[Shog9]

I know someone whose Quora account was disabled a while back because he refused to use his "real name".

No idea if they still have that policy; my own account is evidence that they don't enforce it across the board (and really how could they?), but if it's still nominally in place then that leaves active users forced to choose between using a pseudonym (and living in fear that access to their account will be stripped from them) or using a name that can potentially be used to identify them in other contexts (and living in fear that being candid will come back to bite them later in life).

Not a particularly good decision to force on someone, IMHO - even if you do promise them an "out" by letting them retroactively self-censor.

[thomasfoster96]

They still have that policy. There have certainly been issues with it because there are international users (Quora still struggles to cater for users outside US/UK/Australia, though their recent efforts to connect with Indian users are going well) who might have a 'western name' and 'transliterated' name, and the policy sort of breaks down.

I suppose Quora thinks that anonymity will be good enough, but pseudonyms might prove to better in 90% of cases. I think that probably 9 out of 10 uses of anonymity that I've seen on Quora weren't really necessary.