I do want something with which to connect in a review.

What do you connect with in "rank_tyro" that you can't get from "reader from Los Angeles"?

Because you are not getting my real name. That's not even vaguely negotiable. I've gone to a lot of trouble to make sure there's no automatic openly available connection to my last name.

Well, that makes me a freak, then. Because I do care; I do want something with which to connect in a review.

No, I hear you, Deb. As a reader, I'm much more likely to give credence to a review if I can identify the reviewer (even a familiar pseud) and place it in the context of previous reviews. I want to know their agenda. Some anonymous hack slagging off a book I have an interest in is going to have to be a pretty clever writer to convince me unless they have cred with me.

But then, you are one of the few people here posting without a pseud (at least one connected with your professional identity), so your view may be a harder sell in the deliberately-secretive interbunnyland. I'm shielded here too, although it doesn't take much of a scratch to get my real identity from me. Even though my pseud here is more humour/tribute than a hideyplace, I too benefit from the barrier. I try to stand by the dorky things I say where and whenever I've said them. I may be wrong, but I don't mean any malice.

What do you connect with in "rank_tyro" that you can't get from "reader from Los Angeles"?

Someone who took the trouble to somehow differentiate him or herself from seven million other people.

I don't want your real name, unless you're being paid to do the review, which I believe I've already said. I want *A* name.

So if I see "rank-tyro" again, I have a reference.

Wandering off now.

don't want your real name, unless you're being paid to do the review, which I believe I've already said. I want *A* name.

have to say I misunderstood what you were saying -- because pseud to me is annoynomus. I am trying to hide my identity. but I have to admit i don't want you ( general ) confuseing me with another reader from Fremont , Ca . If I review more books.

but I have to admit i don't want you ( general ) confuseing me with another reader from Fremont , Ca .

YES. Exactly that.

I have to admit i don't want you ( general ) confuseing me with another reader from Fremont , Ca

I don't mind. And not just because I'm not from Fremont.

I may be nursing a delusion, but I feel I'm keeping some sort of privacy the fewer through lines there are to assemble my persona. It's why I have four livejournals, for starters.

And that's more important to me than the author or other people that read the reviews.

In the extremely unlikely event I'd review a book, that is.

don't want your real name, unless you're being paid to do the review, which I believe I've already said. I want *A* name.

I don't really get what you're saying here. If I sign it as "Joseph Rotman from Washington, DC" (just grabbed a name off a textbook), how is that different than "A reader from Washington, DC"? All it means is that I took a second to type the name of the author of Galois Theory. The name Joseph Rotman doesn't connect to anything else about me. The next time I write a review, I might sign it Richard Stanley.

I understand how you feel ,ita. I just have a little ego invovled, - mostly because i don't want pooly constucted reviews connected to me.

So if I see "rank-tyro" again, I have a reference.

That I understand. It's not the anonymity, it's the inconsistency. I am consistently myself online; after some squawking I haven't really tried to differentiate too much between cofax and Suela.

There was a battle early on in the Farscape campaign about whether the strategy team members should use their real names on campaign materials in communicating with the fandom. Our response was, "hell no." In part because of security issues; but also in part because we had earned our reputations in the fandom under those pseudonyms, and using our real names would negate that. Nobody knows me as C--- Mylastname in fandom; they know me as cofax.

And, what's more, they can track me from my blog and my fic, and identify me as a particular individual. If everything I did online I signed "a ficcer from X", and changed the city every time, I'd have no reputation.

Deb, forgive me if I'm misinterpreting, but I think that's what you're getting at. It's not the anonymity, it's the inconsistency, the inability to identify individuals as individuals that bothers you. And I can totally understand that.

I can totally understand that.

I understand that, but not the level of dissatisfaction with it.

I don't want a reputation among strangers. I think it's weird.

(this is the bit where I pretend no one I don't know reads b.org or any of my LJs, so indulge me)