The Big WoWThe Big WoW

Should people be allowed to be anonymous online? World of Warcraft developer Blizzard seems somewhat unde­cided. Earlier this week, it intro­duced a Real ID scheme that would force people to post under their real names on its forums. Following wide­spread protests at this movement of goal­posts — from pretty-​​much 12mn of the game’s 12mn sub­scribers — the company has today backed down on the idea.

The anonymity debate on web forums is a timeless classic. I last tackled the subject here, where I argued that being able to hide your identity is a key, important char­ac­ter­istic of web com­mu­nic­a­tions and ought t0 be pro­tected with as great a fervour as net neut­rality, if not more.

According to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, in his state­ment announ­cing that the move was to be retracted, the idea was to improve the quality of inter­ac­tion on the forums and make them more wel­coming to new users:

Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our com­munity areas more wel­coming for players and encourage more con­structive con­ver­sa­tions about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as con­ver­sa­tion threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search func­tion­ality, and more.

I think we all under­stand why a com­munity manager might be tempted to outlaw anonymity. Web comic Penny Arcade pretty much nails it here, back in 2004:

You may also have come across Godwin’s Law:

As an online dis­cus­sion grows longer, the prob­ab­ility of a com­par­ison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

People are asshats on the Internet. Quite a lot of the time. As a gamer, I’m sorry to say that this is espe­cially the case in the gaming com­munity. By forcing people to reveal their true identity, the thinking goes, they are made to regard other people as human beings. Calling David Browne a “f**king ret**d idiot” is a bit harder than saying it to DethSlay84. Similarly, when you make that remark, as Eric Smith, rather than h8core666, you might pause to reflect that this will appear against your name in Google searches forever. [Names invented off the top of my head].

Or not. When people get upset, drunk, slighted on the Internet, then they tend to pretty-​​much blow caution to the wind a lot of the time. Look at any number of horrible hate cam­paigns on Facebook for plenty of evidence of people behaving badly despite their comments being linked to their own name. Unlike in real life, of course, the con­sequences don’t blow over after a week or so, though. They’re Googled — but people don’t often seem to think about that at the time. I’m not lec­turing there — I have pub­lished some nasty posts right here that I later regretted. I think it’s the lag between regular social norms and the cyber­net­worked future: it’s just bound to happen.

I’m also bound to add that there are a lot of weird people out there. Some of whom are really unpleasant in their off-​​screen life, as well as on-​​screen. Having them able to track you down because you didn’t like the look of their Shaman’s buffs might well be a little off-​​putting to people. Remember, this isn’t a closed, con­sen­sual com­munity, like your Facebook friends: it’s 12mn frothing lunatics. ;-)

Women and minor­ities have a pretty tough time as gamers. Take a look at this tre­mendous post on Metafilter for some edu­ca­tion there. Short excerpt:

If you do post a picture (I never did) people either go nuts over how hot you are and won’t leave you alone — and the guys that perv on you treat you in a con­des­cending way because hot=stupid; having to hear that shit addressed to other girls on Vent was really infuri­ating and uncom­fort­able — OR they make a point of con­stantly telling you how ugly you are and won’t leave you alone. There is no middle ground. They either want to fuck you or deride you. And it actually doesn’t matter how hot or how ugly you are, either; the hottest girls will get called ugly (and FAT, ALWAYS FAT), and the ugliest girls still have to deal with lonely guys who aren’t super­fi­cial. Any time the girl posts some­thing there­after, people will comment on her appear­ance, even though it has nothing to do with whatever is being discussed.

Now go read the rest.

Anonymity gives a lot of people a freedom they would not oth­er­wise have on the Net. That’s worth some­thing, isn’t it?

Finally, I so loved this in the RPS wrapup on the issue, despite the fact that it under­mines my whole argument:

Plus the oblig­atory Downfall skit (totally inpen­et­rable to non-​​gamers, I suspect):

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• Trust me, I have an IP address
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• Six Reasons to Allow Anonymous Comments