I can see it now.
Employer googles prospective employee. Finds N number of posts on the WoW boards. Rejects the prospective’s application, because they don’t want someone who devotes a lot of time to MMOs. Hullaballoo ensues.
Do you actually know this, or are you just assuming?
Why? I use my real name all the time on forums. The only reason why I haven’t on the bnet forums is because it uses a character name by default.
I understand that some people don’t want to use their real names, and I’m sympathetic to a point, but I use my real name all the time in life. I meet strangers out in the world and they learn my real name. Before the internet, the idea of using a fake name was bizarre.
By removing anonymity, Blizzard is also removing the ability for industry people to participate in discussions without being blatantly obvious, or harassed.
It’ll reduce the signal to noise ratio on their forum. Of course, you can’t go lower than 0, so perhaps that’s what they’re counting on.
We are in a transitional period. The internet has been generally as anonymous as you wanted it to be. But there is no money in trying to sell to the anonymous so we are naturally being dragged to less of it. So early adopters have no problem with it and eventually most everyone will be there too, but in the meantime there will be growing pains.
And yes, strummer is my real name: strummer Ochocinco, actually.
Valid point, but so was the concept of identity theft, the understanding of how common and dangerous stalking was, and the basic notion that a person’s privacy could be jeopardized by filling out a membership card.
Edit - my name is not “Dan Theman,” but if you google that name then much of what you find will still be me. I guess it’s not a terribly common pseudonym.
You had much less interaction with “strangers”, real name or no, before the internet.
QT3 did it first.
Most trolling would also be eliminated by two simple changes:
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When you post, everyone can see all the characters on your account (similar to what RealID will do). A lot of trolling is done on level 1 alts because a lot of people would get kicked out of guilds or constantly harassed on their main for posting what they do.
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Toughen the forum moderation rules. One troll post gets you a warning and/or break. Two or three troll posts and you lose all posting privileges for your Battle.net account.
Are kids under 18 also required to share their personal information? Seems kinda… wrong.
This is a good point as well…so kids can post on the forum and their parent’s name will show up? I’m sure that’s going to go over really well.
All the skype recordings of “Do you know what Timmy has been up to on the WoW Forums” that show up on Youtube should be very funny, at least.
Or just add a user moderation system like slashdot and digg (which they are also doing). I’ve been saying they should do that for years. It’s the only way to effectively moderate such active forums.
I’d go further. Give everyone full mod powers. It would be like the Wild West. Eventually, people would learn to be courteous since anyone at any time could ban you. Make sure that whenever you exercise your mod power, a note gets added to the banned members’ posts like “CountZergalot was banned by Mr Peabody Arthas on 7/12/10.” That would open up any gunslingers to retaliation.
No hullaballoo will ensue. Your resume will just vanish silently without a reply.
You’ll probably have to have a subscription to WoW to post to the WoW forums. Thus you’ll have to pay an extra $15 a month to post as Forum T. Roll.
Yes, you need an active subscription to post. I suppose you could pay an additional $15/month to post, but anybody crazy enough to do that must be so far down the rabbit hole that they wouldn’t mind posting under their real name anyway.
Oh okay. I’d forgotten about the sub requirement since I’ve been subbed since release. Blah. I suppose it doesn’t matter much since the WoW forums are a cesspool that I actively avoid, but if they had forums worth posting on… I might care, maybe.
Never used a dial-up BBS, I take it. Or been to a strip club.
There is the occasional bit of thoughtful discussion on the role forums. I think the end of the WoW forums will be a loss over all.