It’s just so that if I read a LW/AF post/comment from someone, I can more easily recall oh, this is the same person I met at event X, or this is the same person who wrote paper Y (and vice versa). If someone consistently uses their online name for physical meetings and authoring papers, that would be fine with me. And if someone wants to keep their online and physical identities completely apart, that would be understandable to me too. But I’m not sure if people have good reasons to give themselves an online name that’s different from their “real” name, and make others keep a mapping between the two.
It’s just so that if I read a LW/AF post/comment from someone, I can more easily recall oh, this is the same person I met at event X, or this is the same person who wrote paper Y (and vice versa). If someone consistently uses their online name for physical meetings and authoring papers, that would be fine with me. And if someone wants to keep their online and physical identities completely apart, that would be understandable to me too. But I’m not sure if people have good reasons to give themselves an online name that’s different from their “real” name, and make others keep a mapping between the two.