That may be true, but the ‘many good posters’ could just use their real name instead.
We should probably separate that into a different subthread (which I guess this now is). I hadn’t responded to it because I thought your concern was mostly about new user filtering, not use of chosen handle to determine initial standing.
Are you saying “real name”, including human verification into government ID, or are you saying “real-sounding name”, which mods just guess as to validity? Or just self-assed checkbox “this is my real name”? None of them are particularly worthwhile as requirements, IMO.
“real name” with some amount of proof for moderators to review. It could be a link to a blog with a credible amount of archived history/posts, github profile with real code commits, linkedin, etc.. it just has to be accessible and reasonably difficult to duplicate or fake.
The point is that if the moderators do decide to restrict or ban their account, they can feel confident that the user is actually gone (or paid real money to compensate for their time spent, if that’s implemented).
As I say, I have zero idea whether smurfing (multiple accounts or creating new accounts to bypass a ban) is a real problem for LW, nor if it is just how much friction and pain we want to impose on people to make it slightly harder.
Practically, this is a LOT harder than you think. First, simple impersonation—it’s not difficult to imagine creating as many accounts as I like claiming to be any not-already-on-LW social media or github account. Unless some sort of auth scheme or posting protocol (put this code on your GH profile so LW knows it’s you) is in place, there’s no actual verification. Second, many names are common enough that they will conflict, and it’d be really upsetting to find you were banned due to a DIFFERENT John Doe misbehaving.
Perhaps impersonation or name formatting will be a problem in the future if this site becomes even more popular, but they’re not a present day concern.
Whereas many present day concerns could be addressed by some combination of the aforementioned or other proposals.
We should probably separate that into a different subthread (which I guess this now is). I hadn’t responded to it because I thought your concern was mostly about new user filtering, not use of chosen handle to determine initial standing.
Are you saying “real name”, including human verification into government ID, or are you saying “real-sounding name”, which mods just guess as to validity? Or just self-assed checkbox “this is my real name”? None of them are particularly worthwhile as requirements, IMO.
“real name” with some amount of proof for moderators to review. It could be a link to a blog with a credible amount of archived history/posts, github profile with real code commits, linkedin, etc.. it just has to be accessible and reasonably difficult to duplicate or fake.
The point is that if the moderators do decide to restrict or ban their account, they can feel confident that the user is actually gone (or paid real money to compensate for their time spent, if that’s implemented).
As I say, I have zero idea whether smurfing (multiple accounts or creating new accounts to bypass a ban) is a real problem for LW, nor if it is just how much friction and pain we want to impose on people to make it slightly harder.
Practically, this is a LOT harder than you think. First, simple impersonation—it’s not difficult to imagine creating as many accounts as I like claiming to be any not-already-on-LW social media or github account. Unless some sort of auth scheme or posting protocol (put this code on your GH profile so LW knows it’s you) is in place, there’s no actual verification. Second, many names are common enough that they will conflict, and it’d be really upsetting to find you were banned due to a DIFFERENT John Doe misbehaving.
Not to mention all of https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ .
Perhaps impersonation or name formatting will be a problem in the future if this site becomes even more popular, but they’re not a present day concern.
Whereas many present day concerns could be addressed by some combination of the aforementioned or other proposals.