In reply to Bianca.

Having worked in digital media for 30-years through AOL in beta to WP Tavern today, I have watched media companies struggle with the troll armies unleashed by allowing anonymous posts in comments.

You bring up the fact that people can be killed for their opinion.
Obviously, I’m sympathetic to the plight of others who live in far away lands who cannot speak out or share their views in fear of retribution.
That is something we fortunately don’t have to face here in the United States of America...for now unless some rude and obnoxious politicians want to take that away because they are afraid of criticism. But that’s the point. On Twitter, we can see what an asshole Trump is. If he were able to post what he does anonymously, he could say and do just about anything. He could troll you and me for weeks and push us offline.

This has been debated over and over, but media companies have come to the conclusion that a. It is too costly and time consuming to manage trolls online, because it’s never ending, b. If you have something to say, then you should qualify your statement with your identity, and c. you lose something in the conversation when people are allowed to say what they think without care or concern for others who do identify themselves.

Look, you can opine all you want about how people in other countries can get killed for what they say online, but that’s what WhatsApp and 4chan and 8chan are for. There are places on the Internet where you can be anonymous if you want. But WP Tavern should not be that place. Because if you can’t stand behind your words here, then your words have less weight in the WordPress community. But you could certainly create an entirely new persona and post as you will anyway. You can figure out how to create anonymity. It may not be as easy, but it can be done. And, at the end if the day, there is a record somewhere tied to the email address you control that will tie you back to your words.

There is no easy answer. Go ask the New York Times, who fought this battle, what they think. They require real names and so shouldn’t WP Tavern. No one wants troll wars of anonymous bots and fools infiltrating the discussion and disrupting the discourse. It’s unfortunate like needs to be this way, but giving people that long leash has shown over and over again the abyss that befalls the in-line community once you allow anonymity.

It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is.