On 22/10/2013 10:57, Melinda Shore wrote: > On 10/21/13 1:37 PM, l.wood@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: >> A persistent identifier is helpful in sustained shared multiparty >> conversation; whether it represents a "real" person or not does not >> matter. > > Right, this is clearly a problem as stated, but there's a long > history of people posting from and participating from those > addresses, while the other is some individual whose only posts > were ad hominem. So what's of interest here probably isn't > anon-/pseudonymity, but some sort of reputation or track record. I agree, but in this case the email address was obscure, the content was irrelevant, and the tone was, at least to my eyes, highly provocative. It was the sum of those three aspects that set me off. If someone sends well argued technical comments, or comments on IETF procedural questions, using a pseudonym, that would be a different matter. I can certainly imagine circumstances in which somebody might prefer to do that. Brian