Alternative GUIs: GoblinX (TuxMachines)

Alternative GUIs: GoblinX (TuxMachines)

> If someone gives a real name you can look around to see if they have betrayed trust while using their real name before.

Exactly as you can with a consistently-used pseudonym. Moreover, I can legally change my name at any point, for free, as can anyone else in the UK; all I need is a witness to sign the deed poll. And that's only if I want it to be legally binding - in less formal situations, I can call myself anything I please at any point. How exactly would you divine the difference?

> ...pseudonyms are essentially free and limitless...

Exactly as real names are - see above. Moreover, you are overlooking that many people who use distinctive pseudonyms see them as far more personally meaningful than their given names - much more tightly binding, if you will and stay with them for years, even to the point where they have a much stronger pseudonymous reputation than eponymous. (I'm in this position myself, as it happens.)

The assumptions you are arguing from, about the strength of legal names as opposed to pseudonyms, are simply wrong. Pseudonyms are not the throwaways you think they are, and legal names are nowhere near as permanent as you would like them to be.

> Your next point will be that even if someone gives a real name, they could be doing bad things under pseudonyms.

What you are doing here is popularly known as raising a strawman. It's arrogant and fallacious; don't do it.

In fact, I have no next point. I don't need one yet; you don't even appear to have grasped, let alone refuted, my first one - which is that what matters in building trust is reputation, not identity, and given a consistent identity whose reputation can be checked, it doesn't matter WHO assigned the identity, or what legal status it has. Conversely, if an identity has no reputation behind it at all, it's an unknown quantity no matter how much ceremony went into its assignment.