Kyle King has an interesting post up about whether posting under a pseudonym undermines a blogger’s credibility.
Not surprisingly, Kyle, who forthrightly posts under his given name, believes that it behooves the blogosphere to champion accountability if it wants to be taken truly seriously. At the same time, he’s fair enough to note that his partner in crime posts under a nom de plume, although I’m not sure if Kyle caught the irony in this remark:
It seems to me, though, that the better bet is that the blogosphere will be taken more seriously as we continue to augment the openness and accountability of the process. Paul Westerdawg said it best: “Transparency and disclosure is a better policy in everything not involving national security and comments about your wife’s butt size.”
Of course, if Paul has had his last name legally changed to “Westerdawg”, I take that observation back.
As you can tell (or at least I hope you can tell), I blog anonymously, mainly because over the years I’ve seen certain behavior on message boards that’s made me somewhat nervous. Maybe it’s an overreaction, but so be it. What I’m genuinely curious about is whether that affects your perceptions of what I write.
Me, I can see the point Kyle is making depending upon the content being presented. If this were a blog that spent a good deal of bandwidth discussing what purported to be inside information about the Georgia program, then, yes, I can certainly appreciate that knowing something about the blogger posting the information would matter.
But that’s not what you read here. I’m posting opinion and analysis from the perspective of someone who very clearly claims to be as unofficial as it gets. And for that, I would think that the quality of the content matters a lot more than identity in terms of judging the credibility of what gets posted.
Put it this way: would you think any less of the typical Terence Moore column if he’d posted under a pseudonym?
But maybe I’m wrong about this. I’d like to know what you think. Would GTP have more credibility in your minds if I posted under my actual name?
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