In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Grant Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On 2005-12-06, Aahz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, >> Grant Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> >>>Hmm, I though he explained it: >>> >>> 1) Not using your real name. >>> >>> 2) A yahoo, aol, or hotmail address. >>> >>>In the ancient and hallowed (by net standards) history of Usenet, >>>both of these (particularly the first one) have been pretty good >>>predictors of crankness. The correlation isn't as high as it used >>>to be, now that hiding behind silly nicknames has apparently become >>>socially acceptable in other venues (web "forums" and "boards" and >>>whatnot). >> >> I've been on the Net for more than fifteen years, and while this >> canard about real names gets trotted out from time to time, it's >> quite clear that many many people have been active on the Net *and* >> taken seriously using names that aren't what you'd call a "real >> name". (People named "piglet", "tigger", and "pooh", just for >> example, who were active long before I showed up. Not to mention >> "piranha".) > >I didn't said it was 100% reliable, but in most of the technical groups >there sure seemed to be a good correlation beetween "screen names" and >kooks/trolls.
My point is that I do not think the correlation has changed significantly over the last fifteen years that I've been observing. There is still a moderate correlation between screen names and trollish behavior (just as there was historically); there is still a high enough chance that people are using a screen name for reasons that have nothing to do with trollishness that it should never be used as a primary reason for selecting or rejecting posts from a person (just as it always was historically). For that matter, I have no evidence that your name is Grant Edwards. If I really cared, I could find people I know in Minneapolis to look you up... IOW, it just makes sense to me to skip the whole name issue and simply respond to people's posts (for some strange reason, I have a vested interest ;-). -- Aahz ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "Don't listen to schmucks on USENET when making legal decisions. Hire yourself a competent schmuck." --USENET schmuck (aka Robert Kern) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list