This will not be surprising to the AVC community but will certainly be a shock to the "real names" crowd. Disqus has shared some research they have done on three kinds of commenters; real names, pseudonyms, and anonymous commenters. Click on this link and check it out.
But if you are not going to do that, I will summarize the data:
– Pseudonyms lead to higher quality comments
– Pseudonyms are more engaged and active
Of course, nobody in the AVC community will be surprised. Kid Mercury, Fake Grimlock, JLM, LE, Panterosa, Prokofy, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. We have tons of pseudonyms in action here and they enrich and enliven the community.
Props to Disqus for putting out this data. There are so many misinformed and uninformed people working in social media, even at some of the top platform companies. Hopefully this will cause everyone to think a bit more before forcing the real names paradigm down our throats.
