It's not about giving credibility to the points being made. The points made in a conversation still have to hold up on their own, regardless of who is saying them. Identity in online discussion has more to do with trust than credibility. My identity doesn't add credibility to my statements at all when it comes to fight discussion.

But my identity does build trust. Even though I'm a "nobody", people know who I am or, as importantly, who I'm not. That's very valuable in online conversations where criticisms are thrown around. The question of ulterior motives is reduced heavily so there becomes more focus on the actual content of the discussion.

When I make a comment about a fight, gym or fighter, nobody questions if I'm actually an alias account for that fighter, someone from their gym, or someone from a competing gym or promotion. If I were one of those people, that would matter in the discussion. But since I'm definitely not one of those, then ulterior motives are pulled away from the discussion.

Here's another point. If Identities are known, anonymous people are also less likely to try to add credibility to their statements by saying they are a fighter or trainer, or exaggerating their fight record. This happens every so often on all fight forums. People are less likely to lie about their background if other people can look it up. I can't count how many times I've seen anonymous posters do this. And even if they aren't lying about their background, people will assume they are lying if their identity is hidden.

So what is so great about anonymity? You may think it causes more focus on the points than the person making them, but actually the opposite is true. With anonymity, there is more focus on their identity in the discussion since there is no trust there. Anonymity forms a big crater in the middle of many online conversations, creating a massive distraction from the topic at hand.

I used to actually think like you do now. Back when I was about 22 years old, a couple of my friends and I started a website where we wrote articles about MMA under anonymous names. We got a lot of attention from people on fight forums for our articles, but the conversation was mostly about our identities. We thought we were being really slick by making the point that our identities didn't matter, only our points did. We were very naive. The truth is that anonymity actually took attention away from our points.

If someone's points are good, then why not make them under their real name? Anonymity is surely not adding anything of value. If so, then what is it? Anonymity fuels distrust and allows people to hide bias and agenda. I think the main reason why people want to use an anonymous account is to avoid personal attacks, thus the title of this thread.