Note: In the case of my HN alias, I've always included my full name in the
profile page. The alias references a domain I started years back and was
originally intended to help push traffic. It slowly morphed into my personal
account as I bridged the gap between reader and contributor._

~~~
jshen
"If I wouldn't say it in public, odds are I shouldn't be saying it online."

I've been working on social sites for years, and I disagree with completely.
There are many reasons, but here's one. What I think when I'm 20 is not a good
indicator of who I am when I'm 40. I remember I posted with my real on some
pantheist site when I was young, about why I was a pantheist, and for many
years that was one of the top results for a search for my name. I regretted
it, and luckily it's falling off of google.

Or, here's another example. I've made a small little community site
(yakkstr.com) and lately there has been a lot of talk about non monogamous
relationships and our feelings about them. I doubt people would be honest
about this if they were using their real names rather than pseudonyms, and the
value of the conversation is much greater when people are being honest.

~~~
jqueryin
You regret a number of things you've done in your lifetime. It's a part of
being _human_. Do you think Zuck regrets his IM logs:

    
    
       Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
    

Damn straight he does. He'd love to take it back. It's in the past, and I
think we can all agree that it was an immature comment by an early 20
something and he has since matured.

~~~
jshen
I think you missed my main point. There is real value to pseudonyms, even if
accountability is also good.

If one could be discriminated against for religious views then it's probably a
good idea to not use your real name. And the list goes on and on.

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cft
Are they trying to convince their future investors that they will survive,
despite of the Facebook Comments social plugin? Their Alexa traffic data seems
to contradict this.

~~~
thetylerhayes
Using directly-measured data, the Disqus network holds the #1 U.S. Network
rank in Quantcast: <http://www.quantcast.com/p-94WKwgUwZHlfo>

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akshaykarthik
I think this is especially shown in reddit. The idea that you have no idea who
a username is but you know that it is the same person each time... I think
this may be the factor that brings actual communication.

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zerostar07
\- In the graph, 61% appears to be inline with 51% .

\- Would be interesting to see deviation bars on those values - my hunch is
that real identity is not different from pseudo.

\- It's false to suggest that pseudonymous users contribute more comments. You
need comments per user data for that. Your graph just shows that pseudonymous
accounts are easier to use.

\- Why is everyone here attacking their data. Disqus is huge, this is an
interesting topic and it would be interesting to have more data from them

\- While writing your blog post, please also report separately the number of
responses a comment evokes, or the length of the comment. It would also be
interesting to have the number of edits per comment.

\- Also post comments per user for different login sources

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onli
Note that the "Quality Signals by Identity"-graph is broken. 61% != 51% (well,
at least not on a %-scale).

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tantalor
The graphic for "Quality Signals by Identity" shows two bars for 61% and 51%
with the same length.

------
gridspy
Based on the info here in the comments, it seems that pseudonyms are any names
other than FB logins.

Perhaps this could be as much an analysis of the quality of a comment left by
your typical FaceBook user. I know that as the Shepard of my own digital
identity I'd much rather register www.myname.com and have a blog than use FB
on a regular basis. Perhaps those of us that have been posting online for
longer still live in the days of 'doing it ourselves.'

It wouldn't be surprising if FB adoption is higher among web novices than web
pros simply because FB wasn't there when web pros started. This is then
reflected in web pros leaving more useful comments for a variety of reasons.

In addition, as other commenters point out that pseudonyms are not just
another form of anonymous posting, often with more personality than the
poster's actual name. Being forced to give a real name requires a lot more
commitment from many posters.

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xster
I completely agree with the conclusion of the infographics, but just from the
point of view of the approach... wouldn't it be a possibility that people
aren't necessarily avoiding real names but rather facebook profile access?

~~~
northisup
my personal thoughts here is that this question represents tunnel vision of
the tech community. Anecdotally my techie friends avoid it, but the vast
majority of my non techie friends use it all the time.

~~~
thedz
The vast majority of my techie friends use it all the time. Maybe I just need
better techie friends.

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recursive
Content aside, I dislike the giant-image-as-page-layout style. I remember
seeing stuff like that in the 90s, but given the rich abilities of browsers to
style content, no one should do this anymore.

~~~
arthurdenture
Bonus gripe: the pie chart is totally misleading, for two related reasons:

\- Some segments are arbitrarily taller than other segments (makes them look
bigger)

\- Some segments are deeper than other segments due to where they are in the
bubble.

"Real identity" is listed as 4% of the graph, but it's not clear if they
intended for it to be 4% of the volume, top-down area, or horizontal distance
on the graph.

It's the worst kind of chartjunk: not just unnecessary, but actively
misleading.

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deepkut
This doesn't surprise me. Pseudonyms are the middle ground between anonymous
and real. This article seems to point to the fact that pseudonyms are the best
of both worlds, ie more likely to comment (from anonymity), while the quality
remains high (from actual identity).

Whether or not this report is comprehensive, and I believe it to be pretty
airy, this is still extremely fascinating.

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Duff
This has been intuitively known since the Internet emerged. Hell, more people
know me by a pseudonym that I've used since 1992 (not this one) than my real
name.

The only people pushing "real names" are Facebook and Google, and they are
doing so because it helps them build a better profile of you and make more
money. Building community is a secondary concern.

~~~
zerostar07
The real identity thing also helps build the fuel that keeps the social
engines running: gossip.

------
vicngtor
1) I am not surprised by the findings considering that it came from disqus 2)
Posting more doesn't mean better. As a reader, it's often more helpful to have
better comments than to have more comments. A good example would be the drop
in trolling comments after TC switched to the facebook commenting systems.

~~~
andrewhillman
I agree 100%. Couldn't have said it better myself. So true. Up vote this
comment.

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jerfelix
My issue with Disqus' pseudonyms is that they don't seem to be personally
owned.

I selected a pseudonym, put in an email and a password, made a few comments...
then I realized that some girl's photo is next to my comments! Apparently I
hijacked her account.

~~~
thetylerhayes
If you registered an account with your email address you wouldn't have been
able to hijack someone else's account -- all registered accounts are tied to
unique email addresses. Can you reach out to us at <http://disqus.com/support>
with some more specific details? We'd be happy to help get everything
clarified.

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zeeg
I love that we're able to publish research like this.

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akuchlous
This is of course true. look at 4chan. they have enormous traffic and is real
active, but totally annonymous!

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/4chans_chris_poole_face...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/4chans_chris_poole_facebook_google_are_doing_it_wr.php)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...](http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online.html)

