I am waiting for the applause of those who abhor that old chestnut about how no one on the Internet knows you are a dog to be reach a crescendo.

MBunge: What personal facts could possibly be relevant? Pseudonymity strips any possibility of argument from authority, and it is authority that is usually in question when conflicts of interest arise.

A doctor who is being paid to advocate a medicine doesn’t have a conflict of interest because he’s a pitchman, but because he’s trading on the credibility afforded him by being a doctor. If he used a pseudonym to pitch the drug, the possibility that he could benefit financially from it would be naturally present no matter who he was, and would be a part of any attempt to judge the arguments’ credibility.

And to claim that there is any “fairness” between someone with a secure bully pulpit vs. someone without one is just perverse. Have you even HEARD of SLAPP suits, MBunge?

So your position is that I can express my thoughts without having my identity revealed, but only if I allow someone else to do my writing for me?

Now you’re the one introducing a non sequitur.

1. Someone’s name is not “background information”.

2. If you don’t know who the hell you’re debating with, you can’t possibly know what personal facts about them can or cannot be relevant to the discussion.

3. Whelen didn’t seek out and engage publius, it was the other way around. The idea that pseudononymous bloggers can take shots at public bloggers while remaining behind the shield of a pseudonym strikes me as far more corrupting to discourse that requiring people to put their names to their opinions.

And Mark Felt didn’t make his charges pseudononymously. He made then anonymously. W+B created the pseudonym for him and vouched for his truthfulness with their and their paper’s own credibility. I would have guessed that someone sending letters to the Post under the name Deep Throat that contained allegations against Nixon would have tossed into the circular file.

Mike

As for when choices imposes obligations: what one has not voluntarily exposed falls under the background presumption that you do not introduce irrelevant personal facts about a debate opponent into the discussion as a way of penalizing them, even if you have yourself been freely willing to share personal facts. The choice to use a pseudonym doesn’t IMPOSE the obligation, it is a specific case of a general obligation that binds every civilized person engaged in debate until the person waives it.

I comment there under my own name, but that’s got nothing to do with anything other than I didn’t really read the form I was filling out at first and I haven’t bothered to create a new ID.

No, it’s not. It’s about the basic fairness that if you’ve going to go after a public figure, you shouldn’t do it from the shadows. What if the Watergate stories had been run in the Post under a pseudonym because Woodward and Bernstein were afraid to put their names on it?

Ed Whelen, for better or worse (mostly worse), is in the arena. If publius wants to take him on he shouldn’t automatically be able to do so without getting in the arena himself.

And in regards to choice, publius was free to choose a pseudonym. How can that choice impose ethical requirements on anyone else? You can blog under a pseudonym but no one has to respect that pseudonymity.

Mike

Why? I just reject that entirely; it’s a complete non-sequitur. If you don’t want to be called by name, don’t USE your name. People are at liberty to introduce all sorts of personal information about themselves into a public discussion; making that free choice for yourself gives you no rights at all with respect to anyone else. It’s also, incidentally, a pretty bogus conception of “fairness” that demands equality on something that is a benefit to one person—a writer and professional pundit looking to raise his profile—and a liability to the other.

1. Does the appropriateness of the shield of pseudonymity decrease as the bloggers commentary/prominance/influence increases? It seems sort of odd to contend that someone who participates in the public discourse on the level of, say, publius, needs or should have the same level of anonymity as someone who occasionally posts to comment threads on the blogs of others.

2. If you call someone out by name, they have the right to call you by name. When a pseudononymous blogger goes beyond talking about issues and starts engaging with other bloggers, particularly those blogging under their real names, it is unfair for them to remain in the shadows. If you want to be in the arena, get in the damn arena stop using a megaphone to yell from the crowd.

Mike