I'm gonna respond to this, but first, Farhad...are you serious about the password thing? Email me.

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I am very glad this topic was started (or restarted) because I have a lot of thoughts regarding this that have changed over time. I did speak with Tony Hayes, and others, about the mandatory profile idea. But, as Chris Hernandez pointed out, what good is a profile if the information is not verified. I've had many ideas about this over the past 2 years or so. I've privately told people about some of these ideas and I've gotten mixed feedback. After going through those conversations, and after getting really frustrated time and time again because of moderation issues, I've come up with two solutions (see below).

First, here are the different fragments of this issue.

1. Anonymity - I do respect what satankid is saying. I used to be a huge advocate for anonymous identities because, as satankid has said, 'When I post something I like people to judge what is written not to judge me.' That is a very good point. However, after 10 years of being on the internet, I realize now there are some fundamental things about the internet, and about human nature, that cause that to not be realistic. The first thing being that people are stupid. That's right, I said it...people are stupid, typically speaking. More specifically, people's decisions are most often fear-based. Thus, if Joe-Shmo says that Richard Somebody is not to be trusted, then it doesn't matter if there is any truth to the claim or not. People are not going to do business with Richard Somebody because of fear. There will always be the question 'Well, what if Richard Somebody is not to be trusted?' Joe-Shmo takes advantage of fear-based decision making plus he accepts absolutely no personal responsibility for what he says. Nothing falls back on Joe-Shmo. Nobody can touch him (except the FBI, CIA, IRS, RIAA and other such acronyms).
   
   
2. But also, I see, especially in the Kickboxing community, or I should say MORE specifically within the Muay Thai community, how people tend to judge others. There are definite cliques and elitism within the community that causes people to be closed minded. This is the part of the community that I really cannot stand. Those attitudes, alone, have caused me many times to want to drop Ax altogether for a lack of vision of anything good to come from all of this effort. There are many people in the community who will not consider what you have to say unless you are a fighter or have been training people or promoting shows for 15+ years. To those people, if you are merely a hardcore fan, then you are nobody and what you have to say is not worth consideration.
   
   
3. Things in the KB community are fragile. Very few people are on firm ground, if any. Even Ishii has collapsed with a Tax evasion scam in a drastic effort to garner money to afford enticing Mike Tyson to fight in K-1 (the way I understood it). That is at the top of the foodchain. Everyone underneath is desperate for food scraps. What this means is that everyone is afraid of negative publicity or negative judgments because they can't afford it. Example, there were people in the past who used to post on Ax, people that were involved in the sport, but they decided to stop posting for fear that they could receive a backlash from e-pirates who just like to stir trouble. Their fear-based decision is rooted in
   
   
4. There are those in the community who are actively involved (judge, referee, promoter, trainer, fighter, manager) who feel this pressure of judgement from within the community and decide not to say their real opinion on certain topics because they fear that others in the community will not do business with them. They value anonymous accounts because it allows them a certain freedom of speech that their peers would not allow them otherwise. In an ideal world, we'd all have open communication and say what we really think. But...um...bah humbug! Many people just can't accept opinions that differ from theirs too greatly.
   
   
5. Not only that, people on the internet generally have a lack of ability to hold a discussion with someone who has a different opinion. People get defensive. They lash out in anger and frustration. Even if they decide to argue, often they don't know how to intelligently argue. There are those who feel they have skill in online debating and have spent many an hour on forums across the globe telling people the many ways in which they are wrong. The formidable Keyboard warrior, if you will. They spend so much time trying to make themselves appear to be the more intelligent, or better, person that they lose the actual point of the argument. The purpose of the discussion is gone and people forget why they were communicating in the first place. It turns out that people come here for diverse reasons, some of which are to get into online verbal battles with others. I don't respect that. Those people suck.
   
   

As time goes on, I spend less time thinking about how people should change and I spend more time thinking that people will never change. I sometimes think I should start being selfish, for once, especially since a handful of people in the past have accused me of being this way anyway. What the hell do I have to lose? Perhaps I should decide how I want to do things and not really care about what people think.