Yeah.

You'll be forever censoring yourself.

I feel your pain. I've got so many nicks by now, that I can't hardly keep track of me. I'm not dishonest with any of it, so there's no guilt or anything, but sometimes the distance I've personally kept myself at leaves me feeling... left out at some meaningful level. I'm not likely to unmask myself, but I imagine it would be nice to do so. But - I would definitely do a little "pruning" before going public, were I to do so. My two cents.

My reasoning is that I'm striving for a clarity and honesty in my life and pseudonyms and nicks undermine that effort.

I hear and applaud you.

You'll be forever censoring yourself.

The thing is, someone who's determined enough can trace your path all across the internet. I've kind of given up on the anonymity thing; the good thing about 'outing' yourself is that you gain a bit more control over your web image. Yes, you're more accountable, but no, you don't have to worry about the traceability of your image and who knows what about you.

Yeah, maybe clean up the more incendiary of the old posts (though can't they still be discovered by the determined in cached versions?) and hand off. There is only one forum where I still try to cloud my identity through layers of email addresses, and that's because sometimes it's naughty. I treasure my freedom to speak there without my Aunt Tillie finding it, so, you know. Depends on your activities.

keep one pseudonym tho, for porn or something.

I deliberately make sure that anything I write online is true to what I would say/do in real life. I don't like the idea of hiding behind an "online character" or using the anonymity of the internet to be more aggressive or pretending to be someone/something I'm not. But I'm very conscious of keeping my full name and my internet name separate.

Face to face I can defend anything I've written to anybody, but since things on the internet seem to last forever and continually become easier to search for, I'm cautious of somebody taking something I wrote ages ago out of context. And in many situations, I would never even know it has occurred. All it would take would be the right (or wrong) person to be in a position of authority that didn't like something I said in a forum like this one. It could be a cool office with a bunch of great people, but if the one gate keeper is not so cool, that could sway things the wrong way. It could be a conservative member of a condo association, a future boss, or something later that I can’t even imagine today.

Also, I'm in sales and marketing and today everybody I deal with is pretty cool, but somewhere down the road I may be dealing with somebody much more conservative, less tolerant, or aesthetically divergent to where I am. I don’t want my less guarded personal life to interfere with my professional work life. By keeping the real world me and the online Slack-a-gogo separate (in name only) I feel I can speak more freely.

I've been very careful to keep names and companies out of my online writing. It's been a pain, and probably comes off fairly stilted so there's definitely a price. Using pseudonyms isn't quite as satisfying, either. But my company has been clear on what they think of employee criticism online (no one's been fired, to my knowledge, but why take chances?).

When "naming names" is absolutely necessary, I blow off steam in my old-fashioned paper journal. It keeps me sane and employed.

Dude, fenriq, dude, you're ... well, you're fenriq. That'll always be a part of you, and just because you shed yourself of it doesn't mean all your electron spew is gonna go away. I just saved a copy of some of your blog to my hard drive and you can't take that away from me!

Besides, fenriq is probably easier to pronounce than whoever-you-really-think you-are's real or new name might be.

Since '94 I've been kmellis, everywhere. With the one exception of mefi. I was on online services and bbs's 12 years before that, but that's so long ago I hardly remember it. And I've never disguised my identity.

I think the one and only time I've ever regretted being me online was last year when my mom, via Google, found ieattapes's wiki entry on me. It upset her greatly—I'd seen it before then but didn't worry about it, I've long learned to shrug things off. But her being upset made me upset and I couldn't shrug that off.

Even so, I have reasons I've never been anonymous and I'm not going to change that. I'm accountable, and the only distortions to my personality are those that are hard to avoid when you communicate this way. I do think if people were less anoymous the net woud be a better place. I'm usually bothered when someone says that it's just a website or it's not real because I think this now is legitimately a part of public life. It matters. How much I don't really know and don't care, but I think it's as real as anything else.

I was "me" -- dhartung -- for about 20 years. I mostly preferred it that way. It was never specifically a professional problem, although once or twice it came up. In the long run I think being open about yourself is a much healthier approach, I don't have a different personality for different nicks or anything like that, like some people. Ultimately I hope that my latest company takes off so that I can be self-sufficient and I don't have to worry about any employment issues. As for interpersonal issues, well, again, I'm pretty much the same guileless "me" on or offline.

One of the reasons I started blogging in the first place was the naked honesty of it all (he said without irony) -- people like Kottke and yes, Matt Haughey are out there as themselves, and I think there's a lot to admire in keeping that up.

Another vote for being honest about who you are.
Personally, I would say that if you wouldn't say it to a room full of people, it's better not to say it on the internet. Your online identity is only a concerted hack away from being revealed anyway.

After having people from lgf call me up at home in the early morning, I'm aware that full anonymity is nearly impossible on the internet. So I don't bother hiding myself -- I'm a pretty inoffensive person and not stalk-worthy so I don't expect anyone to take advantage of my transparency.

At the same time, I'm aware that what people say on MoFi can have a direct effect on me and my family, so if I see something on MoFi that may cause an extreme reaction, it niggles at me for a couple of hours before I realise that nobody really cares.

Okay - ya'll have convinced me. IRL I am...

Dimitri!!!

Participating under your own name in these forums does cause self-censorship. That is the best thing about it! Many a nasty snark (not all, alas) comes to mind but never gets posted. Why not just start a new blog under your own name.

Well, I am not anonymous. People who felt like being persistent found me easily, including an old friend I hadn't spoken to in two decades. Some of it was my fault-not nearly as clever at covering my tracks as I thought. Posting while bipolar also probably had something to do with it.

I hope I'm never famous. OH, the humanity.

wolfdaddy, I'll still be fenriq on the 'Filters, I've been fenriq too long to try and start over. And you'd be surprised how easy my real name is to pronounce.

My family is already aware of my blog and they read it sometimes. I'm less worried about personal concerns and more about professional concerns as I work in PR and Marketing.

Slack-a-gogo, that's a part of the problem, that being able to hide behind a nick makes me less accountable (even to myself) for what I say online. And one of the main lessons I took from my last job that I walked away from on ethical (and financial) grounds is that defensibility of one's position is alot more important to me than it used to be. And that means being able to be held more accountable.

LarryC, I've thought about it but I kind of like having a blog that's been around for a long time. And it is me still, I'd just be overtly shedding the shadow.

I keep my "internet life" superficially separate from my "real life" - more or less to keep my mom/my professors/etc from googling my posts/recreational blog/etc. It's pretty transparant - I've given enough "clues" about my identity online so that someone could probably trace from muddgirl to the International Superstar I Really Am. It's just part of my generally private nature, and my ability to be more open with strangers than with people who can actually hurt me.

However, I must admit I maintain an entirely separate "identity" for my feet-with-cheese fetish...

I side with muddgirl. To me, literary license (and a lot of interesting writing) doesn't get along with real life or healthy relationships :) So I am in favor of keeping the two separate, and I trust that my friends who know enough about the Internet to connect the two to either not do it, or not let on that they did it.

Hi Ryan!

By keeping the real world me and the online Slack-a-gogo separate (in name only) I feel I can speak more freely.

*rubs hands, considers ways to blackmail slack-a-go-go for his sweet record collection in order to keep his real world identity secret*

considers ways to blackmail slack-a-go-go for his sweet record collection

I actually only have 3 records by Sweet, so the blackmail scheme might not be worth it. :)

I've got so many nicks by now, that I can't hardly keep track of me.

I thought as much - I've had my eye on you for a while now.

I gave up working in sales & marketing AND my anonymity. Double winner!

keep one pseudonym tho, for porn or something.

Made me laugh, "amberglow."

I started out with a nickname, but I realized a while back that a determined person can and will figure out who you are if s/he is so inclined. I started using my real name a few years ago and I'm happy with my decision.

Granted, I haven't worked much since I made that decision but I'll cross that bridge when/if necessary. And if a family member is determined to find me, so be it. If I say something someone doesn't like, that's his/her problem, not mine.