I think what this comes down to for me is: If Kat Woods’ Forum username was pseudonymous, would we have taken down Ben’s post? (Or otherwise removed all references to Kat by her real name?)
If the answer to this is “yes,” then I don’t think Alice+Chloe should be deanonymized.
I do not like the incentive structure that this would create if adopted. Kat did not get to look at this particular drama and decide whether she wanted it discussed under a real or pseudonymous username. Her decision point was when she created her forum account however many years ago, at a time when she had no idea that this kind of drama would erupt. If this position becomes policy, then it incentivizes every person, at the time that they create a forum account, to choose a pseudonym rather than use their real name, to avoid having any unforeseeable future drama publicly associated with their real name. I think this would be bad. People in a community can’t build trust if they don’t know the identities of the people they are building trust with.
A rule that you couldn’t directly name people of moderate or greater prominence wouldn’t work well anyway. People here are awfully clever, and I’m sure one could easily write a whistleblowing piece on such a person that left very little doubt about their identity without actually saying their name or other unique identifiers. In fact, I’m not sure if Ben’s piece could have been effectively written without most of the Forum readership knowing who Alice and Chloe had worked for.
I do not like the incentive structure that this would create if adopted. Kat did not get to look at this particular drama and decide whether she wanted it discussed under a real or pseudonymous username. Her decision point was when she created her forum account however many years ago, at a time when she had no idea that this kind of drama would erupt. If this position becomes policy, then it incentivizes every person, at the time that they create a forum account, to choose a pseudonym rather than use their real name, to avoid having any unforeseeable future drama publicly associated with their real name. I think this would be bad. People in a community can’t build trust if they don’t know the identities of the people they are building trust with.
A rule that you couldn’t directly name people of moderate or greater prominence wouldn’t work well anyway. People here are awfully clever, and I’m sure one could easily write a whistleblowing piece on such a person that left very little doubt about their identity without actually saying their name or other unique identifiers. In fact, I’m not sure if Ben’s piece could have been effectively written without most of the Forum readership knowing who Alice and Chloe had worked for.