Originally Posted by
andychrist
What I'd like to know is, what is this subject doing on 50+ anyway, when a more appropriate venue might have been the site discussion forum. Seems a lot of us old geezers start threads here that are not age related, just because the forum is addressed to us.
But back on topic, I really don't see the importance or even relevance of disanonimity in a biking forum. The opinions and advice offered here should stand on its own merits, who cares whether you know the true identity of the poster.
On the other hand, gibberish handles like snrt2dg are not very helpful in terms of establishing a memorable online presense. It can be hard to follow the subtle nuances of a thread if the various aliases are all so nondescript.
And on the third hand, a problem with employing ones own real name online is that it might well not be unique, which could cause all manner of unenjoyable mixups. As various posters have already remarked, few of us would feel comfortable including further identifying information that could somehow put us at risk.
That said, andychrist is my real name and that avatar really is me too, I swear on a stack of holy bibles-- Agh!
You never know though, sometimes, handles have a real meaning to the user, take mine for example, Wogster. My real name is paul, my mother-in-law started refering to me as pauly-wog. This was eventually shortened to Wog as a family name. I needed 7 characters for an online ID and added ster to the end, giving me Wogster. I use this quite often as a handle, it's short and it's easy to remember. The avatar is me, though.