Examples of online communities in which people use real names?

by philg

Folks:  We’re teaching 6.171 again this semester and need some examples of online communities.  We would appreciate comments containing URLs of interesting online communities to check out and cite as success stories for the class (don’t bother citing slashdot or other well-known ones).  I’m particularly interested in online communities in which people are identified and authenticated with their real name and city (Amazon has this going to some extent in their reader reviews).

41 thoughts on “Examples of online communities in which people use real names?”

  2. Javaranch.com (www.javaranch.com) has a great community that has a real name policy. Its one of the few technical communities I’ve seen that remains genuinely helpful and open to newbies, and I’m sure the real name policy helps reinforce that.

  5. Real names are not required, but most people aren’t making a real effort to hide either at http://www.mpvclub.com – Its a community of (mostly) guys that would like to have real cars, but are stuck driving the Mazda MPV minivan because 4 kids don’t fit into a Corvette.

  9. Well, ET’s Ask ET forum is the best forum I read, and real names are the norm. Photo.net seems to have a strong bias toward real names as well. In both cases it seems to be the norm though, not required.

  10. As you surely know, most people used their real names on USENET for the longest time, a large number still do, outside of places like alt.sex groups where they need anonymity. No rule requring it though, nothing even enforcing a real email address. Most online communities moved to insisting on a real email address but also on not revealing it to the other members at the same time (for a correlated reason, too.)

  11. I’m not sure whether these two sites are already too well-known:
    http://www.artima.com/forums/
    and theserverside.com (forums: http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/index.tss )
    Both for techies though. I found that in decent scientific/techie communities, people are much less reluctant to use real names. In fact, people are quite willing even eager to use their real names. However it’s not the case in other places….When it comes to subjects like politics, religion, sex, etc., very few people would like to use their real identities in public online communities.

    I’m glad to hear the 6.171 is on again. I guess maybe this site would appear a bit interesting for this lecture:
    http://opencroquet.org/
    So far there are only profiles for 6 people involved in this project you can find in the site, with real names, real resumes and real locations:
    http://opencroquet.org/About_Us/about.html

  13. I take part in a local email discussion group run by http://www.e-democracy.org. For our local group (St. Paul, MN) at least, real names and neighborhood (within St. Paul) are required.

    We recently had a couple instances of new users posting who could not be verified (we’ve got a contentious election approaching for Sheriff!). The group management gnomes did some investigating to try to validate these posters; I believe some unvalidated posters were suspended.

  16. There are two very successful hifi forums which spring to mind – Pink Fish Media (www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum) and Zerogain (www.zerogain.com). Neither has a real names policy, but many users are happy for their real names to be known. On a slightly different note, most of the posters to the professional audio forums at http://www.prosoundweb.com/forums/ use real names, and that is encouraged. The Church Sound forum is a particularly successful community, helping many newcomers to technical matters get their churches sorted out.

  18. The WELL requires a real name but you can post with a pseudonym. When someone clicks on your bio, they get your real name and city. Check it out.

  19. http://www.reflex.at, german and unfortunately you need to register to participate. besides that it has a javascript/dhtml interface but best way to access it is open text’s first class client (http://www.firstclass.com/). has some 85k registered users and claims to be the biggest german speeking real name community.

  20. I won’t sign up for an online community that doesn’t allow some degree of anonymity from search engines.

  21. LinkedIn is a viral blackhole, and I would not recommend that your students study much about its social network. There is one area which is typically neglected, and about which I think they have done a VERY good job: The emails that are sent to request linking up are well-crafted, natural language templates, that usually sound nice and inviting, even though I know that they are boilerplate. The point here is that the boilerplate has been carefully and delicately tuned, and I think that is the WD40 that removes a lot of resistance to people join

  22. A somewhat exclusive site for coffee professionals @ http://www.coffeed.com requires that all members provide full name, contact info and professional affiliations to join (after submitting a lengthy questionnaire to the admin) Works great for a focussed community

  23. there is a portal in Latvia – draugiem.lv (friends.lv, an analog of friendster) where people log in with their real names. It’s by invite only, and a surprising number of people have joined (like 500’000 users for a country of 2’200’000 people total population). the portal offers for-pay photo hosting service and some limited discussion boards. everybody is logging in and checking pictures though.

  26. I don’t know if this is too out of date for you, but bulletin boards, along with the vast majority of the inter-board discussion communities associated with them, required use of real names. These aren’t really online in the modern sense, but they are examples of thousands of online communities that used real names before the Internet was so pervasive.

    (Incidentally, the per-capita intelligence on them were many times higher than most Internet communities today. Anybody want to draw a correlation?)

  27. avsforum.com has a mixture of real and fictitious user names. It is one of the best home theater sites.
    PrepVolleyball.com is mostly anonymous, but interesting for the mix of athletes, coaches and parents, all with different and sometimes competing agendas.

  31. An local online community for the UK, Southern Hemisphere and Poland with a stress on London.

  32. WoW (World of Warcraft) is probably the fastest growing social network nowadays. “It’s the new golf”.

  33. On the digital photography site robgalbraith.com, users are required to sign their real name. It wasn’t always like that, but the moderators thought that it would make the tone more professional.

  34. Most of you posted here reference sites, which do not really help much. What Philip may be more interested to know is how do these community sites vetted their members for their real indentities.

  35. Hey, that sounds like the talented and wonderful Jin. What are you up to JC?

    Well, now that you asked. There are some “adult” sites that are semi vetted. Posting a nude pic of oneself and posting as “30 year old single” would be one form of proof. You can tell from the photo, especially the nonclothed (so much more civilized than the worn nude) ones if they are “really” the age they are. There are some that verify using the information from the credit card.

    $.02.

  36. I’m sure you already know about sportsshooter.com, but that is all real names and real locations.

    It’s also very well vetted since it’s a professional forum. You need to submit work and have a sponsor.

  38. The Clarinet BB <http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/list.html?f=1&gt; and the related Klarinet List are resources for clarinet players. Each requires a real name, and about 25% of posters use their real names. About half the members post an email address a couple of clicks away, and the sysop will put you in touch with any member if you give a good reason.

    They’re rather specialized, but are some of the best designed and most usable services on the Net.

  40. Well, I don’t know how *interesting* this place might be to your students, but I wanted to learn about wine & I got lots of good info from the West Coast Wine Network (westcoastwine.net) & the posters either use their real names or have their real names on their bios.

  41. Bayosphere.com, where Dan Gilmor, to the best of my limited knowledge, introduced the idea of Citizen Journalism in the first place. Ironically, just as you express interest in Real Name sites, a few people began discussing the idea of Anonymous Accountability on Bayosphere. Craig Weiler is one Citizen Journalist who recently raised the issue.

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