Well, I just voted to close. But that somebody creates so much noise in a rude form around this, for me is harder to believe than the question.

I would delete/edit my earlier comment if I were not worried that people would think afterwards I said I don't know what.

Angelo, I am sorry if you find my formulation rather offensive. This comes as a bit of a surprise to me, since you occassionaly chose to formulate in ways that IMO at least do not qualify as friendly either, so that I thought your tolerance towards somewhat provocative formulations would be higher. I appologize that I misjudged this and will keep it in mind for further interaction.

IMO anonymous users like you, quid, should lean over backwards to refrain from making offensive posts.

"IMO persons indentifiable as well-respected members of the math community, like you, Bill Johnson, and Angelo, have a greater responsibilty to be friendly and non-offensive; as failure to be so reflects poorly on the profession, whereas conduct of anon users reflects not much anywhere."

This comment of "quid" is quite outrageous and summarises very well all my misgivings about anonymity on professional boards.

First, I appologize for starting this; it was certainly unnecessary. In brief, I found the original comment unnecessarily unfriendly (or a bit harsh, to use the seemingly acceptable formulation); I was annoyed by this and generally in a bad mood and thus thought it 'deserved' an equally unfriendly response; it was however not my intention to truly offend or to be aggressive. Now, it seems unnecessary for me to argue whether my comment is better/comparable/worse than the original, since in any case it was unecessary (unhelpful to the situation) and (thus) inappropriate to make.

The response to Bill Johnson was written quickly, but actually I wanted to reply something like this already to Harry Gindi, had it actually in a more careful form written, but then did not post it as Angelo's subsequent invitation to end the discussion seemed the more reasonable option. Since however it then was restarted, I replied something quickly. I thus do not want to defend each so to say letter of it. But, I stand by the spirit of it. I believe in general, not only on MO, that the more well-establised/higherup in the hierarchy/... one is the more careful and considerate one should be what one says to or over other people. Also a pedestrian should be carful, but somebody driving a 40 tons truck more so. And I said more careful and in the original greater resposnsibilty; of course everybody should be careful, but just like some think anons should be particullarly careful (and I agree with this in certain ways) I at least think there are also other aspects to this. Setting a good example would be another one.

Finally, I agree that it would be odd if I interacted with somebody a lot on MO that would know me in real life without that person knowing it. I would not leave such a situation unresolved. Sure it could happen I meet somebody that I know from MO (but not vice versa), but somebody could also passively read MO and form an opinion on somebody based on that persons contributions; so the situation that somebody forms a opinion on a nonanonymous user without that user being aware of it, will whether there are anon users or not always be an issue as long as the page is visible without identity-check. In that sense I do not understand Alex Bartel's comment. There is a problem with publically visible professional boards. Or, perhaps there is a problem with non-anonymous publically visible professional boards. These two would make sense to me. But what he means, sorry, but I really do not understand it.

Ryan, you are absolutely right. I have all but adopted this policy. For some reason, some of these anon comments still manage to annoy me enough to make me respond. I am working on it.