I am saying no one has put together a coherent argument against it. The interenet isn't anonymous, and giving your name out on it is far less dangerous than giving your name out in real life. The only real problem I have seen brought up is the fact that it could lead to greater harassment of women, which I think probably needs a couple safeguards.

Now if you have a good reason it is bad then I am all ears. My name is listed in this thread, and I would bet dollars to donuts most people complaining about it here have Facebook pages. There is a lot of paranoia on the internet about using real names, but no one has ever given great reasons why its a real problem outside of blind paranoia. Hell, I used to buy into it too for a time until one day I realized my name had gotten out to a bunch of people and nothing bad happened at all!

The creators of this site have their names plastered everywhere, and ioi has a lot of people pissed at him for bad reasons and there is nothing that happens still. You get the occasional horror stories to scare people into the status quo, but they are not representative of the reality out in the wild. This is a phenomenon not unique to the internet either. A few news stories come out every so often and make huge headlines tricking people into thinking there is a big problem where none exists.

 I welcome being wrong on this, and every other point I ever make. I am one of those rare people who enjoys being wrong. I argue to learn, and to spread information. I firmly believe that if you do not challenge accepted beliefs then eventually they cease to hold truth in them. So, please, illustrate how I am wrong, but don't rely on appeals to authority, or single examples. Explain it. Expand on it. Tell me what makes a person on the internet more dangerous than one of your co-workers, or anyone of the tens of thousands of people you are likely to meet over the course of your life.

Anecdotal evidence is countered by other anecdotal evidence and gets us no where. ioi has the collective of neogaf very pissed at him and he still freely gives out his name. Being able to dig up a lot of information on someone isn't overly impressive either. You can often do the same with just an email address, and facebook gives you far far more which is very, very widespread. These threats are a greater concern, and can escalate to far more dangerous levels with someone you know face to face, but I doubt you give out a pseudonym to new people you meet.

http://www.metafilter.com/93492/But-my-name-really-is-Deathblood-Blackaxe#3171416

Also just because it doesn't apply to YOU it doesn't mean it doesn't apply to others on a wide range. In fact, speaking of any points, I have yet to see YOU provide even a single point, even if it was terrible and shit. In fact all you have said "it's right and you are wrong," which is an epic fail in terms of arguments. Now just because you are too thick to understand any of the arguments, doesn't make them any less valid.

P.S. Common Sense crits Blizzard for 153864 physical. (153863 Overkill).

It was a PR stunt to rile people up and publicize their ID system.  Odds are they never had any intent to make displaying your real name mandatory in the first place.

Gullible people.

What do you want from me in terms of a "defense?" I have never said they should push forward with it. I just don;t see why its a bad idea. You seem to be against it, but incapable of forming your own argument against it. If you keep relying on other people then you will never make a good point.

I also have made several good points. Specifically, giving your name out in real life is way more dangerous than over the internet. By a factor of like 50 fucking billion. People like to ignore that thought.

Edit: Also, looking at your link I can see why you didn't bother expanding on it any. It is the same crap you posted earlier that I already addressed, and you never expanded upon. Saying the same point over and over doesn't make it more right. Show me where my analysis is wrong, not where you found someone else  saying the exact same thing with nothing new.

Again though you seem to really not think about this. In real life I KNOW who I tell my name to. Unless I go on a public stage for a speech, I know the people who will get my name. Meanwhile on a forum, especially as big as Blizzard's I haven't the slightest clue who receives my name and who doesn't. Your argument that it is more dangerous to give out your real name in real life has absolutely no bearing on this at all. It is a terrible argument.

As I said, no point of writing my arguments when someone has already written everything that has to be said, everything in those links are perfectly valid. In fact your defense against all of the arguments is "no it's not a big deal" and you do not back up that stetement at all. Overall you have made absolutely zero good points, and zero good counter arguments. Yet you somehow think you are right, which is funny in a very pathetic way.

I would guess that ioi has his name on the site as it's a business he's running. I have my name in the phone book as it's useful if people need to ring me; if I was ever to get any hassle then I would just go ex-directory. If I spark up a conversation in a pub, I tell people my name so I can have a proper conversation with them. I wouldn't randomly start shouting out my name though. I have a Facebook page as I wanted to get back in touch with some university and school mates I'd lost contact with. I don't have any pictures on there or anything else bar the minimum of details though and I don't accept anyone as a friend unless I know who they are. In all these cases, giving out a real name is beneficial.

However, I don't give my name out on internet forums as-

a) There are too many dick heads around and it's far too easy to inadvertently offend someone, even if you didn't mean to, as all the subtleties in body language and tone of a face-to-face conversation are lost.

b) It's impossible to remove it- once it's out there it's out there and there will be a record somewhere. I'm self-employed, but if I was going back into the jobs market, I wouldn't want potential employers being able to Google my online conversations. They can't track my personal conversations, so why should they have the opportunity to view my online ones?

c) It is of absolutely no benefit to me. I couldn't give a toss if it's part of Blizzard's strategy to improve their forums, there are plenty of other ways of doing that without compelling people to give their real names.

d) You touched on this briefly in your post. I'm male, so it doesn't apply to me, but in many gaming forums and MMOs, the hassle and abuse people who even just have female avatars get is bad enough. Knowing for sure that someone is female is really only going to exacerbate that. Yes, I know it shouldn't happen, but it does and something like this can only make it worse.

No-one's pretending that there's automatically a serious danger of being stalked if you give out your real name- the most likely thing to happen is that the names on the forum would be farmed and people would get a lot more spam. But given that the potential audience and the amount of assholes around is orders of magnitude bigger than the number of people I know in 'real life', then why should I take the risk just because a massive multi-billion dollar company can't effectively moderate their own forums? What's in it for me? Chinese human flesh search engines have already outed a number of people others had grudges against just through their online user names, why make it any easier?

In any case, this is all moot as even Blizzard themselves have clearly decided that it's not a good idea and have backed down in the face of overwhelming negativity and the publication of the personal details of various employees. They've obviously perceived that it would be dangerous to continue down this path, and I'm not sure why anyone would argue otherwise.

No facebook, phonebook entry, or personal friends who would give out your name. Gotcha. I say its not a big deal because it isn't. Tell me what could go wrong and I will change my tune. My argument is noting will go signficantly wrong for 99.9% of the populace, and thinking otherwise is paranoid.  I can't prove there is no potential harm though as a blanket statement. You cannot prove lack of existence. Explaining what the problems are, and why they should be avoided is possible though. You are doing your best to not offer up any evidence while demanding I prove something that is impossible to prove.

@Foamer
Thank you for making coherent points. I would say any employer who has enough time to google you, and then read your random Blizzard forum posts have way, way too much time on their hands. Still it is a valid point. It is not one unique to Blizzard, and a direction the internet as a whole is ultimately driving towards with the rise of social networking sites sadly. I don't think it would ever be an issue, but I will concede that it can cause a serious problem in certain circumstances.

I disagree that there is no one pretending there are serious problems. Vlad and his host of links keep parroting people getting stalked, raped, and killed by people thousands of miles away simply because they somehow got the name of the person. No only is that a serious threat, but a god damned ridiculous scenario. The potential for a few assholes to send you mean emails is ultimately not that big a problem, and if it ever starts to progress past that then you have legal means of defense. If they have your name, then you have theirs which means they would have to curtail their behavior more to the level accepted by society in those scenarios.

I am not saying it is something that should be implemented though. I personally don't care if it is there or not. I just can't stand people spouting paranoid non-sense as if it were real. Blizzard ultimately backed down because 90% of their forum is people who want to troll others anonymously, which is also why I liked the idea. Getting rid of all the b.net kiddies could only help their official forums, but I suppose killing them to make it better is seen as a bad trade off from the business end.

Check my thread :

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=112807&page=1&str=412108262#

They aren't doing it.

Check this thread, it has been covered. No need for a repost.