Anonymity on the board?

[sportscardtheory]

Originally Posted by Al C.risafulli

I'll tell you why its important to me, Sportscardtheory.

If I read a post from someone and I don't know their name, and they're just posting about cards, its no big deal. Ask a question, make a comment, post a scan, it's all good. Nice to have you as part of the community.

But if I read a post from someone making an inflammatory remark, or getting involved in a debate about auction houses, specific sellers, a bad transaction, grading companies, or whatever, I want to know who it is that's making the post. If that person isn't willing to disclose their name, I assume automatically that they're hiding. Maybe it's an employee of one auction house, criticizing another. Maybe its a collector who had a bad experience with one grading company, and now they're making anonymous, negative comments because they have an axe to grind. Maybe it's someone who doesn't get along with a particular collector, taking potshots at him because of a personal dislike.

And sure, maybe it's a perfectly honest criticism.

But we've seen so many times on message boards where the person posting controversial comments in an anonymous way is actually someone with a hidden agenda. On the hobby message boards, I've seen competitors arguing with each other, both using anonymous IDs. I've seen guys who are known consignors to auction house A, criticizing auction house B. I've seen guys making anonymous posts on a message board, hyping a card on eBay, where it turns out that they're the owner of the card - or criticizing a card on eBay, when they turn out to be the winning bidder. We've even seen guys who are in legal disputes with companies in the hobby, anonymously criticizing the person they're in the dispute with - or trying to clear their own name, pretending to be someone else, giving a testimonial.

If I'm going to read someone's opinion on a controversial topic, WHO is writing it is almost as important as WHAT they're writing.

-Al

If someone is in a heated discussion and not doing any of the things you have stated, then I see that this is where the line is hazy. This thing started with someone, who I hadn't even had any kind of inflammatory discussion with, calling out for my name to be publicly displayed for God knows why. I didn't say anything derogatory, nothing that would harm anyone or their business. Nothing but opinionated discussion on the topic at-hand with a few defensive posts at some posters who were being inflammatory themselves (I didn't ask for THEIR names to be exposed because I simply don't care, BTW). So I'll ask again, what would anyone do with my name when I was simply discussing the Joe Jackson T202 and someone didn't like my tone.