9 to 5

Tom Grubisich's anti-anonymity brainstorm -- "Sunshine for the Virtual Town Hall" -- was sure to provoke plenty of response, and it did. Crooks and Liars has a roundup of some of the initial reaction.

Grubisich's proposal is basically this: require all online commenters to use their real names:

If Web sites required posters to use their real names, while giving the shield of pseudonymity when it's merited, spirited online debate would continue unimpeded. It might even be enhanced by attracting contributors who are turned off today by name calling and worse. Except for the hate-mongers, who wouldn't want that?

This is an example of the kind of solution that H.L. Mencken described as "simple, neat and wrong." I'm inclined to be charitable here, since the racist/sexist/homophobic/bullying/hateful/hurtful ugly cesspool of newspaper comment threads is, for me, an occupational hazard. But Grubisich's response is still pretty dumb.

I won't chime in on the merits/demerits of pseudonymity and anonymity. What I want to point out, instead, is that Grubisich doesn't seem aware of the traffic patterns for readers of WashingtonPost.com.

The graph to the right here is Monday's traffic for this blog. The numbers for the Post will be much, much higher, but the shape of the graph will be exactly the same: Traffic peaks between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

In other words:

People surf the Web at work.

So the answer to Grubisich's question -- "Who wouldn't want that?" -- is "People who don't want their boss to know they're sitting at their desks reading the paper (or The Onion, or this blog) instead of/in addition to working."

Please don't think I'm criticizing these folks for surfing the Web during the workday (see, again, the graph above). I started this blog from a cubicle in an exurban corporate office park, posting under a pseudonym because I didn't want to get dooced. That wasn't a bad job -- the pay and the hours were both a lot better than my current gig -- but I only had about 30 hours of work to do in any given 40-hour week. I tried the go-getter approach, but that prompted mainly resentment and the punishment of make-work, so I was left with the exhausting option of stretching five hours of work over an eight-hour day while trying to look busy. So I read newspapers and blogs online and I got all of my work done, often at the same time.

Many people are in that same situation, and asking them to post time-stamped comments under their real name, thus creating a virtual paper trail for their bosses, is not a good idea.

Grubisich's plan might succeed in reducing the posting of obnoxious comments, but it would also definitely succeed in reducing -- to next to nothing -- the posting of any comments between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Comments

[coriolis]

Do I get to be the first response that mentions this?

[Red Ensign]

Thats it, coriolis. I've had it with your slacking off at work. Your FIRED!!!!

[Chris_C]

I share my name with a US Congressman, a Harvard Med Professor of Cardiology, a bush-league Pro-Wrestler, and an academic authority on the etymology of Chaucer.

Also 11 other folks in the local phone book.

[Raka]

So it would keep the hate-mongers from posting, but it would let the silently seething hate-mongers know my real name (and with a bit of work, my current address and workplace). Great. Thanks, but I'd rather be called a sexist oppressor online than have my boss called up and told about it.

[LL]

Did I miss something, or do people who run websites not know about this nifty thing called "moderating"? If an objectionable message appears on a site, you delete it. You have that right as the admin. I'm not saying it's easy, it's probably really time-consuming. But I can't see how requiring people to give their "real" info would make it easier. Are they going to verify that every name and phone number given are genuine and not just a random string of 9 numbers? If anybody tries to enforce this, I predict a lot of John/Jane Smiths and a lot of 123456789 phone numbers. What's the point, anyway? So people don't have to read things they don't agree with? Trolls are tiresome, but there's a way to deal with them that's a lot easier. Ignore them. Delete their comments if you must, but otherwise, ignore them. If they (big pubs like WaPo and NYT) don't want to pay for the extra bandwidth, don't enable comments. But don't think you can advertise a free-for-all and then keep out the riff raff. Doesn't work like that. You accept everyone or no one. And if you don't want to go through the trouble of wading through all the crap to delete the "unacceptable" comments, then don't bitch about them. I love how the "mainstream" media still has no clue about how the Internet works, either technically or philosophically. They still think they are the gatekeepers. There are no gates anymore. That failure to understand is one reason why print news is dying.

[Raka]

Also, even if I restricted my posting to hours that HR approves of, future employers will presumably retain the ability to Google me. There are reasons that they're not allowed to quiz me on my family life and political preferences during an interview. Forbidding anonymity/pseudonimity means that saying anything online is effectively the same as saying it in every single job interview from that point forward. No thanks.

"Friends-only" blogs and message boards (which could presumably circumvent the anti-anonymity law) would become much more popular, at least.

[NonyNony]

I choose to post under a pseudonym for a variety of reasons including the "at work" one that you mention above, Fred, but I specifically chose something that was an obvious pseud when I picked my name. I could have just as easily gone to the phonebook and selected a name at random to post under and no one would ever know.

In fact, I have done this in the past - created a plausible pseudonym to sign up for web sites that I didn't want to collect my personal information, then make up a person to fit the name. And I use an anonymous Yahoo! account to subscribe to those sites. If I chose to post under the name "Jeff Smalls" would anyone realize I was using a pseud? How about "Rachel Willis"? Or "Sanjit Singh"? Or "Yang Hu"? Would I be any less vitriolic if I posted under the name "Jeff Smalls"? Probably not, though I don't think I'm a terribly vitriolic poster anyway.

The whole premise of Grubisich's article is flawed - some people are intelligent folks who you want to carry on a conversation with and some people are jerks. Regardless of whether they post under their real name or a pseud you can figure out pretty quickly which is which just by reading what they post. It's the ultimate in meritocracy -- divorced completely from any information about WHO is doing the posting you only have their actual work to judge them by -- you can't fit them into any pre-determined boxes based on who they are, only what they actually say. I find it to be one of the most interesting aspects of this technology we call the Internet, though I'm not surprised to find that some folks are afraid of it.

[Pat Greene]

I blog/comment under my own name. But that's only because a) I am currently a stay-at-home mother and b) I have a deceptively common name (it is more common than it appears at first glance). I've always gone around under my own name.

If I had more at risk, or were more easily identifiable, I wouldn't.

[Bugmaster]

I've been "Bugmaster" online for as long as I have been online at all; I occasionally switch to "Metabug" when "Bugmaster" is taken. Sure, I could use my real name, but it just feels wrong at this point.

[Fraser]

Digby made the excellent point that going public doesn't stop Coulter, Limbaugh, Robertson, Savage, etc. from hate-mongering.

[Rozasharn]

I post anonymously because I don't want to be tracked down in real life and physically attacked by people who want to silence me. My anonymity limits them to baseless threats. If I had to use my real name I'd never post anything.

[Dan S.]

From Grubisich's piece:"Imagine going to a meeting about school overcrowding in your community. Everybody at the meeting is wearing nametags. You approach a cluster of people where one man is loudly complaining about waste in school spending. "Get rid of the bureaucrats, and then you'll have money to expand the school," he says, shaking his finger at the surrounding faces. You notice his nametag -- "anticrat424.""

To be honest, I'm not sure what the problem's supposed to be, here. Now, if knowing Mr. anticrat424's name would reveal something relevent to the issue, or if some of the folks nodding along and praising anticrat424's wisdom and judgment turned out, on closer examination, to actually be made of cotton with googly-eyes stuck on, and were in fact attached to anticrat's hands, well, that's one thing. Now, if anticrat was screeching about the !*@#& *&@&#!# @!&%&# bureaucrats and how they engaged in unnatural congress with domestic anaimals - well, in any real world community meeting, he would probably be removed. And if - worse - he started muttering on about how if people really cared about the kids, they'd take matters into their own hands and "take out" some of these bureaucrats, well, matters might even be taken further. But Grubisich admits that
" . . . .the [WaPo] site prohibits comments that are libelous, abusive, obscene or otherwise inappropriate." The problem, as he sees it, is that "Mr. anticrat424 could still find a well-amplified podium at washingtonpost.com."

Ok. And? I might not agree with anticrat424 - and I may dislke his style - but why should he be denied a podium unless he 'fessed up to his real identity? Grubisich claims that if they required real names, with exceptions made at their discretion for whistleblowers, etc., "spirited online debate would continue unimpeded. It might even be enhanced by attracting contributors who are turned off today by name calling and worse." But didn't he say admit that the Post, in theory, already prohibits at least some such comments?

Now, there's a quite reasonable response he can make, which is that the site simply can't/won't hire enough people to adequately manage the quantity of comments they get. But he doesn't , mentioning only the staff's "struggle to balance transparency against privacy."

The fact that the only problem with 'veranymity' that he can see involves whistleblowers (and that he thinks that the promise of an unbreakable "shield of pseudonymity" when merited would be immediately accepted with total confidence) speaks volumes about privilege and frankly, ignorance - and one doesn't even need to know his name to see that! (To be fair, knowing that he is a "former Post reporter and editor," et.c does tell us a little, but about a certain mainstream media mindset, not the quality or credibility of his argument). Somehow he fails to understand that the mechanism he wants to rely on - more or less, fear of community/authority disapproval or sanction - doesn't discriminate between 'good' and 'bad' comments. It might deter some people from spewing bigoted, venomous, or threatening things - and it might just as likely deter some people from expressing, say, locally unpopular political, social, cultural - or simply personal - views. The wage slave whose workplace - and boss - is rabidly partisan, the member of a religious community or family who is having troubling doubts, people who could face real-life name-calling - and worse - if their sexual orientation was widely known . . .etc., etc., etc

[Jos]

Wow... this is...

Really stupid.

I don't really have anything constructive to say, but how on Earth is anyone going to be able to enforce such a rule? Keeping in mind, of course, that non-Americans also have a presence on the Intertubes. Are website managers really going to phone people overseas just to check?

[hf]

We learned earlier that a disturbing number of pundits either don't know what "sockpuppet" could mean, or pretend not to know. They excused deliberate deception by pointing out that some people like nicknames and others don't think their real names are any of your business. It didn't seem to occur to them that anyone would openly admit using an online handle for one of those reasons -- they thought, or pretended to think, that it necessarily involved deceiving readers in some way.

[zzyzx]

I'm pretty well known (at least in the Jambands world) and always go by Zzyzx. It just feels natural to me. Even the link to my columns is http://www.jambands.com/Columns/Zzyzx/ . Everyone else gets their real name.

[Kate]

Well, i was going to comment on female safety issues, but I figure that's pretty well covered by "wow, this is the stupidest piece of stupid I've read in a while".

If nothing else, allow me to forget that at age 18 I thought that the CIA shot JFK and that my friends were convinced (for the summer at least) that the moon landing was a hoax... those are mild positions to hold, but can you imagine others that would make you look rather silly if they were preserved linked to your name for all eternity... let's take a pass on that one.

[Indiana Joe]

"We learned earlier that a disturbing number of pundits either don't know what "sockpuppet" could mean, or pretend not to know."

Ironic, considering most of them perform the same function.

[Jen R]

Given the disproportionate abuse that women take online, and many women's not-unreasonable fear that unhinged individuals might take their threats to the real world, this proposal seems like an effective way to stifle women's voices.

[Steve]

The one thing I miss about my old job (Dilbert-esque cubicle dweller environment) was the 40 hours a week to complete 25-30 hours of work, which allowed me to maintain my personal relationships via e-mail, read slacktivist, etc. The downside is that it was pretty unfulfilling work, but timed to concide with obtaining a college degree, so I also finished many a draft of papers on work time.

My new job is more fulfilling, and more demanding, so on the occasion that I get really sucked into a comment thread on slacktivist, I tend to screw myself and then need to pull an all-nighter to meet work deadlines.

Steve (real name Horatio...not)

[Steve]

Sometimes I wish I could write an anonymous letter to the editor of the local paper. By in large, I think people shouldn't be anonymous there, but there are sometimes I wish I could say something without it hurting my work (I'm a non-profit head, so pissing off my funding sources, like local government or local church leaders...with widely divergent political views...isn't worth it to share my opinion on most subjects. I.e., I don't want to hurt our organization's ability to help homeless families due to my political beliefs.)

[jw]

Ezra Klein also says it well. This is about restricting entry into the public discourse by those who feel threatened by the hordes who now have an outlet. As most everyone here has pointed out, there are potential economic consequences for those who participate. He suggests making an equally symmetrical constraint on the paid pundits --

"I'll start running background checks on my readers if Grubisich and his colleagues consents to some symmetrical constraints: If they write something stupid, inflammatory, or wrong, they will lose their jobs. If what you want is for new entrants to the public sphere to feel more vulnerable when participating, it's only fair that you do the same."

Sounds good to me. We could start with the crack reporter at MSNBC who in talking about Falwell used information from a parody site, whitehouse.org, not realizing the official site is whitehouse.gov. Well, maybe that's too extreme an enforcement. How about all the reporters who parroted the administration's line that Saddam wouldn't let the weapons inspectors into Iraq.

[Emily H.]

The internet was invented so that slash fans and furry fans and gay teachers in conservative southern towns and weird teenagers could talk to each other without getting fired, expelled, or mocked in the Real World. Take that away, and what do you have?

*disclaimer: I know this isn't why the internet was actually invented.

[R. A. Rodger]

You know, most of my handles and user names include my real name, partially to remind myself not to post anything I wouldn't want to come back and haunt me in a laughable presidential bid someday.

By the way, I can't wait until we start having elections among people who blog and posted on discussion fora regularly. Won't that be fun?

[Bugmaster]

*disclaimer: I know this isn't why the internet was actually invented.

Yeah, we all know that Al Gore had something totally different in mind when he invented it. Heh heh heh

[Bugmaster]

By the way, I can't wait until we start having elections among people who blog and posted on discussion fora regularly. Won't that be fun?

Well, the presidential debates, at least, would be much improved.

Republican: j00 d34d f00 !
Democrat: j00 suxx0r n00b stfu !!11!
Republican: zomg hax
Moderator: pwnd !

[Nenya]

Not to mention that many, may people are as well-known and recognized online under their pseudonyms as they would be under their real names, whether or not people know their legal names. There are half a dozen people even on this comments thread whose comments I sit up and take notice of if they appear elsewhere, because they consistently use the same handles on a couple of other blogs I frequent. So people do still have reputations that follow them around, for good or for ill, even if they're "anonymous".

[Dan S.]

Y'know. skimming Grubisich's piece, not all that closely (and assuming basic reasonableness), I thought he was suggesting this silliness mainly for places like washingtonpost.com and other major and quasi/official sites. Reading comments and looking over it again, I realize that he's suggesting it for the internet.

That's absurd. I was worried about people with unpopular or controversial views/lives self-censoring themselves out of specific (if perhaps important) fora - he wants to slam the whole internet shut in their faces.

[85% Duane]

Yeah, we all know that Al Gore had something totally different in mind when he invented it. Heh heh heh

Yeah, awesome zinger considering that meme is what started 6 years of staggering budget deficits and perpetual war. It is to laugh. Ho.

[the king in shreds and tatters]

i find the notion that any one name is more real than another to be offensively bureaucratic.

[Bugmaster]

Yeah, awesome zinger considering that meme is what started 6 years of staggering budget deficits and perpetual war. It is to laugh. Ho.

Wait... Al Gore and his Internet are responsible for 6 years of staggering deficits and perpetual war ? *confused*

[ako]

You know, if I wasn't able to post under a relatively anonymous username, I wouldn't post at all. Just too much of a career-killer, especially for a law student (an atheistic lesbian law student, even). And while I don't seek to be offensive, the only comments I could post that wouldn't potentially offend any past or future employer/landlord/professor/person with substantial authority over my life would be so bland as to have no point. And I don't see how setting up the internet so all comments consisted of either the blandly innofensive or people in economic circumstances that eliminate the fear of prospective future employers would improve public discourse.

Unless the argument is that some people just shouldn't be heard.

[Nikita Seretenko (formerly known as bulbul)]

I predict a lot of John/Jane Smiths
And I predict a lot of Mike Hunts, Al Coholics, Seymour Butzes, Hugh Jasses and, of course, Uwana M'diq's.

[Nikita Seretenko (formerly known as bulbul)]

Wait... Al Gore and his Internet are responsible for 6 years of staggering deficits and perpetual war ? *confused*
No, dickhead. Zingers like that one - you know, lies propagated by Rove that got us (yes, we're on the same boat here) into the Dubya mess. Got it now?

[Nikita Seretenko (formerly known as bulbul)]

Kate,
If nothing else, allow me to forget that at age 18 I thought that the CIA shot JFK
I see they got to you... :o)

Seriously, folks, how much anonymity can one get these days? Being a member of a professional mailing list, being an alumnus of a university/high school and having written a letter or two to the editor of an online newspaper is bound to get your real name online sooner or later. If you constantly post under the same nick (like me and Bugmaster), someone is bound to make a connection sooner or later and all it takes is one slip-up and bang, the almighty Google makes the connection.

[Tony Blair (formerly X)]

I think you can get a fair amount of anonymity. My real name shows up for a whole bunch of google hits, but so long as I don't post a bunch of pages with "X" linking to something with my real name on it, I don't see how anyone would make the connection. In fact, I put up a "professonal" web page with my name all over it, tried to link things to it, and it still doesn't show up on bleepety google. An old blog i once wrote 'anonymously' does, though, because a bunch of my friends clearly saw fit to write about me and link to the blog.

If some haxor invested serious time into tracking me down I'm sure they could figure it out, if only by tracking IP addresses logged in various places and intercepting bit streams or what have you. But that would be a reasonably serious and dedicated operation. I doubt a potential employer or angry neighbour would have this sort of warewithall.

So no, I don't think you can get perfect privacy, but you can get respectably durn close.

[mcc (AKA mcc)]

Did I miss something, or do people who run websites not know about this nifty thing called "moderating"?

Have you ever read comments on a washington post article? No, I don't think they have heard of moderation.

It's actually pretty funny. Newspapers keep adding comment sections, trying to get in on some of that internet action. But even though newspapers are thought of (at least by themselves) as at a much higher level of professionalism than the average website, the comment sections have wound up being some of the worst places on the entire internet. The general level of spelling, logic and general discourse attached to the articles on newspaper websites are generally worse than things normally thought of as internet sewers, worse than your average video game discussion board. Worse than... Fark.

A big part of this seems to be that the newspapers want to have a comment section for the sake of having a comment section, but they don't want to get involved. They don't want to get their hands dirty-- and for liability/advertiser reasons, probably can't. So essentially, there isn't moderation a lot of the time, or the moderation consists of "go through every so often and delete most of the stuff". There's an entire, 20-year-old series of best practices for keeping S/N high on an online community, but newspapers don't want to or don't have the staff to implement these best practices or even be bothered to find out what they are.

This leads us to what looks to me a kind of fun cycle:

(1) Newspaper attempts internet.
(2) Newspaper attempt at internet does not work.
(3) Newspaper editorial concludes internet must be broken.

(One exception to the generalizations above that I've seen is the Houston Chronicle, which hosts an actual blog site which is occasionally of quite decent quality. I'm not exactly sure what the level of connection between this blog site and the actual paper is, though.)

I'm not saying it [registration]'s easy, it's probably really time-consuming. But I can't see how requiring people to give their "real" info would make it easier.

I would note that one of the most persistent problems in moderating an online community is this: Once you've made the decision to ban someone, how can you be sure they're gone? A banned person can usually very easily just sign up again under a new pseudonym. And a real problem user usually will-- usually again, and again, and again. This leads to a fun kind of filtering effect where the worst of the worst users can't be got rid of ever, whereas maybe-redeemable problem users the first time you ban them they're gone forever.

I've occasionally seen floated the proposal of linking online IDs to verified real-world real-name IDs in some way specifically to fix this problem. That way, there's no guarantee a user who joins a site will behave, but if the misbehaves and you kick them out you'll at least know you don't have to encounter that identity again.

Now given, I don't think this proposal is a good idea or would even actually work, since there are 6.5 billion people on the planet and I somewhat suspect only a very small fraction of them wants to post at landroverforums.com-- meaning, a problem user could probably find five or ten people willing to let them "borrow" their identity for a single site. But the proposal at least makes a certain amount of sense, assuming a hypothetical universe where it was actually implementable.

Grubisich, of course, who doesn't appear to have ever actually used a website, isn't thinking in these terms. His sole motivation, whatever other rationalizations he gives, seems to be that he feels silly talking to someone with a name like "GiovanniTR316".

[Jesurgislac]

mcc: I've occasionally seen floated the proposal of linking online IDs to verified real-world real-name IDs in some way specifically to fix this problem.

You can ban by IP address. That won't necessarily permanently stop a determined commenter and can be difficult to keep up (IP address changes as ISP changes, and some IP addresses are shared between lots of people) but it can prevent the worst excesses. Which (as a part-time moderator myself) I tend to think are not poison-pen screamers but spambots advertising loans, porn, phones, or drugs.

[Al Frente '69 (aka Chuck)]

bulbul: If you constantly post under the same nick (like me and Bugmaster), someone is bound to make a connection sooner or later and all it takes is one slip-up and bang, the almighty Google makes the connection.

I think you're overestimating both Google and the trouble that a potential employer would go to. I mean, I post as "Chuck" here--Chuck happens to be my actual first name. Googling "Chuck" gives you 59,300,000 hits, and none on the first dozen pages are me. Googling my full name, on the other hand, gives you papers I've written, agendas for conferences I've attended, references to me in a family friend's blog, and some old pages still up from my time as an undergrad. Nothing from slactivist or half a dozen other blogs I've commented on. And how would they ever connect? Unless I use my real last name, or a unique nickname (where someone has also posted, "Chuck, who is also known as Nickname" in their blog or the like), I don't think a layperson could ever put the two together.

[ako]

If you constantly post under the same nick (like me and Bugmaster), someone is bound to make a connection sooner or later and all it takes is one slip-up and bang, the almighty Google makes the connection.

It's questionable whether Google would. Unless by "slip-up" you mean "chooses to make a post specifying that your popular nickname is your actual name," Google wouldn't put the two together. It doesn't have a personality profile search that lets employers go, "Okay, so he's a computer programmer, from Indiana, speaks Italian, studied computer science...A ha! He's poster159! The man's an atheist Democrat who likes to drink, mocks our president, apparently thinks profanity is funny, and admits to having smoked marajuana in the past. I'm not hiring him!" I mean Google's an astoundingly powerful keyword search device, but it's not much more than a keyword search device.

Even if there was a post somewhere, and Google could connect the two. specifying that poster 159 is Bob Wilson, unless it's fairly high up in the Google ranking, odds are a potential employer isn't going to sort through all the entries. Whereas, if 200+ Daily Kos comments were all signed Robert Jonas Wilson (a completely fictitous name, which I just made up for an example), that would likely be pretty prominent on a name search.

I'm curious, though. How is this "real information" supposed to work for people who have really common names? Will there be hundreds of identical Joe Smiths and Mary Browns? Will people with common names have to tack on their home city?

[85% Duane]

Nikita Seretenko (formerly known as bulbul)

Is that yer real name?

[LL]

I guess the consensus is that this (requiring ID to comment on websites) is a deeply stupid idea and couldn't work anyway. Many people don't give their real names on sites for the same reason you don't give them your name at the McDonald's drive-through: it isn't necessary. Whether you intend to act like an asshole at McDonald's or not (and I wouldn't recommenb being an asshole to people who handle your food), it's a drive-through, it's not the Pentagon. People understand being required to produce ID at the airport or if they want to renew a driver's license or get a copy of a birth certificate. They don't understand why it's important that everyone who comments at WaPo or NYT know that the person who just called you a moron for agreeing with Rush Limbaugh is Mike Smith or Chuck Jones or Mary Brown. Their opinion has no more weight than if they called themselves SuperDem245.

I have read comments at WaPo and NYT (a couple years ago, until it proved tiresome). There seemed to be a small, hardcore group of idiots who apparently had nothing better to do than administer virtual smackdowns to anyone who disagreed with them about anything (that's the "tiresome" part). There was little give-and-take or substantive debate, it was mostly a bunch of name-calling by sad little people typing into their computers. Pointless and stupid, so I almost never read comments at newspapers anymore. It's like the letters to the editor in the print version, only worse.

RE Al Gore and the Internet: Gore never actually said he invented the Internet. He was part of a group of politicians who voted to fund it or whatever, but he never claimed to have invented it (if you were serious about that reference, and not making a joke). Rove et al rendered this as "Gore said he invented the internet" and have been using it against him ever since. Just one small example of their monumental assholishness.

[cjmr]

Is that yer real name?

Even if it is, the google results won't be much use to anyone who doesn't read as many languages as bulbul does...

[Bugmaster]

Zingers like that one - you know, lies propagated by Rove that got us (yes, we're on the same boat here) into the Dubya mess. Got it now?

So... zingers about the Internet are what got us into Iraq ? You keep digging, I'll keep handing out the shovels...

I mean Google's an astoundingly powerful keyword search device, but it's not much more than a keyword search device.

In the interests of fairness, I should point out that Google is vastly more than a mere keyword search device; it is a sort of a graph (in the CS sense) search device. This is why it is able to offer such amazingly correct search results, as compared to Lycos or Altavista or its other competitors at the time of its inception, who no longer exist. You can't really build an effective search engine using only regexps.

[Jeff]

I found a picture of Nikita Seretenko! He's a cute li'l fella!

re Al Gore & The Internet: The media-spread lies about Gore are what got Bush elected (Gore didn't help by not taking aggressive action). The media willingly painted Gore as a Lying Liar Who Lies, even when they knew that it was Rove doing the lying.

Does that suit both of you?

[Salamanda]

D'awwww, bulbul! *pats birdy little head*

You know, I was half expecting to find out that Nikita was joking and that Seretenko was a small mountain range. :D

[Mikael Johansson]

I blog. I comment. None of it anonymous - my personal identity occupies a good bit of webspace by now.

Generally, I'm comfortable with it - and I also have never gotten into serious flames.

However, my current employer did google me pretty thoroughly, and did custom build the hiring interview using what I've written on the web.

I have also managed, though, to stay with employers and bosses with deep respect for my own time management. My current boss is firmly of the belief that in order for me to stay at all productive, I need to balance Really Fun things so that it's just under a too high workload. Any less, and I grow unfocused, and boring things get forgotten.

It drives me to a 60h workweek on a 20h salary though. I love it here.

[Bugmaster]

Aw, bulbul is so cute ! He even looks angry, in a cute way, just as I'd imagined him. It's an excellent picture, too, despite the chromatic aberration -- you can really see the individual feathers. I wish I could take photos like that...

[Nikita Seretenko (formerly known as bulbul)]

There goes my anonymity. See, Al Frente, I told you!

"Nikita Seretenko" is an elementary-school version of names like "Mike Hunt" or "Al Coholic". "Sere tenko" means "He/she shits thinly". :o)

[Nikita Seretenko (formerly known as bulbul)]

I should point out that Google is vastly more than a mere keyword search device
Agreed. It managed to connect my real name with my nick within hours of someone's posting my name with the link to my blog. Quite a feat for a mere search engine.
Also, there is the frequency issue: there is exactly one other person with the same name as mine. Whereas I suspect that that are hundreds, if not thousands of Bob Wilsons or even Mike Hunts.

[Jeff]

There are 2 Jeff Liptons in San Diego. There's probably a 100 or more in the US. Googling "Jeff Lipton", I find a post to Making Light at #32. My previous nick (and one I use on other boards) seems to be unique, however.