Personally, I agree with everything you've said (RD). And I think that zero tolerance might be a Good Thing if it could be achieved - but so often things escalate from a perceived discourtesy step by step to mutual assured destruction of any reasonable discussion. Then it's a hard judgment call for the site moderator, whether the posters are pseudonymous or not.

Richard, I always read your posts, and yes I did learn some latin. And I understand your position.

Here are two more ways I would look at it.

A forum is just a mirror of the Internet as a whole.

If you had had full attribution on the content of the Internet, it would never have become what it is.

Here is another.

I believe strongly in Open Source software. In many cases trust is placed in people who do not reveal themselves. Yet they deliver. They are judged on their results. Their pseudonyms carry weight.

Do not forget that we have achieved so much with the Internet because the norms of physical society have changed within the virtual world.

Th internet is based on trust, and much of that trust is with non attributable personas.

Forgive another analogy. It is a little like complaining about Ebay and Paypal charges (and there are many that do), whilst still using the benefits of Ebay to buy and sell: "How do you think Ebay became so successful?".

Thanks logico. I think "Zero Tolerance" is unhelpful as a phrase - though I made the mistake of using it myself earlier - because in debate one is trying to make the person you are disagreeing with look more stupid than you. There's no getting around this. So a real-name-user who is coming off worse in a particular spat may be tempted to call "defamation" against his opponent - but this should by no means always lead to snips or even a caution. These things can quickly be misused, in whatever direction.

But of course we've all seen the drive-by snideness/misrepresentation from a pseudonym who's taken no previous part in a debate and (if one stops to think about) is adding nothing but gasoline to some flames that have heretofore been in control but quickly go out of control, to the total loss of the original, often rather subtle point at issue. The three evils of defamation, distraction and division often occur together. To curb such 'freedom' to ignite decent-hearted people from a castle of pseudonymity is a move for the ordinary person against a self-appointed elite, if one thinks about it carefully. Nothing is what it seems in this game.

Jiminy, thanks also. And if people want to know which Richard Drake I am, I'm the Richard Drake who showed Tim Berners-Lee the Wiki idea for the first time, in 1999, shortly before I travelled to Portland for two days with the inventor, Ward Cunningham. Without these real people who have used their real names (some of the time, anyway!) our world would be poorer. But of course you're right that the pseudonymous still make a contribution. The history is valuable, rich and quirky and, as always, has much to teach.

I think you are reading too much into the use of pseudonyms, personally. Blogs are a child of the internet and internet pseudonyms predate this forum and the web itself. I'm even known in real life by my pseudonym in some circles - known as TBY or 'tibby' by many friends of long standing - it's just another name I give myself that suits the environment I am in. A nom-de-plume, if you like, or a stage name. Adds a bit of drama and mystery.

Yes, the anonymous nature of the web makes it easier for nasty people to do their nasty things to nice people - that is human nature. If you think making them use their real names will stop them being nasty, you are wrong. I have a lot of experience of this. All that happens when real names are involved is that people start threatening litigation far more quickly.

James, there was an implicit question in my large post at the end of the previous page that introduced the evil trinity of {Defamation, Distraction, Division} as reasons to curb pseudonymity. Can you give examples from your 20 years of experience where such a scheme was tried and failed?

Although the history is interesting it hasn't helped many of us to predict the rise of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now Pinterest. Did you foresee Facebook and LinkedIn bringing real names to the fore in the way they did? This changes the culture within which blog owners make decisions - whatever the internet fora were like before. Twitter's an interesting development indeed. I don't think Shub's dismissal of it is at all adequate. But as a journalist said I happened to meet on Sunday, who is notable enough to have a Wikipedia page (unlike me!), none of us know where the Internet is heading. All I feel I can do is push the bit of the boat I take part in in the direction of more humanity and more compassion, not less. Because the death of these things online would be a bad outcome indeed.

For about 10 years I ran a forum where the identiy of every member was absolutely established before they were allowed to join. The criteria was even more strict than that - they had to prove they worked at a certain company, and we checked. I also wrote the forum code, so my interest was less of a moderator and more of apps support, but ultimately I was 'super admin'.

I've never seen such fighting, arguing, bitching and threats of litigation in my life. Most people fell out with each other, some permanently. One guy wanted to murder me at one point, he told me later, and fantasised about how he would do it. I was threatened with litigation. About 3/4 of the original membership left during the decade, including myself a couple of years ago, when I handed over the reins to the inmates and left.

If you ever want to conduct an experiement on how professional, intelligent people can descend to the level of protoplasm in a matter of months, run a forum. If you like your depravity hardcore, insist on knowing their names first.

In my experience, anonymity lightens the load, and de-stresses it. It's hard to be offended by someone who hasn't even left their name, and what can you do anyway? You learn to ignore the insects. Making it personal by making them traceable and identifiable just makes it messy in my experience.

James: great story, genuine thanks for sharing it, sorry about the scars as you did! So why has the experience of Paul Matthews on a real-names-forum been so different this year? Worth teasing that one out - even though I stress I'm not advocating such a policy for BH.

Another angle :)

A pseudonym does have some credibility. It has more credibility than me creating a gmail address and using a false name.

Such a trivial thing to do. Call myself for example David Foster and create dfoster@gmail.com. I can even create a wordpress blog to go with it. 10 mins work.

But I have not done that. And never would. So there is some credibility in a pseudonym.

I giving "something " to Jiminy Cricket. It is not just weightless.

Richard,

I suspect having a figurehead who is the ultimate authority, or at least arbiter, helps.

When I ran the forum, I was also a contributor. But since I ran the forum, I wasn't *just* a contributor. People admitted they felt inhibited from laying into me, or defending themselves robustly because I had the power to ban them. The fact that I didn't actually ever ban anyone didn't seem to matter. In fact, I think I became TOO laissez-faire about it, continually trying to prove I wasn't using my authority as a debating tool. This may be where the mayhem came from, I don't know.

But what it taught me is you can't be the 'owner' and 'contributor' at the same time. The Bish does this very lightly on this forum - his posts are the 'content' and he pretty much stays out of the comments. This seems to work better than the egalitarian model I tried, or the benign dictator model.

Perhaps the forum Paul Matthews is on has a similar 'figurehead' not actively taking part but keeping everyone polite. This is a close model to this forum, the difference being insisting on an appearance of real world names. I don't believe the real names are making a difference, I think that is just a reflection of the tone of the control of that forum. Correllation not causailty :)

Jiminy, yep. A real-sounding name ain't a real name. There is more honesty in using Jiminy Cricket than that. But note what I said earlier: once a question arises the person concerned must give details to establish the 'real' in real name to hosts/moderators without complaint. That's from experience. Complain at that juncture and you're marked as pseudonymous and indeed worse, as a deceiver. And remember that for me bender on CA, who I know Steve McIntyre knows, is as close to a real name (though not in defamation cost, which is important). Hard to write down the rules but I think easy to enforce them, given some common sense.

James, thanks again, even more so. I need to take some time to do some other things. Have fun :)

Shub, I was aiming to go silent for a little while, partly to get some other things done and partly because I thought it might be good for the thread. But here's a quick reaction to a small part of what you've just written. I started with you because as far as I knew you were the longest standing BH regular who had offered your opinion. I was disappointed that you made a wrong assumption about my own view in what I knew from past experience (I mean from 2000 onwards) was a very emotive area. But in my initial response I made a point of being lighthearted in correcting your error and in saying that I pretty much agreed with everything you'd written. I was then angered by your response - but also delighted by it, because it illustrated something I've long felt about the assymmetry in this situation. So I used you as my whipping boy, if you want it to put it like that. Which I would never have done if you'd apologised for misrepresenting me, once I'd made that clear.

But take a look at the situation here. Paul starts the thread having tipped me off about it ahead of time - as if I needed to prepare my thoughts on this subject! Since then we've been joined by Jeremy Harvey and Barry Woods. That four real names, two of them ready to be somewhat critical of me, explicitly or implicitly - which is quite fine, exactly as expected. And we've had twelve of your own brethren too, most of them breathing fire towards me and most of that on the basis of the very misreprentation that I initially tried to correct with you. It's something that you could have done a lot to nip in the bud. But you didn't.

And now, from my perspective, some genuinely rational discussion has broken out on this thread, quite unexpectedly. But you are still angry. It's hard to know what to say. Why so bothered given that you use a pseudonym, which is meant to (but clearly never does) take the heat out of situations exactly like this?

If you can't take it, don't dish it ... no, no, that's wrong, as a pseudonym you don't really have to take it in the first place, not in my book. The complaint from you now doesn't look very good from where I sit.

But here are two things I learned from your post which I think are important. One is that you began by using your real name here. I didn't know that. The other is that you've given details of your scientific credentials before. I missed that too. I've been grateful for your support in the past, not least on something on Climate Audit last summer. But we're going to have to work at this one.

'You learn to ignore the insects.' That's the key.

@logicophilosophicus... I am offended...

cb's ridiculous obnoxious rant at me on the main thread convinces me to continue using an alias. And he's supposed to be on "our" side. There are too many nuts out there.

Talking of obnoxious rants, I'm back :)

I was glad to see that I couldn't see cb's 'contribution' by the time I came to that thread James. I never had the chance to judge for myself and you know what, I'm glad. I trust our host to simplify and dignify.

I was going to consider two bits of BH history to do with Richard Muller in my next piece of exploration here - partly because I think Muller's a key figure. But the broader point is about developing a culture at Bishop Hill that gives the maximum chance of alliances being formed to roll back existing climate policies (or resist proposed ones) that make no sense and damage the poor. In practical politics you very often have to hold your nose in order to agree in a limited area with an ideological enemy in order to gain democratic traction. And let's be very clear that this is not what the vested interests behind climate policy want.

I don't think this is often considered in the cut and thrust of threads on Bishop Hill and the few other places I know well in the climate blogosphere. And of my unholy trinity stirring up Division is a key reason why the pseudonymous frequently don't seem to help. Remember that I'm not talking just about those using pseudonymity in the best possible way for the best possible reasons, I'm talking about the sum total of the pseudonymous, including all trolls and other miscreants, and the culture they help to produce. I'd like to illustrate from two threads on Richard Muller next. But that certainly won't prove the point either way. We have a very long way to go even to lay out some reasonably representative evidence.

Despite using an alias, I am with you on that. As my 8:27 AM post on the Tamsin Edwards 'cool exchange' thread shows. Shouting from the sidelines is somewhat enjoyable, the hard work comes with the peacemaking.

But I do seem to be antagonising the 'old guard' somewhat.

That's a terrific post about how something as big as CAGW will fall apart James. Churchill wasn't a bad peacemaker, funnily enough, as Roy Jenkins brings out in various ways - but you're quite right that he reached his peak in those war years, a role for which he himself felt he had been prepared all his life. We need the hand of destiny in this case too! But a lot of very helpful points to chew over - and helpful background for my concerns here. Worth looking at Bernard Levin's amazing prediction of the rise of Gorbachev (or someone like him) triggering the collapse of the Soviet Union, at least tens beforehand, as well. I'll get onto the detail on Muller in due course. I feel no great urgency on it now this thread is here.

Oops, 'at least ten years beforehand' that should have been.

Thanks Shub, a very fair summary of my position - though I'd stress that "pseudonymous commenters ... controlling the agenda and attempting to prevent potential 'alliances' with the 'other side'" are not the majority, even in my suspicious mind :) I do think the pseudonymous contigent on Bishop Hill control the agenda unwittingly more than they think though. Groupthink is not restricted to warmists or the 'very big', it can easily be seen to operate on a tiny thread on Bishop Hill. Has anyone else noticed how the early comments on a thread can set the direction for hundreds of subsequent ones? But in all that the pseudonymous is never all bad. Complex - but I'm now trying, with you help, to get a handle on it.