Official announcement.

Blizzard will soon be forcibly displaying it's customers real names on any forum posts made on any Blizzard community forum. The point of displaying the names is to fight trolling/flaming, thus improving the quality of the forums. Even the forum moderators and Blizzard employees will be displaying their names as far as I can tell, and it's important to note that this is a public forum that anyone can view.

The "Real ID" system isn't new to Blizzard though, who implemented this months(?) ago. It's causing security issues though, as cases like this one have already proven that this information is perhaps not as securely stored as you would think.

What do you guys think about this new system Blizzard is using? Should anonymity be expected when using a game forum, or should you be expected to reveal your personal identity whenever making a forum post on an official forum? As pathetic as it sounds, Blizzard really seems to be going down the 'slippery slope' when it comes to how personal information is handled.

It seems likely to slightly improve the level of discourse in the forums, though USENET has shown us just how shitty people can be to each other even when they're using their real names. I'm worried, though, about the loss of anonymity for women and members of non-European ethnicities. Anonymity can be a useful tool for sidestepping prejudice, even if it can't really fix it, and I imagine a lot of people will be negatively affected by the loss of that tool.

Quote: Original post by Sneftel
It seems likely to slightly improve the level of discourse in the forums, though USENET has shown us just how shitty people can be to each other even when they're using their real names. I'm worried, though, about the loss of anonymity for women and members of non-European ethnicities. Anonymity can be a useful tool for sidestepping prejudice, even if it can't really fix it, and I imagine a lot of people will be negatively affected by the loss of that tool.

My girlfriend was actually harassed quite a bit in WoW back when we played ages ago, and she's not the kind of person who is very vocal about their gender. Information was passed from a friend to a random person down to the harasser, and it goes from there. As such, I agree with you entirely, while anonymity was used to hurt the quality of the forums, it was also used by 'minorities' to cause the discussion to be less focused on their gender/race.

I'm wondering if Blizzard knows my actual name. If so, I regret giving it to them, despite the fact that I never actually use their forums. It's bad enough giving out email addresses to add people as friends on their new battle.net. It's easy enough to link my handle to my real name through a number of evidences I've left behind, but that was my choice to make. And as anyone here knows, that hasn't reduced my level of trolling in the slightest [lol].

Quote: Original post by MaulingMonkey
And as anyone here knows, that hasn't reduced my level of trolling in the slightest [lol].

But isn't that because you are required to, by law, as you live under the bridge?

I don't have any impressive philosophical arguments to give you about this, but I definitely don't agree that people should be forced to reveal their identities on such massively public forums.

I think it's a really good idea for support forums. General discussion forums could be another thing entirely. It seems like it would turn into something where you have your real-name forum and your anonymous forum to fulfill your need for both kinds of discussion.

I think a real name political forum could be pretty huge. A lot of good political debate discussions are completely ruined by the trolling that anonymity allows.

Did anyone hear the guy on NPR this week talking about trolling on the internet?

That's awesome.

Also, next to the "Report this post to a moderator" button, they should also add a "Report this post to their parents" button ;)

Regarding privacy though, most people already publish more than enough public information on the net :/
e.g. I moderate a local gaming forum with a lot of kids on it. In one case, there was a really abusive kid on there. Just from knowing his IP, nickname and approximate age, about an hour of Googling gave me his real name, suburb, school and both his parent's work phone numbers.

Makes me wonder about the legal aspects... I, for example, would not consent to Blizzard or any other company displaying my real name on a web page. Which would make it illegal, no way to talk your way out of that, at least not in Europe (might possibly be different in the US).

Now, if you use the forums, you implicitely have to agree to the terms of service and those would have to include a clause that your real name be shown. So far, so good. However, usually forum software is backed by a normalized relational database. Posts have a reference to users, and when some thread is shown, the usernames of all posts are looked up and filled in. Pretty trivial.
Now, if the forum software is changed to use "realname" instead of "login" (or whatever they're called), then this will mean that all new posts will show your real name. However, it will also mean that all old posts will show your real name, and you never agreed to the new terms of service when you made these.
For this to work in a legal way, there would have to be an extra field (and logic) added to every post marking it as "old" post (i.e. pre-ToS change), so only new posts show the real name (which the users implicitely agree to).

Quote: Original post by samoth
Makes me wonder about the legal aspects... I, for example, would not consent to Blizzard or any other company displaying my real name on a web page. Which would make it illegal, no way to talk your way out of that, at least not in Europe (might possibly be different in the US).

Now, if you use the forums, you implicitely have to agree to the terms of service and those would have to include a clause that your real name be shown. So far, so good. However, usually forum software is backed by a normalized relational database. Posts have a reference to users, and when some thread is shown, the usernames of all posts are looked up and filled in. Pretty trivial.
Now, if the forum software is changed to use "realname" instead of "login" (or whatever they're called), then this will mean that all new posts will show your real name. However, it will also mean that all old posts will show your real name, and you never agreed to the new terms of service when you made these.
For this to work in a legal way, there would have to be an extra field (and logic) added to every post marking it as "old" post (i.e. pre-ToS change), so only new posts show the real name (which the users implicitely agree to).

Alternatively, if the user doesn't agree to the new ToS, the database continues to use "login" instead of "realname" for that user, but they can no longer post until they agree to the new ToS, at which point the software starts using "realname" for them. But I'm just speculating how it might work :)