When I read other lawbloggers -- whether through tweets, on their sites, etc. -- "trust" doesn't enter into it. I wouldn't embark on a course of action because a blog recommended it without doing reasonable due diligence myself. I might use a blog suggestion as a jumping-off point, but you better believe I'm going to do the research on my own.

I read lawblogs because they are informative or entertaining or because they give me ideas for subjects to blog about. If a blogger acts like an asshat, I'll stop following them -- or blog about it.

My chief co-blogger Patrick and I don't blog to attract business. We do so for own own entertainment -- for the joy of writing (sometimes well, sometimes amusingly) about things, and for the fun of interacting with people who read and follow us. If I had to worry about some jackass getting mad at me for what I said about Sarah Palin or class action reform or the new Transformers movie or something and then calling and screaming obscenities at my secretary, I probably wouldn't do it.

My lengthy defense of blogger anonymity -- written in the wake of the Publius outing -- is here.

I enjoy your site, by the way -- I'm glad to find it through your Twitter traffic. But I'd likely enjoy it the same if you just went by "Kevin" here.

Cheers,

Ken

But I'm not sure why a law student would want anonymity online - at least if they are looking to get a good job. Building meaningful professional relationships and enhancing one's reputation while in law school is arguably as important as a clerkship - especially if your grades were like mine and a clerkship was is not within reach.

I have always been willing to say what I thought and stand behind it. I've never found the need to say what I wanted, but only anonymously.

We can define a relatonship in any instance as anonymous and be clear who it is we don't want to identify us. Or rather, who we would like to put to immense trouble before they identify us.

I've been involved in activist groups where the rule is that everyone uses a nom de guerre - for obvious reasons - the other side will kill you as readily as have a beer with you. So don't ask and don't tell is the rule.

I've also seen local people engage in a quarrel on the internet. Being anonymous under those conditions looks tacky if not underhand.

The important point to me is understanding that our identity in the 21C is our set of relationships and we are refining these all the time.

Hence I am commenting here with my name and url and leaving a permanent trace of myself.

As a psychologist, I see it as important that we understand this aspect of network culture (that is likely to pervade our lives for 10 or 20 years) and help adolescents understand how it works. I agree students should be encouraged to develop online portfolios and then to be thoughtful about what they put up. Gone are the days when we can graduate with a portfolio that amounts to our transcript, list of student offices and thesis. As educators and mentors we need to consider how to set assignments so that students have work to show in their portfolios.

For the law student above, have a look at www.designswarm.com. I would like to see all students produce something like that. And aim to have your portfolio come up no 1 in Google when someone searchs your name. Remember too that if you work for BO he wants a trail of your online activity - so learn how to aggreagate everything!

Thanks for the thoughts, Kevin. Now I need to go make sure my own About page is up to date!

The more I think about anonymity in social media, the more I see no good reason for it. That's whether you are blogging/using social media for client development or not.

I've been involved in a lot of causes & projects that were not done for client development reasons. Some involved political causes which God knows only can hurt you on the client development front. In each case, I placed my name with my commentary. Leading two lives because I was too afraid to let people know what I really thought never occurred to me.

Ken, your Pope Hat blog produces some good commentary. However, I don't see the content and you cited as much in blogs, Twitter, and main stream media as other content produced by non anonymous people. There's a reason, human inclination is not to cite the anonymous.

If you believe in what you say, back it up with your name.

For example, perhaps you want the focus of the blog to be about the content, not you. News orgs quote anonymous sources all the time. It doesn't *have* to make them less credible. I think readers are (generally) smart enough to discern between anonymity for valid reasons vs. someone trying to hide something. It comes out in what they blog about and how they write.