A post from Doc G in another thread has prompted this thread - but it's also stuff that I've been chewing over for a while, particularly following the launch of the excellent akahele.com (well done, and great stuff to all involved) - Doc said "Hiding behind a pseudonym, whilst commenting on real identifiable people, is cowardly and deplorable." - a view echoed on akahele - "When people hide behind anonymous identifiers or phony pseudonyms, trust breaks down."

I just wanted to mention (as an pseudonymous person!) that I kinda hope that pseudonymous writing and good ethics / value / humour / quality aren't fundamentally in tension, rather that they will just tend to lead to the whole slew of problems well documented already.

In particular, I thought I'd mention the example of 'Private Eye' - a british institution and fantastic magazine which doesn't generally do 'bylines' (with notable exceptions) - contributors make up silly names and write their stuff... sound familiar?

The fundamental difference of course is that Private Eye is 'published' - and as such is regularly in and out of the courts, with varying degrees of success. The important point is that they manage very successfully to continue to publish, and even though they fairly regularly make mistakes / cross lines and have to pay damages, they're more often 'right' in some sense or other.....

So if one allows that pseudonymous contribution can be valuable - where does 'responsibility' come in? - On the part of the publisher, I guess - and it's the absence of such which I reckon is of higher importance than the identity of author thing.

The more you think about it, the odder it seems that publication wouldn't be a stated goal of a foundation seeking to share the sum of human knowledge. If the tool requires 'self-publication' (which is how I'd describe wikipedia?) - then that's where identification is required - fundamentally because the buck stopping somewhere is a good thing, and should be supported - I don't think many would disagree?

This post has been edited by privatemusings: