To generate a hypothesis about the effects of anonymity on user participation in online communities, comments on Youtube were analysed for effects of the change from allowing pseudonyms to Google+ with its real name policy. Small differences were detected, leading to the hypothesis that the option to remain anonymous leads to a less active environment for getting feedback, with less polite and less rude comments on the expense of neutral ones.
@cite_7: In this paper, we analyze a natural experiment regarding anonymity options and participation in a large, successful online community of practice (CoP) for U.S. soldiers. We study the impacts of changes of anonymity options on comment quality for productive discussion and professionalism. Four levels of personal attribution or anonymity of comments are significantly correlated with comment quality under some, but not all, circumstances. Eliminating anonymity options produced significantly fewer antisocial comments and fewer comments overall, although it did not affect overall peripheral participation as measured by logins and page views. Online identity or reputation appears to be more of a factor than external culpability in shaping user behaviors. Attitudes of participants and the evolution of norms over time are presented, and implications for the design of online learning communities are discussed.
An important practical work is described by in @cite_7 . An online forum for soldiers gradually changed its account model from anonymity with pseudonyms to full civil identity. analysed the different stages and found that removing anonymity options led to fewer antisocial comments and fewer comments in total. This work heavily influenced our analysis in selecting possible hypotheses.