John Funk said:
Treblaine said:
John Funk said:
Treblaine said:
Publicising real names and identities just seems to be inviting vigilante justice. People are asshats on XBL because they are immature and detached from any immediate threat. But is it REALLY any solution to replace that with actual threats like "I know where you live Timmy McKormack".
Public Anonymity is VITAL for good online community along with good moderation of warnings, probation, bans, perma-bans and so on.
If the person making the threat is doing so with THEIR real name attached to it, that's a very serious deterrent. It goes both ways, mind you - the MAD of the internet.
I don't think it is. Look at GI.biz - it's an industry site and requires credentials. You post under your name and position. There isn't as MUCH communication but it's pretty much all reasoned and polite. On the other end of the spectrum, we have 4chan.
As I said, I'm very heavily divided on the RealID issue. I'm not entirely sure what I think of it, but anyone who refuses to acknowledge that there are both pros and cons to it is willfully blinding themselves.
Brave attempt, you are arguing your corner with spirit but it's a lame defence because you are defending the indefensible. I suggest you change your plea to Guilty and save the court of public opinion a lot of time and hope for clemency (i.e. argue that people should merely not use the service rather than something more serious).
Mutually assured destruction is a TERRIBLE template, it is utter madness. Of course there are SOME benefits, there are benefits to being paralysed from the waist down (great parking) but nothing you'd wish on anyone.
(Also, GI.Biz: you only post what you want, and is not linked to anything else (gaming tag) but your business credentials and is of course a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT environment from a games forum)
Bullshit, I am defending the completely defensible (not actually, just admitting my opinions are divided because I can see pros and cons - is that 'defending' these days?), because as you seem to have forgotten it is their forum and their rules. This is like a dress code at a restaurant: If you want to wear shorts and flipflops, you can get the food to go, you just can't sit down and eat. They can set whatever rules they goddamn want. If we made it so that everyone posting had to have an avatar praising Barack Obama, and barred everyone else, that would be our prerogative and everybody else would be perfectly free to go elsewhere.
As I said, anyone who refuses to believe that there could be positives to this, or who refuses to believes that there could be negatives to this, is willfully deluding themselves one way or another and has some sort of an agenda to push.
I fail to see how it is a completely different environment. It is an environment for people to discuss game-related issues, and I use it as a source for news posts here somewhat often.
I don't want to get into all of my arguments right now (for and against) because it's monday's column but really. Let's rein in the raging hyperbole and look at this seriously and rationally. This doesn't just go for you, but for everyone.
I love how on this matter, you're so willing to see reasonable argument about both sides of an issue, yet file sharing is an unequivocal negative and those who perpetrate it are millstones around the neck of the gaming industry
As for your argument, well, you can say that of everything. There are positive outcomes in a tyrannical Dictatorship just as there are negatives, but generally people can decide whether one outweighs the other, or if you can achieve the positive aspects through other means. The only real positive that can be argued is that the lack of anonymity could potentially lead to a lessening of offensive content on the forums.
Leaving aside the issues with that position which others have pointed out, can we not achieve the same outcome with a universal
yet still anonymous moniker, combined with rigorous moderation techniques? And further, can the positive(potentially less vile crap) outweigh the negative(potentially exposing people to real life violence and harassment)? Frankly I don't think so, and no argument you've made has persuaded me otherwise.
As for your analogy, you got one thing correct; it's their business, and they can do what they like. However, your restaurant dresscode comparison doesn't quite work, because Blizzard provide a service which consists of several parts, each of which is interdependent. It would be better to equate Blizzard's RealID policy with a nightclub allowing anyone to enter the establishment, but having a dresscode in order to access the VIP room.
Even with that favourable restructuring, it doesn't hold water, because as many have pointed out the forums are an integral part of the user experience in WoW, and provide functionality that is required to play the game, but not included within it. Tech support is heavily reliant on the forums, as is the ability to find a Guild tailored to your specific playstyle, as is the ability for Guilds to find others who share their ethos. It's also the only viable avenue for feedback for players who are excited or dissapointed by a new feature.
Finally, you completely leave out Game Hunters' article(linked below, I fail at HTML) which quite clearly reveals that the motivation behind this system has little to do with providing users with a better forum experience, and instead is a cynical attempt to wring more money out of the user by the publisher, possibly with the support of the developer(I'll wait to pass judgement on them until the veracity of earlier quoted statements about their unhappiness are verified or otherwise).
So, in short, we have a system which has a single positive aspect, which could potentially be achieved through other means, and accompanied by multiple negatives which will either lack any tangible benefit for the user, or indeed potentially expose them to real world physical or emotional harm. Do Blizzard
have the right to implement this system? Of course.
Are they right to though? I don't think so, and I've not seen anyone, least of all Blizzard themselves, put forward a valid argument to that effect.
I just hope this idea doesn't spread to other games.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2010/05/blizzard-and-facebooks-friendly-social-networking-deal-launches-with-starcraft-ii-/1
