Thanks, your comments are useful! For the cases you describe, where we want to hide the user's real-life identity, I think the "hide real names" option is the way to go. I've also talked to a teacher here in NZ who assigned arbitrary firstnames and lastnames to her students (i.e. "student one", "student two", etc) to make sure their names stayed hidden.
I do indeed favor this approach of giving the user an "anonymous identity". It maintains community-accountability in the site, while keeping the user's real name hidden.
Hi Dirk,
Thanks, your comments are useful! For the cases you describe, where we want to hide the user's real-life identity, I think the "hide real names" option is the way to go. I've also talked to a teacher here in NZ who assigned arbitrary firstnames and lastnames to her students (i.e. "student one", "student two", etc) to make sure their names stayed hidden.
I do indeed favor this approach of giving the user an "anonymous identity". It maintains community- accountability in the site, while keeping the user's real name hidden.
Cheers,
Aaron