My online persona grew up in the world of MOOs, and I think that world can provide us some helpful insights in how pseudonymity and anonymity can work online.

Why is this important? Recently, there have been lots of discussions about anonymity and pseudonymity online. How can Craig’s List deal better with trolls and scamsters? How can Wikipedia better deal with people deliberately posting false information? How can we have better discussions in the comment sections of active blog sites? Would requiring some sort of consistent online identity help address these problems? What sort of level of verification should be used?

All of this comes at a time when people are getting more and more concerned about anonymous sources. For example, Daniel Okrent last year called for journalists to wean themselves from the ‘anonymous source’ habit in Washington. Later, Judith Miller went to jail to try and protect the confidentiality of her sources. How do we make sure we get the best possible information?

One thing that can be done is to use consistent pseudonyms for anonymous sources. The idea of a pseudonym is nothing new. Charles Dodgson and Samuel Clemens both used pseudonyms years ago, and W. Mark Felt for decades was best known by the pseudonym tied to his anonymous suggestions to follow the money.

When logging into a MOO for the first time, users connect as ‘guests’. These guests are for all practical purposes anonymous. They have a pseudonym that is consistent for the duration of their session, but then the pseudonym is reassigned to the next person choosing to login anonymously. People that wish to become part of the MOO request a character. They provide a verifiable email address and create a name and description for their player. They can change the name and description of the character over time, but the character has a consistent object number.

There are many rules that have grown up around the pseudonymity of characters in MOOs. The most important rule is that you don’t ‘out’ a character. Protecting a characters pseudonymity is of the utmost importance. Granted, a character that is not careful can reveal information making it easier to find out who the character really is. But, revealing the identity of a character can be grounds for banishment.

Some people may want to have other online persona and will create second characters. These people may have multiple consistent pseudonyms. Many MOOs frown up this for various reasons. In particular, each character takes up a certain amount of space and some people have created multiple characters to get around the way that space is allocated.

Other people who have characters at times wish to connect to the community anonymously, so, even though they have characters, they connect as guests. This approach, known as ‘gursting’. (For an interesting discussion about Gursting, check out SocioAnthro SIG Transcript for the Online Reading Group.) Gursting is generally frowned upon.

As was mentioned in the SIG transcript, the idea of consistent online identities is to establish “identity based on behavior rather than external appearance or tag”

The behavior of a pseudonymous participant is valuable information that gets lost in communities that have a norm of anonymity.

Personally, I think online communities, and I include sites like Craig’s List, Wikipedia, and blogs with a large number of commentators would do well to encourage consistent pseudonymous identities.