W/respect to anonymity, I’ve never understood why people get so excited about anonymity. People see it as coming out of weakness. Some see it as generational. At the end of the day, it’s really not that big of a deal, and in situations where it is a big deal, people put in the requisite amount of energy and will expose what needs to be exposed. I really don’t get why all of this energy is spent on this. I personally don’t see blogging anonymously as somehow negative, and I’ve never understood why people attack ideas put forth by others because they are offered anonymously. That just makes me discount the person attacking on the basis of anonymity a bit. But we’re all human, and I probably would attack someone for approaching blogging in a way that doesn’t feel acceptable to me.

It is what it is. Either way, good post.

What I said was that your post made me first start thinking about writing a post about “people who use the Internet differently than we do” — and then I wasn’t perhaps clear enough to write that while initially the idea to write was sparked by your post, “what finally makes me speak out is Norm Pattis….”

So in retrospect I can see why you think I was addressing both issues, even though the rest of my post talked only about anonymous and pseudonymous blogging (neither of which Koehler was doing). I guess I could have added in there somewhere, “So while Scott’s post sparked my thinking about lawyers blogging, I’m not going to talk about the marketing aspect; I’ll focus only on the anonymous or pseudonymous blogging aspect.”

And I have read a lot — though not all those you listed — on the issue of anonymous blogging. In fact, my interest in this goes back to before I started blogging here, back even to before I was an attorney. I’ve been blogging since before there was blogging software. (I talked about that here, for anyone interested in knowing my blogging history.) And this issue has come up for me before in relation to anonymous commenters.

My disagreement with those who rant against anonymous or pseudonymous bloggers doesn’t come from lack of knowledge. It’s a difference of opinion, driven, in fact, by the same philosophy that causes us to have a different approach to people who post comments on our blogs. I stopped posting on yours (except short very focused comments) because I could never tell which comments you thought were “off topic” and thus you were going to delete and/or criticize me for; I don’t know that I’ve ever deleted or refused to post comments on my blog except when for spam. As you’ve pointed out when we discussed that once, it’s more work that way — because I often find myself responding longer than I normally would to idiots — but it’s a philosophy I’ve adopted at least as early as May 2004.

There’s no question that honoring the principles that permit anonymous or pseudonymous writing can also be more difficult than not. My difference of opinion with you on this is a choice, not a lack of thinking on the issue. You can call it that, if you want, but it’s a topic on which I’ve thought and written off and on for years.