Online privacy (forums, gaming, etc...)Follow

Fuck no.

I don't know. Part of me says "Hell no" but, looking back on it, I used to post thousands of posts to Usenet groups under my real name. Some on game oriented groups like the Magic: the Gathering and some on places like alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die which had the same sort of tardbags you find on forums today. Never worried or phased me for a moment.

On the other hand, it is a hell of a lot easier to dig stuff up on a person across the country today than it was back in 1994.

I probably wouldn't post here if my real name was required and publicly available.

My facebook has my real name, but I've been pretty picky about who I friend. When I post comments to our local paper it uses my real name. I do feel weird sometimes having my name on those comments but at the same time it does cause me to double-check my diplomacy before hitting the send button.

Presumably you could make your WoW account under a false name that would then be used for forum-trolling.

I honestly don't know why Blizzard wants to do this. Seems like opening pandora's box or at the least a can-o-worms.

Sick and I were talking about this the other night. Blizzard may think this is a great idea, but it's going to open up more cans of worms than I think they expect.

Hell no would I post anywhere that gave my full name out. Even the local mother site where we meet up face to face, we have usernames and do not provide our full names unless we choose to. For one thing, no matter how well moderated forum boards can be, people can take offense to things and take it off the board. Anything off the board is unmoderated. As a manager I have watched personal conflicts escalate from a minor infraction on our board (which we have the authority to step in and help resolve, and do)to massive hate fests outside of our jurisdiction that sucks other people in. In time people forget the slight infraction that caused the initial issue in the first place, but bad feelings fester in areas of the net mods can not control.On a much larger scale, such as Blizzard, having personal information such as full names can lead to people being stalked for a disagreement on the board, and in small extreme cases, even physical violence. Granted the majority of people using the forums would never dream of doing stuff like this. But for a gaming company to give that type of information freely to thousands of (lets face it, many immature) players in a public forum environment just screams for potential violent vendettas to occur. And that is something I would never wish to risk dealing with. How do I know that if I say something in innocence with no ill intent, I may inadvertently **** off the wrong person who is not mentally stable? Not worth it.

So if this goes through you have that angle to worry about. You also have the aspect of many people leaving the forums in droves because they don't feel comfortable posting with personal information out in the public. So while Blizzard may be trying to do this to stop trolling, in reality it has too many cons to make this idea work in their favor.

If I didn't have one of the most common first/last names on Earth I might be hesitant.

If one were to look up my first and last name they'd think I was a professional snowboarder, artist, or some guy running for Mayor of some town called Herriman, or the guy who played "Kevin" in "Hobgoblins 2."

No, no, and Hell No.



I don't hide behind a nom de plume in order to be a nasty troll (usually). But I need the privacy to say things I would be to shy to say face to face in RL, to say things I wouldn't want many of my relatives to come across, and to get around lingering social phobia problems about both speaking and writing. My net name is my safe place.

It also stops stalker problems, but really, that's actually secondary to the daily service it provides.

Shaun White, that you?

Someone go sue blizzard for stealing our karma system!

off topic: 7,777 post for Elinda.

Make a wish, or something.

Now that they've changed their minds on it, will you bother? Personally I wouldn't, since this seems like a bit of a harbinger of things to come.

d'awwwwwwwww. :(

There was an easy way to make that happen but you went and f'ucked it all up.

Well, gullible duck that I am, I went to forum=268. There was NOTHING there. >.<