[staktrace]

I've found that one of the more subtle cons to thinking in public is that you become more attached to the opinion you have expressed. I'm not sure if that's because you are forced to defend it more vigorously or just because it's "written down". But I do find that I'm less likely to change my mind on a particular topic after blogging about it.

[throw456]

This is why I comment only using throwaway accounts on all the forums I use.

I feel like I'm much less likely to get attached to an opinion if it's wedded only to an ephemeral identity that I will probably forget about entirely within a short timeframe.

I also much prefer the dynamic of having anonymous conversations with strangers.

[throw458]

I heartily agree about preferring anonymous conversations.

Though for the first point, personally, I view being “attached” to a particular idea as more of an external problem than internal. An alias lets me consider other ideas or play devil’s advocate or perhaps more importantly, write with less revision than I might require of my public persona, which can be the difference between making a post or deleting another imperfect draft.

I can understand the appeal for a forum operator to lock functionality behind reputation-based systems which dissuade temporary aliases to reduce spam, but I think it is vitally important to have anonymous spaces for conversation.