Lukas—I guess one disadvantage of pseudonyms like ‘Alice’ and ‘Chloe’ is that it’s quite difficult for outsiders who don’t know their real identities to distinguish between them very clearly—especially if their stories get very intertwined.
If we can’t attach real faces and names to the allegations, and we can’t connect their pseudonyms to any other real-world information about them, such as LinkedIn profiles, web pages, EA Forum posts, etc., then it’s much harder to remember who’s who, and to assess their relatively degrees of reliability or culpability.
That’s just how the psychology of ‘person perception’ works. The richer the information we have about people (eg real names, faces, profiles, backgrounds), the easier it is to remember them accurately, distinguish between their actions, and differentiate their stories.
You’re right about the effort involved, but when these are real people who you are discussing deanonymizing in order to try to stop them from getting jobs, you should make the effort.
Well all three key figures at Nonlinear are also real people, and they got deanonymized by Ben Pace’s highly critical post, which had the likely effect (unless challenged) of stopping Nonlinear from doing its work, and of stigmatizing its leaders.
So, I don’t understand the double standard, where those subject to false allegations don’t enjoy anonymity, and those making the false allegations do get to enjoy anonymity.
So, I don’t understand the double standard, where those subject to false allegations don’t enjoy anonymity, and those making the false allegations do get to enjoy anonymity.
I don’t think all people in the replies were arguing that Ben’s initial post was okay and deanonymizing Alice and or Chloe would be bad (which I think you would call a double standard, which I’m not commenting on right now). Some probably do but some probably think that Ben’s initial post was bad and that deanonymizing Alice and or Chloe would also be bad and that we shouldn’t try to correct one bad with another bad, which doesn’t look like a double standard to me.
Lukas—I guess one disadvantage of pseudonyms like ‘Alice’ and ‘Chloe’ is that it’s quite difficult for outsiders who don’t know their real identities to distinguish between them very clearly—especially if their stories get very intertwined.
If we can’t attach real faces and names to the allegations, and we can’t connect their pseudonyms to any other real-world information about them, such as LinkedIn profiles, web pages, EA Forum posts, etc., then it’s much harder to remember who’s who, and to assess their relatively degrees of reliability or culpability.
That’s just how the psychology of ‘person perception’ works. The richer the information we have about people (eg real names, faces, profiles, backgrounds), the easier it is to remember them accurately, distinguish between their actions, and differentiate their stories.
You’re right about the effort involved, but when these are real people who you are discussing deanonymizing in order to try to stop them from getting jobs, you should make the effort.
Well all three key figures at Nonlinear are also real people, and they got deanonymized by Ben Pace’s highly critical post, which had the likely effect (unless challenged) of stopping Nonlinear from doing its work, and of stigmatizing its leaders.
So, I don’t understand the double standard, where those subject to false allegations don’t enjoy anonymity, and those making the false allegations do get to enjoy anonymity.
I don’t think all people in the replies were arguing that Ben’s initial post was okay and deanonymizing Alice and or Chloe would be bad (which I think you would call a double standard, which I’m not commenting on right now). Some probably do but some probably think that Ben’s initial post was bad and that deanonymizing Alice and or Chloe would also be bad and that we shouldn’t try to correct one bad with another bad, which doesn’t look like a double standard to me.