User blog comment:XelNecra/Anonymity - The Source of all poison?/@comment-137.226.66.4-20130128095833

ah, the glorious days of Diablo 1. Now that you mention it, internet communication used to be a lot nicer back then. I actually still remember this game where I spent several hours just standing in Tristram chatting with some guy from Hawaii. Good times.

Anyways, I completely agree with you on anonymity being a source of much of the hating and flaming on the 'net and I've said so before in replies to several blogs on here.

A non-anonymous server would be a solution, but mostly because it would be a way to make sure that permanent bans are permanent. If you have to enter your passport number to create account, you can't just get a different one once it gets blocked, as opposed to completely interchangeable and disposable e-mail addresses.

Interesting Fact: Flaming and mobbing on the 'net have become a huge problem in South Korea, where very strict social conventions (similar to Japan, but even more complicated) require people to be very polite and well-behaved in all aspects of daily life. By providing an uncontrolled outlet for all emotions and words that should be best left unsaid, the Korean-speaking internet has become a much-too-fertile soil for flame wars and mobbing (or so I'm told). As a result, you need to enter the number of a Korean personal ID card to be able to register on many Korean websites nowadays (and can't use the respective services without registering). So in some parts of the world, this solution has already been implemented.

Although, tbh, the rest of the 'net is probably not much better. There's a reason that chat rooms and message boards usually have operators/admins...