On 5 April 2010 23:52, Jason Dusek
There certainly is a significant subculture of anonymity on the internet but maybe it has spread beyond its useful limits? There are places where it is helpful (Allberry's examples above come to mind) but I don't think contributing code to Hackage (or Cheeseshop or anything else) is like that.
You're coming at this from the wrong angle. Rather than saying, "why should we allow pseudonyms?" we should ask "why are we restricting the freedom of users that just wish to contribute code?" If I'm honest, I'm really surprised so many people have replied in favour of the restriction. I've stated an explicit way in which it's hurting the community, and the only person to say anything in the policy's defence other that "well, why not?" has been Ross (and I hope I dealt with the flaky arguments he linked to in my reply). (P.s., I certainly wouldn't describe the use of pseudonym anonymity a "subculture". Perhaps it's not the norm in academic circles, but virtually all websites requiring a registration allow you to use whatever you like as a username. As does email. As does IRC. I can't think of many bits of the internet that don't.)