Originally posted by Mikesul It would also be helpful to require real names. Many of us already use something close to our full names so it really would not be a burden. Anonymity is the bane of the Internet.
You might argue it is a bane on unmoderated forums (think popular social media) where there are issues like childish on-line vandalism, stalking, scam lures, grooming of under-age targets, and use for the passing of criminal messages. You might argue that it makes it a bit harder to identify the miscreants, although they need to be very stupid not to use false names anyway. In practice it is not possible for forums to check that user names are real.
I'm pretty sure that none of those abuses are issues on PF and I fail to see any problem here in which real names would make any difference. We use consistent forum names, so if anyone is mis-behaving they can be recognised, their track record considered, and diciplined if necessary.
I won't be using my real name and would leave if I were required to do so. I have no wish for anyone to connect the dots between the several forums I use in very different subjects, in particular not by marketing people to whom I am very alergic.