All must use their own real names, even here in the non-member discussion board

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

As if the Constabulary doesn't have enough to do already?  I think that this is a non-starter of an idea.  (Perhaps if the Constabulary were expanded to have, say, 40 members, from the two [two!] currently active ones.)

Don't think that counts as an argument, given that we are talking about cases much rarer than CZ approvals.

Have you ever bothered to look at how much Howard, say, and Milton, have contributed over the last year?  How would you like to have an anonymous Howard and Milton each sending in their material to the Kops to be put somewhere or other?  Hate to say it, Daniel, but it ain't ever gonna happen!

Why would someone be anonymous and perverse enough to produce that volume?  

[Hayford Peirce]

Why would someone be anonymous and perverse enough to produce that volume?  

Are you telling me that there aren't anonymous people at WP who haven't produced *enormous* amounts of material?  I can tell you two or three "names" in the tennis articles just off the top of my head.  Why wouldn't the same thing obtain here?

Howard has made, what, 25,000 edits since joining (I saw somewhere yesterday that I had made over 9,000, so let's say Howard has made at a minimum 3 times more).  AND they have been scattered around hundreds of articles and hundreds of talk pages.

PLUS he's made 1,100 or so contributions to the Forum.

Suppose ALL of the above had to be received by a Constable and then put in the appropriate places?!

I ask you: are you actually *serious* when you propose such a project?

Yeah, yeah, I *know*, you're gonna say, "Well, I doubt it anyone will be as productive as Howard, or Meg, or Milton, or even Hayford."

Okay.  But do you recall the chaos (there's no other word) that Dan Nessett and Tim Westbrook created in their first week or so in CZ?  How much effort among how many people did it take to clear all of *that* up?

A lot of trouble can be created in very little time.  But I myself won't be contributing to it, thank you....

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Why would someone be anonymous and perverse enough to produce that volume?  

Are you telling me that there aren't anonymous people at WP who haven't produced *enormous* amounts of material?  I can tell you two or three "names" in the tennis articles just off the top of my head.  Why wouldn't the same thing obtain here?

In no way am I advocating extensive use of pseudonyms. In fact, after Matt reminded me of the issue with giving pseudonyms to some EZ users, I'm leaning more and more to Meg's absolute prohibition.

If someone wanted anonymity all that much, why wouldn't they stay at WP?

I have had several private discussions with people who wanted pseudonyms, and in only one case was I particularly impressed with the reasons.

Okay.  But do you recall the chaos (there's no other word) that Dan Nessett and Tim Westbrook created in their first week or so in CZ?  How much effort among how many people did it take to clear all of *that* up?

A lot of trouble can be created in very little time.  But I myself won't be contributing to it, thank you....

You have just made a very strong argument for karma systems. Real name or pseudonym, they limit how much a new user can do.

[Daniel Mietchen]

The case of granting anonymity for Eduzendium authors has been discussed repeatedly but I am not sure the following points have been made already:

The decision to do a move a course (or part of it) onto the CZ wiki is usually made by the course instructor(s), and in cases where the course is compulsory, this may create undue pressure on students who, for privacy reasons, do not want to use their real name in such a project which may reveal a lot of personal information about them (their interests and expertise, writing style, typical errors, daily activity patterns etc.).

I think that, in such cases, some sort of anonymity should be granted (e.g. by creating a User account which includes the course name, the qualifier "student" and a numeral), provided that both the course instructor and the constabulary have verified the real name of that participant.

Thinking of other cases where granting anonymity (to the public, never to the constabulary) could make sense is not easy but I would not feel comfortable excluding it entirely.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

The case of granting anonymity for Eduzendium authors has been discussed repeatedly but I am not sure the following points have been made already:

The decision to do a move a course (or part of it) onto the CZ wiki is usually made by the course instructor(s), and in cases where the course is compulsory, this may create undue pressure on students who, for privacy reasons, do not want to use their real name in such a project which may reveal a lot of personal information about them (their interests and expertise, writing style, typical errors, daily activity patterns etc.).

I think that, in such cases, some sort of anonymity should be granted (e.g. by creating a User account which includes the course name, the qualifier "student" and a numeral), provided that both the course instructor and the constabulary have verified the real name of that participant.

Thinking of other cases where granting anonymity (to the public, never to the constabulary) could make sense is not easy but I would not feel comfortable excluding it entirely.

I wouldn't rule it out entirely, but I believe that one of the conditions of Eduzendium should be voluntary student participation in the Wiki project.  The value of Eduzendium, so far, is less to Citizendium than I see as the value of real names.

Daniel, in retrospect, I was furious about that giving of anonymity, for several reasons. I had been talking to some colleagues who wanted pseudonyms, and I suspect would have been excellent contributors, but I had to tell them that they could not have them.  Making this argument for Eduzendium, to one outside academia, comes across as one of the occasional biases of Citizendium operations toward academic rather than industrial/professional contexts.

I was especially annoyed to see it for medical students, who really are going to have to get used to quite a bit of stress if they will be successful in their profession.