Please reconsider the real names policy, it is perfectly appropriate to keep my legal name separate from what I write online, and I don't even live in a country where I can be arrested for my opinions.
I would much rather see a 'durable identity' process, whereby when someone sees my username as an author, they know it was authored by me. This goes beyond allowing or not allowing duplicate screennames (where you swap an I for l and impersonate a politician etc) -- consider authenticating edits and transactions with public key cryptography so I can assert my identity -- just not necessarily the one I can't change.
keybase.io is, of course, an innovator in this space and you should consider adopting their strategy for asserting identity online !
You can still make it a pain in the ass to create multiple accounts without asking for a government ID (which can be faked too, by the way!). ban multiple log-ins from single IP, have a phone number challenge, put a waiting period on the account, nothing is perfect but all of this is better than having to use my real name.
I would much rather see a 'durable identity' process, whereby when someone sees my username as an author, they know it was authored by me. This goes beyond allowing or not allowing duplicate screennames (where you swap an I for l and impersonate a politician etc) -- consider authenticating edits and transactions with public key cryptography so I can assert my identity -- just not necessarily the one I can't change.
keybase.io is, of course, an innovator in this space and you should consider adopting their strategy for asserting identity online !
You can still make it a pain in the ass to create multiple accounts without asking for a government ID (which can be faked too, by the way!). ban multiple log-ins from single IP, have a phone number challenge, put a waiting period on the account, nothing is perfect but all of this is better than having to use my real name.