At 2009-06-03 14:48:40 +0530, ud...@pobox.com wrote: > > this member was of the opinion that pseudonyms such as "." or even > "lawnun" should be discouraged on the list.
I've thought about this question often, but my feelings are complicated and may be somewhat contradictory. (I've never tried to write them down before, and I'm not sure I can explain them well, but I'll try.) In this context, I interact with people on a variety of mailing lists, ranging from technical lists (which I think of as "work" at some level, even on a casual open source project's list) to more social lists (such as the delhibird list, which is still technical but less connected to "work" in my mind), to lists like silk (not "work" at all); and IRC. Broadly speaking, the kinds of people in these places range from those who always use real (or real-sounding) names to those who use nicknames (in this category I include people who use only an email address that doesn't obviously correspond to a name, of which there are many) to those who use obvious pseudonyms and make a concerted effort to keep their identity a secret. In a way, I feel I should react the same way to people across the whole spectrum. I *know* that real-sounding names may be fake or even actively misleading; and I know that people who insist on their anonymity may do so for good reasons, and I don't grudge them that. Nevertheless, I do find myself reacting differently sometimes. I can relate to how Madhu feels, but I draw the line in a very different place, and more softly. People who use pseudonyms range from people like lawnun and bonobashi, who use their nicknames consistently but make no effort to keep their real identity a secret; to people who use nicknames but whose identity is unknown to me, and not obvious from their communications; to people who, for lack of a better way to explain, "make a big deal of" keeping their identity a secret. (Again, this is a spectrum, and not discrete classes; there are plenty of people who lie in between.) In general, I don't react negatively to pseudonyms at all, even when I don't know who the people behind them are. But I find myself becoming more and more uncomfortable as I approach the "hardcore anonymity" end of the scale. I've felt guilty about that, and trained myself to not be bothered about it to the extent that I can cooperate with such people. But I would definitely be more comfortable speaking to someone named "Udhay". (There have been people elsewhere on the scale who made me uncomfortable in the past, but I can't think of any examples now.) When I say "react negatively", I mean to the name itself. Of course, I don't *like* some of the people who use pseudonyms, but I don't dislike them *because* they use pseudonyms (of that I'm sure). Still, I can't be entirely sure that if I don't like someone (for any other reason), their place on the pseudonymity scale doesn't reinforce my not liking them. In other words, I may be less forgiving of an annoying pseudonymous person than of an annoying nymous person. I do know that I'm less bothered by pseudonymity on lists I don't think of as "work", but that difference is usually quite small. Aside: "." should classify with lawnun and bonobashi, but it bothers me because I can't read or write it as a word. It's a syntactical problem, though, not one of identity: "va" was better, but so would "qx" be. I'm just not comfortable writing ".," to address a person, but apart from that it goes in the bonobashi pile, and I have no problem with it. I can also relate to how Deepa feels in posting to a list where she doesn't know who else the subscribers are. I have to do that all the time, of course, so I've become used to it; but I've noticed that the reluctance is still there somewhere, sometimes. -- ams P.S. It really bothers me that it took eight paragraphs to explain how I feel about this, and then quite poorly, with a fair bit of handwaving. Oh well. Life would be different if everyone used serial numbers.
