This page is for discussing the contents of Importance of using your RealName.
I think it'd be a good idea to sit on the proposed changes here. I didn't see consensus on the Identity/Talk page about this and the page has stayed in more-or-less the same state for several years. Sitting on the changes will give the many folks who aren't on the wiki right now due to the winter break a chance to weigh in, and hopefully will let the dust settle from the heated discussion and accusations. As far as I can tell, there's a number of folks who are now uncomfortable with even participating in the discussion because it's become heated. What do other people think? —PhilipNeustrom
The page is a mess and I don't even know where to start adding to it. And yes, I am uncomfortable defending the status quo when the person who proposed these changes wants to turn this into a discussion about sexism. —WilliamLewis
For the record, I made the changes based on my own discretion, and I did not change the content in any way to suggest any relevance to gender issues. I believe that is a separate issue. If anyone has a question about the reason of these change, would you please ask me first because I am the person who changed it. If anyone wants to change it without discussion that is also okay because I am not in a position to respond to it. If I respond to it that way, it will turn into some sort of edit war. I hope that it is clear that currently I am accountable for these changes. —EdgarWai
Regarding change #47 (revert to #44). Philip, would you clarify whether you are involved in this change as a moderator who knows about concerns of other editors, or as an editor who personally share the concern? In either cases, I would like to know the exact concern so that a consensus can be reached. Sometimes people disagree (fail to form a consensus) without articulating what the actual concerns are. Currently I am aware that there is a disagreement, but I am not informed what the concerns are causing the disagreement. As such, I could only state my concerns, because it is not my sole responsibility to come to a consensus. If I clearly state my concern, but the community fail to react to, the community as a whole dropped the ball of finding a solution. The following is my concern and the reason behind the changes after what I saw as sufficient amount of discussion. My concern was that the judgmental remarks unnecessarily aliened people who would be editors to make contribution to Davis Wiki. My main concern is reduced inclusiveness. I am asking you and the community at large to address my concern either by action or by discussion. Now that I have expressed my concern and remaining open for the discussion, I am fulfilling my part of the responsibility to reach a consensus. Once all concerns are accounted, then the issue transforms into a design problem. When that happens, there will be a solution that addresses all concerns. Please continue the process my stating the concerns of the other parties when you are ready. In terms of my schedule, I would check the topic about once every two weeks. In the meantime I will skill up to write articles about problems like this because until the world understands how to resolve this kind of problem, there is zero chance of sustained world peace. I have no choice but to work on it, regardless the speed of the progress. My sticking to this topic is not a personal choice. If I am not emotionally ready I have to train myself to overcome it, because ethics sets the priority. The way to train someone to become emotionally ready for this type of discussion, is to engage in this type of discussion to demonstrate how it works, so that people can become familiar with resolving disagreements. The mass media over-represents conflicts and under-represent conflict resolution. Anyone who understands this problem please help continue the discussion by stating the concerns of the other parties. —EdgarWai
Perhaps I'm a bit too blunt here, but what people see as a bug, I see as a feature.
My concern was that the judgmental remarks unnecessarily aliened people who would be editors to make contribution to Davis Wiki. My main concern is reduced inclusiveness.
That's how it's supposed to work. If you're not willing to stand behind your edits with your real name, you should be discouraged from editing. It's all about accountability. Letting up on this is a major departure from policy that has largely been in place since 2005. The reasons given for change are based more on hypotheticals and conjecture than experience. For these reasons, I vehemently oppose any attempt to weaken the message that on DavisWiki, you should use your RealName. Anyway, for more information on this stance rather than my bitter, half-formed thoughts, check out ![[WWW]](http://wikispot.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/sycamore-www.png){kind=small}
Ward's wiki on this subject. —WilliamLewis
Two Q&A pairs from that page more or less summed up what I think has been the unspoken rule here. Quoted below with a set of brackets replaced with parentheses for the sake of clarity. —TomGarberson
Q: I don't want to be completely anonymous, but I have a very good reason why I want to use a pseudonym instead of my real name.
A: As noted above, exceptions may ultimately be tolerated. If people write RealNamesPlease on your user page, it is because they assume you are unaware of this convention, and they are trying to be helpful. If you understand the rule and still want to use a different name, despite the objections, nobody is going to stop you from doing so. Please review the RealNamesPleaseDiscussion, note your reasoning on your WikiHomePage (to prevent later RealNamesPlease requests), and please try to be as respectful of the community's wishes as you would like it to be of yours. Whatever your reasons, don't use somebody else's real name, and use OneNamePlease.
Q: I have an OnlineName that I use regularly; it is a name that is "primary, invested, and permanent" and certainly not disposable. My real name is easy to find. Yet I am not [one of the established OnlineName users]. How do I convince the community that my OnlineName qualifies for the aforementioned exception? Or are the above-mentioned folks only allowed to use a nickname due to an unwritten GrandfatherClause, a privilege unavailable to newer WikiZens?
A: (Be discreet, spell correctly, ... and fit in... then it's probably okay.) There is no need to convince the community. The community will ultimately respect your wish to use any name you choose, particularly if it respects your contributions and can tell that you have understood the community's normal practice but choose not to follow it. If you "battle" for the "right" to use a name that is not real, some sectors of the community may object to this as trollish behavior. If, however, you politely decline to adopt this practice whilst continuing to make valuable contributions, the community as a whole will support you against petty-minded persecution, albeit somewhat reluctantly.
On "Hypotheticals": My concern was not hypothetical. I find the explanation offensive, and there had been at least one editor with pseudonym who explained the negative experience. In my judgment, their account was truthful and I sympathize with them because I felt the same in another context. In this context, the discussion will have a problem because I am not a direct victim of the situation. This is an analogy: I saw Person A got robbed. Since Person A saw the robber's face, I told him to go to report it to the Police. But A refused because he could not tell the Police his own name. So I go to the Police Station myself and tried to make a report, but I couldn't because I was not A. I did not know what would be right to do. The Police told me to just forget about it, and so the case was never made. A year or two later, I got robbed face to face and Person B saw me. I wanted to report the incident, but I could not, for the same reason that A couldn't. B asked me if he could help by reporting the incident on my behalf. While I hope that B could do that for me, I also knew that the Police would dismiss his account. At that point, I felt regretful that I did not do more while I could. This is some sort of social deadlock that should be solved even if it is hypothetical. If you could foresee yourself in such a situation, then solve it now instead of waiting for it to happen to you. Otherwise, when that happens to you it would be too late. At this point I am not pushing for any change because I had already did, but got reverted. Therefore from this point on, I see this as a discussion where I learn more about what and how other people think about this kind of problems. I am not going to wait until it happens to me to solve it, but it doesn't mean that I am rushing to get it solved.
On "Accountability": In another discussion about this same topic, accountability did not end with real name, but whether the author of a statement keeps in touch to provide any missing information relevant to the issue being raised. Ultimately, accountability isn't just about whether someone stands behind their words, but whether they pay for any damage caused by it if what they said is wrong. In legal terms, perhaps "accountability" and "liability" are different. I don't know the legal definition. By from an ethical standpoint, when we say that some one is accountable for their action, we mean that they are responsible for paying any damage caused by their action. Therefore, accountability is not rooted in whether a person discloses their real name, but whether the person is mending, or would mend any damage that they might cause. Suppose two cars, A and B, collided at an intersection. Both of them are publicly condemning the other to be the one at fault, defending their position, and accusing the other as a liar all at the same time. The situation was not nice. A mediator arrives and assesses that if A was the liar, he should pay B $1000, and vice versa for B. The mediator asks both A and B, that if they were found to be at fault, would they be willing to pay the other $1000. Given that both A and B believed that the other was the liar, they both agreed, and each put $1000 on the table. At this point, the mediator tells them that it just happened that someone was having a birthday party upstairs and filmed the collision. They sit down and watched it together, and B realized that he was the one at fault, although he did not intend to lie. B let A take the $1000. A gets his $1000 on the table, plus the $1000 B pays him. In this story, accountability is not about real name, but the likelihood that they would pay for the damage (i.e. being reachable and willing to put money on the table). Until a person is willing to mend their damage, it does not matter if the person is using their real name. The details, then, is in the design of the protocol to support anonymity. But before that we need to fix the problem where even people with real name aren't accountable for their action. They thought that they could say anything they want and don't need to pay for their damages.
On "Community": At this point I feel that when people say "community" here, they don't mean the geographical community but the virtual community of Davis Wiki editors. I didn't know that there is such a difference before because I thought representing the local (geographical) community was the intent of local wikis. I do not study the history of local wikis, I understand that I could have misunderstood. The following is just an explanation of my view point. When I use the term "inclusive", I mean anyone who happen to be a stakeholder of Davis. By stakeholder, I include people who goes to school in Davis, who works in Davis, who would like to be here, who likes something here, and also those who are stuck here, those who hate Davis, and those who harm Davis. If "Davis, California" means something to you, then you are a stakeholder. This understanding of community is important because this gets problems solved. Otherwise, the physical community would be asking its people to hide, or to reject anyone who does not follow the norms. In this case, the term "inclusive" would become quite meaningless because if one only include those that meets certain criteria, then that is the definition of being exclusive. Inclusiveness is based on the volition of the person who wants membership. I understand that our view could be different, but I also understand that we could be talking about the same thing. For people who oppose pseudonym, they might be coming from a standpoint where users with pseudonym are threatening. However, accounting to my view, those pseudonym editors are not threatening the community, they are part of the composition of the community. What they threaten is the vision of the community held by some or the majority of the people in the community. I am questioning the vision and the logic behind it.
On "You could break rules as long as you do it discreetly": People should work toward eliminating this type of policy. If it exist now, it is just because what existed before was even worse. Once upon a time there was a village where most of the people had horrible conduct because they get to do stuff anonymously. The people with good conduct, who also used their real name, was the minority, and had a hard time finding like-minded people to talk. Then Person A from this minority created a club where the application form asked for the applicant's real name. As a result, the majority of the members in that club belonged to the minority of the village. The club was successful, and the minorities could now find one another. A few years later, Person A meets Person B, who was a pseudonym member in the club. B told A that people in the club look down on him because of his pseudonym. What should A reply? What should A do?
a) It is in your head. We did not look down on you.
b) Would you tell me the instances where you were looked down upon? I want to confirm it.
c) All right, let me change the application form to accept anyone, it should just take me a second... here. Done!
d) Due to our effort, anonymous people in our village had become the minority. At this point we have enough real name members that even if we don't force people to use a real name, they would do so on their application form. We have finally reached the point where we turned the tide. The majority of the people now have good conduct, and our old policy may retire now. It was a good policy, and it had served it purpose. However, before it retires, I need to explain this to the club so that they don't look down on the minority who could not use their real name.
e) I am sorry to hear your experience. However, if I change the application from now, our club would be destroyed by anonymous members. Just between you and me, I want you to know that you are welcomed, but please don't tell anyone. I hope that you would still stay because I like you, as many people do, however, at this point I can't even explain this to the club because if I do that there would be a huge influx of destruction. It would destroy everything we had worked on so far. I hope that you would understand and bear with it.
f) I have been thinking about where the club stands with respect to the population of the village. I am sorry to hear your experience, but I cannot act prematurely to change the application process. I need to know if the application changes now, would it destroy our club, or would it finally reach a level of inclusiveness that our village had never reached before. Would you help me design a method to get the data that I can use to make this decision? The data is one thing. On the other hand, I also need help deciding what to do when the data returns to show the composition of our village.
g) I am sorry to hear your experience. I understand that the decision is based on a correct assessment of the composition of our village. Below some threshold, we should kill the current application process, otherwise our club would be destroyed. Above that threshold, we should change it. However, since we cannot afford that assessment, we could only wait until the day the composition becomes so obvious that we no longer need an expensive assessment. Therefore, in the mean time, could you please wait? Or, if you could afford it yourself, could you do the assessment? If not, could you suggest what less expensive or risky things I could do for you?
An anonymous person can damage someone else's reputation without any impact to themselves. That's the lack of accountability. Like the anonymous reps of Boardwalk Apartments who called me a child molester. Sure, I could file a lawsuit and subpoena the State's IT department to identify them. But by being anonymous, they've created a $1000 or so shield against accountability. If an anonymous editor isn't doing anything damaging, it doesn't have the same importance, so no one's likely to make an issue of it. There isn't some sort of mechanical application of "rules" here because A) they're norms, not bright line rules, and B) every act takes time and effort from a volunteer. If an anonymous editor is playing nice, people who are burned out by excessively long discussions probably aren't going to make an issue of it. You pick and choose your battles.
It's a norm, so it's based on the beliefs of people within the community (in this case the wiki community, since that's the subcategory of the Davis community that contributes to those norms). It also means it's subject to change if there's a change in values. My hope is that it won't change. I think that devaluation of the wiki in terms of quality of contributions and risks to people who do use their RealName would be more severe than the benefits of adding the contributions of the tiny subcategory of Davis that A) is uncomfortable using their realname and B) can't play nice while using a pseudonym. Maybe I'm just insensitive, but I think a change to encourage pseudonyms would do more to detract from the wiki as a resource for Davis than it would to improve it. —TomGarberson
There are significant drawbacks to allowing pseudonyms, and even worse drawbacks to allowing anonymity. These drawbacks are manifested regularly, and, in fact, are why I have reduced my participation here. Unfortunately, even discussing this issue has illustrated the problems. Certainly nothing should be done to encourage anything other than the use of real names. People will use pseudonyms, and people will post anonymously, but I see no good reason to imply that it is acceptable or desirable. —DonShor
I think one thing that has gotten lost in the discussion is that the "Importance of using your RealName" page does more than just express a norm about using one's real name. It says some things that are arguably insulting about those who choose not to use their real names. I think you can do one without doing the other. I'm going to make a few changes to illustrate what I mean about deleting that which is insulting while not changing the basic message of the page. I assume that if someone disagrees he/she will revert; I ask only that potential reverters please consider whether anything is truly lost by the deletions I've made before making the reversion. —CovertProfessor
I think those changes improve the page. Thanks. —DonShor
Thank you. —cp
I see that Tom's link to Boardwalk Apartments. When I was posting on Feb 3, I did not know that it was happening. Now that I start reading it, my first reaction was that the situation that DavisWiki faces is (E): If any protocol that promotes accountability is lowered, DavisWiki will be destroyed. But at the same time, CP's assessment is correct, I wasn't trying to encourage people to use pseudonym, but to keep a channel open for those who need to make a legitimate warning anonymously. This is because this discussion originated from a negative review made by a PseudoNym editor, who joined with the sole purpose to warn fellow visitors about a dishonest practice. Here is a stakeholder-concerns table. On this table, my role is potential customer.
| Stakeholder | Concern | Description |
| Victim/Accuser | Prompt Warning | Victims worry that additional customer could be hurt or mistreated if they don't speak up. |
| Business owner (BO) | Reputation | BO worry that bad reputation could destroy their business. |
| Potential customer | Truth | Potential customer worry that censorship would hide legitimate problems. |
Fundamentally, the conflict arises because BO feels the need to protect their reputation, and they are trying to do so by discrediting the accuser. Discrediting the accuser is not a good reaction. I think a better reaction (by BO), would be to ask the accuser to submit their complaint to Better Business Bureau or the appropriate agency. And then the BO should explain if any protocol was causing the problem. If the BO does this type of response, the credit/accountability of the accuser should be irrelevant. The situation could be dissolved entirely by the BO (without deleting anything). However, if the BO doesn't know how it works, I don't think they are "at fault". I would forgive BO for not knowing how to handle it, because I probably won't know how to handle it if I were in the middle of it. Therefore, some of this discussion needs to continue when people are not actively involved in any conflict. People need to be trained to handle it when they are calm, so that when the situation happens they would know what to do.
Comparing CP's edit and my edit ("Version 46"), the only main difference is the section about how to write an warning using a PseudoNym. When I was writing that, I thought that would help weed out the false accusations. The idea was that when a BO sees a false accusation, they could simply cite that page to avoid any counter-accusation to accuse the accuser for lying. Perhaps bystanders could encourage the victims to file complaints to Better Business Bureau (I don't know enough about BBB to know if this is a good suggestion, if this is not, someone please correct me). An honest BO should have no objection if the victim brings the case to BBB. And the victim should bring the case to BBB because otherwise BBB could not correctly assess the ethics of the businesses in the community. That would be a disservice to the community.
A clarification of my role: I am not pushing for any further changes to the RealName page because I am not the person responding to bad BO or bad accuser posts. I included the now omitted section because I thought it would help those do that work. Therefore it is up to them to decide what they want to do or how to handle the situations. I am not waiting for any further action on this topic. To me this is done and thank you CP for your changes. —EdgarWai
The BBB operates roughly similar to how the Wiki handles your scenario: they are a nonprofit that posts comments about businesses, allows businesses to respond, but not to remove the original complaint. For the small subset of activity on the wiki that you are addressing, they are similar (and the wiki is equally as "official" as the BBB). ⁓ʝ⍵
Then what agency has the authority to handle this type of dispute? I think part of the answer lies in what agency the BO trusts. For example, in the last case, someone mentioned that DavisWiki is worse than Yelp. If both the Accuser and the BO trust Yelp, but the BO does not trust DavisWiki, then the Accuser could file the complaint to both. If the two parties have no common agency that they both trust, it would come down to two responses: 1) The BO could present verifiable facts on their side to show that the accusation is false, or 2) The BO could explain how a potential consumer could prevent the situation and protect themselves. The second response will not prove or disprove whether the accusation was truth or false, what it does, is to eliminate the situation as a method that the BO could gain any potential advantage. For example, if a BO is accused of lying to a customer on what services are necessary, the BO could disclose the reasoning and tell any potential customer that they could decide for themselves whether that services are needed. This would not uncover what happened, but it would prevent the discussion from dwelling on a point that cannot be resolved, and also prevent the situation from happening again. It is not the best outcome but it is probably the second best outcome. A bystander could ask this question to the BO: What can a potential customer do to see for themselves other than simply trusting your word for it? What can you do to help them do that? —EW
