02-09-2011, 01:23 PM
You have to use your passport to get through airport security because there are serious security implications potentially affecting enormous numbers of people. This noticeboard is a place where a few dozen people read about a board game. It's not exactly comparable.
JR isn't Jonathan Rowson, as you now know, anybody who's ever really seen him post before knows, and anyone who reads the sticky at the top of the forum also knows. The no-need-for-anonymity argument is one you can make (I personally reckon that it doesn't do any harm as long as you or Andy knows their real identity and it's not worth stopping people who might feel more comfortable staying anonymous, but I agree that you can contend that people don't need it), but saying that everybody needs to follow the accepted format for names is just taking things far, far too seriously. You've already admitted that PNums are a better way of mapping the grading data. At the moment you're threatening to drive off at least a couple of good posters for basically no reason at all.
If you do decide that democracy should be the judge of this situation - and I still think there are serious sampling bias issues on the new board - then I'd ask you to at least make that dependent on a new poll, asking whether initials/nicknames/whatever are acceptable as long as the identities of the posters are fully disclosed, as they currently are in the 'Forum Usernames' thread.
JR isn't Jonathan Rowson, as you now know, anybody who's ever really seen him post before knows, and anyone who reads the sticky at the top of the forum also knows. The no-need-for-anonymity argument is one you can make (I personally reckon that it doesn't do any harm as long as you or Andy knows their real identity and it's not worth stopping people who might feel more comfortable staying anonymous, but I agree that you can contend that people don't need it), but saying that everybody needs to follow the accepted format for names is just taking things far, far too seriously. You've already admitted that PNums are a better way of mapping the grading data. At the moment you're threatening to drive off at least a couple of good posters for basically no reason at all.
If you do decide that democracy should be the judge of this situation - and I still think there are serious sampling bias issues on the new board - then I'd ask you to at least make that dependent on a new poll, asking whether initials/nicknames/whatever are acceptable as long as the identities of the posters are fully disclosed, as they currently are in the 'Forum Usernames' thread.