I think you have one of the rare names that could come off as cool internet handle. Most people have never met (or heard of) someone named Jazz and you are blessed with this. I say, start a revolution on battle.net!

Well, at least you used a different version of the same picture I used in my article on the same subject.

That's something, I guess.

Wait wait wait, Jazz English is your birth name? That's like having your name be Jack Laser.

@William: Did I rip you off? 

@William - Why not link to your post so we can see a different perspective?

One of the things I love about Giant Bomb.com is how nice the community is. There are often "Bombing Runs" set up where members of the site get together to play a multiplayer game.

http://www.bitmob.com/articles/anonymity-online-harsh-words-and-the-real-world

Just saying.

@Will: ooooh. My bad. Does it help that I didn't know about your's before hand? 

Sorry if that came off as touchy, in retrospective (and with consideration to the fact that we're really talking about trying not to be assholes to complete strangers on the internet), I guess it shouldn't matter. You probably didn't even see my article, I would guess.

Appologies for any unintentional snideness on my part, Sir.

@Will: Posting links to your own story in my post? I'm angry about this you jack ass!

And that was some intentional snideness on my part. 

I just read your article and I did like it. We did touch on some similar points and I both made math related jokes. Lets just chalk this one up to great minds thinking alike. 

@Jazz I find the math thing funny, as I'm quite terrible at it. But, huzzah!

More importantly....You POST on battle.net? Did you lose a bet or something? =P

@Will: Oh hell no! I just used that as a reference. In hindsight I probably should have cleared that up in the article. 

@Will and Jazz

Seriously though, almost everybody with a blog wrote about this in the lat few days. Hell, I did a quick one too: http://www.bitmob.com/articles/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-about-blizzards-realid

Ooh, @Bruno: I actually did rip yours off :D

That was a joke, by the way.

To divert the discussion from other articles in the same area to, well, the actual article...

My gut reaction was similar to yours, "Yeeeah screw trolls!" but when I thought about it, and read the reactions of many perfectly sane (i.e. non-troll) people, I had to re-think my position. 

I would expand, but I honestly couldn't say anything that a lovely lady on metafilter didn't say better, so I'll just link:

http://www.metafilter.com/93492/But-my-name-really-is-Deathblood-Blackaxe#3171416

The difference between Bitmob (where the lack of anonymity contributes to the quality of discussion) and WoW (where it's dangerous) is primarily one of size and moderation. A community the size of WoW is far less policeable. Besides that, the second major issue is that as heated as people may get over an argument about a review, they are never going to approach the level of passion that WoW can inspire in people, for good or ill.

Hmm, I also thought that reversal was pretty lame on Blizzard's part; then I read that metafilter post.

I think you guys are only looking at the negatives on anonymity, people can also have a more honest discourse when their livelihoods arent hanging on the first wrong thing you say. the cadence people hold themselves to in an anonymous discussion is based on the community's standards and expectations of the discussion, if the community has no standards like on battle.net, you'll only get shit, if you have some standards like NeoGAF, you'll get some pretty crazy shit that you'll keep clicking through because its good. someone has to set the tone of the conversation, if its not there, you get chaos. on bitmob, you're getting direct feedback from respected journalists, the standard and expectation of the user content is much higher, you know the people that run this aren't going to take any bullshit, so the conversation tends to be less retarded, there are moments though.

Holy crap that Metafilter post is long... but very relevant and well done. After reading it I kind of come to the conclusion of "fuck it!" As I do with most issues that take place solely on the Internet. Now, if this was an issue of half the world hiding their identities behind physical masks and assaulting others verbally. Then I would be in an uproar! 

I comb the B.net forums often (specifically the Starcraft boards) as well as some other Starcraft sites like TeamLiquid.  I don't post on B.net, and it is mostly because there's better discussion to be held elsewhere, but I don't think taking away anonymity is the answer.  The problem with B.net is that it is extremely poorly moderated and the Blizzard community managers act as little more than PR reps.

Real names work great on Bitmob because this site is all about journalistic integrity.  B.net is a forum about a specific video game -- there's no reason to give out my real name to thousands of people simply because I want to submit a bug report or ask a question about my build order.  Requesting that people dole out more privacy information than is remotely necessary is not going to promote quality discussion; it's going to deter discussion altogether.

Of course it's difficult to moderate a site like B.net because so money people come there every day.  But I am more than willing to bet that Blizzard could find some forum regulars who would actually make pretty good moderators, and putting those people in that position would be the right step in fostering an actual community.  The moderators couldn't comment on the inner workings of Blizzard, which is currently what a lot of the community mangers do, but would instead just keep quality content on the forums.  They probably browse the forums more than any community manager as it is, and without having to pay them, you can afford to have as many quality moderators as necessary.

The internet still holds room for quality communities, and doing away with anonymity is no requirement for building such a place.  All that is required is a staff who cares and is willing to keep on eye on things.

@Garret: And in the absence of such a staff, it might just have to be accepted that the people who go to the Battle.net forums may not be there for the type of discussion that is held at sites like Bitmob. 

@Adam The difference between Bitmob (where the lack of anonymity contributes to the quality of discussion) and WoW (where it's dangerous) is primarily one of size and moderation.

Blizzard should hire more moderators, then. It's not like they can't afford to do so. 

Read more: The Effect of Anonymity on a Game's Community http://www.bitmob.com/articles/the-effect-of-anonymity-on-a-games-community#ixzz0tgUdzmirA community the size of WoW is far less policeable.

@Jason Agreed. 

I think that would be a far more valuable step than removing anonymity. There are plenty of large internet communities that remain civil and controlled due to effective moderation: the Penny Arcade forums have a fraction the population, but have only 20 or so moderators. It would require a thorough overhaul of the moderation system, a couple hundred employees/volunteers and multiple levels of organization and oversight.

But I don't think Blizzard has any interest in that effort, and that's why I don't think the removal of anonymity was ever really about making the forums more civil; it was about using Blizzard's Real ID system to turn the WoW ecosystem into Facebook v2.