[viridian]

I don't follow your logic, maybe I'm missing something. Let's say I publicly claim to be Scott Alexander. The owner of slatestarcodex with the email address [e-mail] also claims to be scott alexander? Doesn't the latter claim carry far more weight? If so, why is the personage relevant?

[coldsnap427]

> Let's say I publicly claim to be Scott Alexander. The owner of slatestarcodex with the email address [e-mail] also claims to be scott alexander? Doesn't the latter claim carry far more weight?

It's just an email address. It could be Scott or it could be someone else. Yes, common sense would say it's Scott, but the reporter would have to still prove it's him. If you claim to be Scott, too, that will also need to be checked out.

Many people will take that information and run, but if you're writing for a national outlet, where accurate reporting is everything, your editor will say, "Yes, that might be Scott, but how do you know? What proof can you provide? If we get called out for a fact error, can you refute that claim?

[kyle-rb]

How does providing a last name make his authorship of the blog more credible though? And how does publishing it help? I don't see how the reporter or the readers have any way of verifying that the blogger of SSC has a last name matching the one from the article.

[viridian]

Forgive me for the repetition you are about to see, I'm attempting to apply a bit of formality to the reasoning in question:

The Scott who posts at slatestarcodex.com is the Scott who is [e-mail].

Therefore, the material Scott when attempting to pin down Scott in the context of slatestarcodex is [e-mail].

Human X out in meat space could or could not be Scott, but that much is immaterial, as [e-mail] has been shown to be directly linked to Scott Alexander the blogger as a means of contacting him.

Thus I ask: what better proof could one have that [e-mail] is Scott Alexander, author of slatestarcodex?

[coldsnap427]

> Thus I ask: what better proof could one have that [e-mail] is Scott Alexander, author of slatestarcodex?

From an editor's point of view, that's not enough, assuming the reporter has not done any form of reporting through interviews, public records and other methods.

[Smaug123]

I think you've missed the point. The point is that even if Scott were in fact a conglomerate of twenty people, Scott's writing is still the same, and is what draws people to the blog, and is ultimately why there's any story to be written at all. Nobody, but nobody, cares about the actual human originator(s) of the posts; it's the persona who matters.

[catacombs]

I have not missed the point.

The story is about the blog, yes, but a portion deals with the _person_ or _people_ behind it. And that's important.

[greenGolem]

Agreed, the author who writes under a pseudonym to protect himself should definitely be part of the story. We definitly talk about Scott Alexander, the pseudonumn everyone knows to be connected to the blog.

I'm not sure why though, the NYT, would need to know the name that is purposely never used.

If you really need the name sooo bad, then just don't dox him and drop the article. That's perfectly fine.

As long as they don't dox him everyone is cool.

If they can't write the article without doxxing him then they should just drop the article.

Whatever they do they shouldn't dox him. And if they can't write the article without doing so, then they shouldn't write it.

[Smaug123]

Ah, I see you're from a different culture to me. I gave up reading anything that looks like mainstream news, and am much happier for it, in part because I wholeheartedly disagree with the mainstream news's founding sentiment which you summarise as "and that's important".