CJ Morgan “I post here under my real name,”

I would contend, because of the relative commonality of what you claim is your real name, it results in you being pretty anonymous anyway.

GrahamY “So, what if we set-up a forum where you had to use your own name, and where you had to have a photo on it, and where you had to have an identifiable address”

I support Robert post. In the past, some posters have attempted to followed up beyond the this forum. Like him, I do not wish to attract spam or invitations to join Amway.

Graham, I trust you will recall something happened a couple of years back where, through the uniqueness of my name, another poster identified my street address and deliberately published it here.

I have enough problems already with random graffiti artists, I do not need more.

As I said before

not all readers can be assumed to be ‘benign’

I recall one OLO poster went to some efforts to find out my identity when I opposed his view. Since that person has criminal record for violent criminal activity and I suspect would not be averse to following up on intimidation, I would not wish to mark an “X” on a street map for him.

Equally, the views I express here are personal and not a view necessarily endorsed by any association I may have or represent.

If disclosure of personal identity became mandatory, I would have to consider seriously, whether to post here or find a different forum to post on

CJ Morgan “Truly fascinating that all the quotations from KGB and Col Rouge are from people who are identified with their utterances (unlike "KGB" and "Col Rouge" of course).”

In other arenas, where my views are used in concourse with my business life, I readily use my own name.

However, since some of my income is derived from government contracts, I do not wish to limit that competitive opportunity by presuming the tolerance of small minded bureaucrats who may be offended by my right wing views and belief in small government.

KGB “Of course it was the same old stink, just a different name.”

Exactly, Nazis were not to the right where communists were to the left.

It is more like the face of a clock, liberal democratic values place the minute hand on the hour, whereas the Nazis are at 29 minutes ”past the hour” and communists at 29 minutes ”to the hour”.

However, Stalin achieved 3 times what Hitler achieved, in terms of the dead.

Graham

Unfortunately, I have to say, count me out as well.

I’d very much like to be recognised for my views and my efforts towards improving road-safety, achieving good environmental policy, population stabilisation and sustainability, and various other subjects that I have been involved with on this forum, but it is obvious that there are nutters around who wouldn’t hesitate to make trouble for me away from the forum if they could.

One particular poster has made it patently clear that he would make life as difficult as he possibly could, if he could find out who I am. Not over one of our recognised highly emotive subjects, but over a pretty benign subject: tree-clearing and vegetation management!

I used to be an avid writer of letters to the editor. I became well known in my town and polled very well as a minor-party candidate in the state election a few years ago, largely on the back of that reputation.

The small number of idiots that rang me up just to be abusive in response to my letters were not worth worrying about. Some fifteen years of letter-writing was by and large very rewarding.

But now, on this and other forums, with a very much wider readership, I simply dare not go under my real name.

This sort of forum has huge advantages over letters in newspapers: your message is out there instantly, unedited, instead of a few days or a couple of weeks after you write it, often edited, sometimes ridiculously so, and fairly often not printed at all.

But there are highly hateful irrational people out there who are intolerant of others’ views. Maybe only the occasional one, but that’s enough for me to stick with the very difficult decision write under a pseudonym and forego the personal recognition, except from a small number of people who know who Ludwig is…and sleep at night without worrying about rocks coming through the window.

Having said that, I constantly think about terminating Ludwig and coming back onto this forum under my own name.

Oh Come On Col Rouge
I am a woman and am not too scared to put MY real name up and I assure you I get far more hate mail then you do.
Much of it from my own people when they do not like when i say we are reasonsible as well for alot of our problems.
If a man- or a woman cant put their real name to a comment then they are not much of a person.
Look at pale when they get stuck into Muslim Leaders who they work with.
If anybody should be a bit concerned surley it would have to be them. They are saying the opposite to you because they think much of the behavoiur that spolis OLO would dissapear.
Why do you think I stopped posting. Because there is no accountabilty and I cant run to lawyers and why should I have to.
I say let us have as pale suggested a Cowards section and a real section with a higher degree of credibility.

ASymeonakis,said

I always use my real name, I feel shame to use a fake name in a democratic environment. Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide
Posted by ASymeonakis, Friday, 22 February 2008 6:32:22 PM

ASymeonakis - Well said and I will be reading your posts a lot more because of it.

When I know a person is real I then am interested in what that person has to say.

Even if I do not agree with them. You may not be aware but a person using a false name on the sorry thread has upset many of my people. We now have to pay for lawyers to address it. I dont thnk this person would have made those comments if they had to post their real names.

Its cowdly and hurtful and the aboriginal people have been hurt too much.


Taryn Winter A Aboriginal Lady proud to be honest about who she is and what she has to say!

I believe that by using your real name you are more accountable for the information you provide to others. I am not saying that some information given might not be true, but one would do its research prior posting and stick to the truth to the best of ones knowledge and experience in a particular field.

Using Nick Names leaves certain people with the assumption that they are “immune” to prosecution and can publicly demean, defame, insult, spread hatred, ran a smear campaign, be aggressive or damage another’s person or Organizations Reputation and a Solicitor has to be employed to bring these people into line. –This costs an awful lot of money and should not be necessary.
Yes, sometimes heated discussions produce outrageous irreversible comments that have to be deleted.
The whole world can read the comments we put up on the net and it is in our best interest to conduct ourselves with integrity, respect and compassion towards another poster and to reply in a experienced, civilized, non aggressive and professional manner. This makes a huge difference between well educated people of our Society (upper class) if you like and the lower class and it raises the Standard of the overall performance of this Political Forum.

The point is to discuss a topic in a sensible manner in order to achieve the best possible outcome towards a solution.
I do not believe that there should be a Public Photo ID - that could be voluntary but the Names should be real and all other details should be made available to the Forum Owner when Register as a member for specific reasons.
If someone has a profession and wants to withhold his/her Name for a very specific reason (like life might be in danger etc) this should be told to the Forum Owner so that a Nickname can be provided under the condition that the label says Person is known to Forum Owner or similar.
Does it make sense to you?