A month or so ago we had a poll asking what people thought of our policy of using real names on Bench-Talk. Overwhelmingly, the consensus was that things should stay the way they are. We thought long and hard about what to do about this, because we know that some people are reluctant to use a real name and we wanted everyone to be able to participate.
I looked around at a lot of other boards and the majority don't require real names. I also found a small trend among some sites to buck this trend. Of the sites that I found real name policies on, the main reason for the use was either to cut down on flame fests that sometimes erupt because anonymous users tend to think they can spout whatever, never mind that no one is really anonymous on the web, all it takes is subpoena to the ISP and viola, it turns out the real name and address of gravedigger52 is readily available.
Most forums have moderators, ours does not. Part of the reason I believe that is because, generally, everyone is very well behaved. If nicknames were allowed and we grew to have a large user base of essentially nameless people it may not stay that way and then I'd have to spend time cleaning up posts and banning ip addresses and that is not something I care to do.
The other reason some sites were considering real names, was that some of these sites were smaller niche communities like Bench-Talk and had many members that would actually meet face to face someday and using nicknames seemed a little silly. Not all of the sites using real names or considering it were small. The Powerline blog had posted to it's members the same question. If Powerline is thinking about going real names, you know there must be a reason.
Our policy is going to stay just as it was. Real names, which means that people not using real names will be purged and required to use a real name if they wish to participate.
If you are currently using a nickname rather than a real name, please consider registering with a real name. I will be removing the non real name accounts soon.