On Wednesday 03 Jun 2009 2:48:40 pm Udhay Shankar N wrote: > I had an offlist conversation with a silklist member that got me > thinking. Following the contretemps last year about multiple people > ostensibly using a single email account, and what this does to the > notion of identity online
My view on this is that while I do not care about the identity of a person or what name that person uses, I would prefer tie an identity down with a distinctive name+email id In a sense a person who signs as "." is selfish because he (she) relies on a dot as being a recognizable name and gets away with it only because many others on the list have not opted to have exactly that name. But to me the presence of a consistent email id along with that name is reassuring. Names lake Gandalf, Lawnun or Bonobashi are fine with me. But I suffer from the human failing of tying an identity down to one human being. After a few messages it becomes easy for me to detect a character or personality in the messages. If one indentity (name tied to email id) is used by different people it is not a problem - most often the character of the post varies and it become evident that the "identity" posting the messages is a fickle and inconsistent idiot, or multiple people posting under one identity. In a public forum I would ignore such an identity, or alternatively conduct a vicious attack and get into a degrading fight with the people behind that single id on the logic that I will degrade myself and pull the other guy/s down with me. IOW Catch 22 - either defend yourself and get degraded or be degraded by my insults. But this is not desirable in a private list of friends such as this one. If there is one reason why a list of "friends" should have distinct and recognizable identities it is because the list of friends can include people such as myself who will fight and be insulting when irritated by what I consider as absurd idiocy that should not exist among a group who purport to make conversation with each other. The problem is that X may not want to make conversation with me, but that will not stop me from making conversation with or addressing X. (I am not referring to any specific individual here). BTW who is Udhay Shankar? shiv
