Disqus Research: Pseudonyms Drive Communities

They did nothing to demonstrate non-Facebook logins are actually pseudonymous. I use my real name without using Facebook. I believe many do as well. Even if not true it could be true and they haven't shown otherwise.<p>They presumed the effect they are trying to measure. It is easy to draw a conclusion when you start with it as a premise!

I think the conclusions this infographic draws are absurd. Let me explain by way of analogy:<p>Reddit and HackerNews are two sites on the internet, each with their own community of commenters. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Reddit users enjoy inane off-topic humor in their comment threads, and HackerNews users enjoy thoughtful posts with occasional dry wit. Let us also assume that Reddit users can post on HackerNews using their Reddit credentials, and vice versa.<p>After some analysis of their comment threads, Reddit makes the following claim: Reddit users drive communities! After all, nearly all of the comments on the site are inane banter from Reddit users. People from HackerNews rarely comment on the site, and Reddit's indicators of comment quality show that Reddit users generally post higher quality comments. They get so many upvotes!<p>But on the other hand, HackerNews claims that HN users drive communities! After all, nearly all of the comments are thoughtful and insightful posts from HackerNews users. People from Reddit hardly ever comment on HN articles, and Paul Graham's indicators of quality show that HN users generally post higher quality comments. Reddit comments tend to get downvoted to oblivion.<p>Anyways, I just wanted to show by this example that if you take a service that caters to a particular demographic, and ask its users to rate each other, of course you will find that the demographic comes out in a positive light.

I too think this page is too light on details.<p>I can see one major bias (albeit inferred) - they consider anyone posting using Facebook to be using a "real name" - and assuming that anyone posting using a "real-like" name outside of Facebook is a pseudonym.<p>If this is true, they're really only measuring and comparing the quality and quantity of Facebook-identified commenters vs other commenters.

This page seems long on cute fuzzy pictures and short on content. They don't say what discussion forums they sampled: most likely, their own. They don't describe their methodology in detail (I looked in vain for a link to or citation of a proper experimental writeup.) And what did they learn?<p>As far as I can tell, they learned that people who bother to sign up for forum accounts ("pseudonyms", in their terminology) make more return visits/contributions than people who use least-effort ways of logging in (existing Facebook account, or anonymous contribution).<p>Well, that's a surprise.

The data presented in this post doesn't support the conclusion. The data do not show that pseudonyms are the cause of more quantity and higher quality, they just show a correlation. I hope that the full blog post that's been promised addresses this.

TLDR; people are more likely to comment when their true identity is masked.<p>This is, IMO, likely due to the fact that people can't be held accountable for their comments if nobody knows their true identity.<p>Personally, I have made it a goal to only use alias variations including my name for the sole purpose of being held accountable for my actions online; good or bad. It's a better moral compass than acting on behalf of some made up "pseudonym" (i.e. alter-ego). If I wouldn't say it in public, odds are I shouldn't be saying it online.<p><i>Note: In the case of my HN alias, I've always included my full name in the profile page. The alias references a domain I started years back and was originally intended to help push traffic. It slowly morphed into my personal account as I bridged the gap between reader and contributor.</i>

Are they trying to convince their future investors that they will survive, despite of the Facebook Comments social plugin? Their Alexa traffic data seems to contradict this.

I think this is especially shown in reddit. The idea that you have no idea who a username is but you know that it is the same person each time... I think this may be the factor that brings actual communication.

- In the graph, 61% appears to be inline with 51% .<p>- Would be interesting to see deviation bars on those values - my hunch is that real identity is not different from pseudo.<p>- It's false to suggest that pseudonymous users contribute more comments. You need comments per user data for that. Your graph just shows that pseudonymous accounts are easier to use.<p>- Why is everyone here attacking their data. Disqus is huge, this is an interesting topic and it would be interesting to have more data from them<p>- While writing your blog post, please also report separately the number of responses a comment evokes, or the length of the comment. It would also be interesting to have the number of edits per comment.<p>- Also post comments per user for different login sources

Note that the "Quality Signals by Identity"-graph is broken. 61% != 51% (well, at least not on a %-scale).

The graphic for "Quality Signals by Identity" shows two bars for 61% and 51% with the same length.

Based on the info here in the comments, it seems that pseudonyms are any names other than FB logins.<p>Perhaps this could be as much an analysis of the quality of a comment left by your typical FaceBook user. I know that as the Shepard of my own digital identity I'd much rather register www.myname.com and have a blog than use FB on a regular basis. Perhaps those of us that have been posting online for longer still live in the days of 'doing it ourselves.'<p>It wouldn't be surprising if FB adoption is higher among web novices than web pros simply because FB wasn't there when web pros started. This is then reflected in web pros leaving more useful comments for a variety of reasons.<p>In addition, as other commenters point out that pseudonyms are not just another form of anonymous posting, often with more personality than the poster's actual name. Being forced to give a real name requires a lot more commitment from many posters.

I completely agree with the conclusion of the infographics, but just from the point of view of the approach... wouldn't it be a possibility that people aren't necessarily avoiding real names but rather facebook profile access?

Content aside, I dislike the giant-image-as-page-layout style. I remember seeing stuff like that in the 90s, but given the rich abilities of browsers to style content, no one should do this anymore.

This doesn't surprise me. Pseudonyms are the middle ground between anonymous and real. This article seems to point to the fact that pseudonyms are the best of both worlds, ie more likely to comment (from anonymity), while the quality remains high (from actual identity).<p>Whether or not this report is comprehensive, and I believe it to be pretty airy, this is still extremely fascinating.

This has been intuitively known since the Internet emerged. Hell, more people know me by a pseudonym that I've used since 1992 (not this one) than my real name.<p>The only people pushing "real names" are Facebook and Google, and they are doing so because it helps them build a better profile of you and make more money. Building community is a secondary concern.

1) I am not surprised by the findings considering that it came from disqus 2) Posting more doesn't mean better. As a reader, it's often more helpful to have better comments than to have more comments. A good example would be the drop in trolling comments after TC switched to the facebook commenting systems.

My issue with Disqus' pseudonyms is that they don't seem to be personally owned.<p>I selected a pseudonym, put in an email and a password, made a few comments... then I realized that some girl's photo is next to my comments! Apparently I hijacked her account.

I love that we're able to publish research like this.

This is of course true. look at 4chan. they have enormous traffic and is real active, but totally annonymous!<p><a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/4chans_chris_poole_facebook_google_are_doing_it_wr.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/4chans_chris_poole_face...</a><p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...</a>