CosmoCoffee

[Anze Slosar]

Two suggestions:

1. could we add a rule that says that people should post a link to a paper they want to discuss, i.e. the first link of a new article should be of the form:
   
   http://www.arxiv.org/astro-ph/abs/xxxxx
   
   
2. Could we either allow pseudoynms or explicitly prohibit them on the registration page?
   
   

[CoffeePot]

We have added your suggestion 1 to the posting guidelines at the top of the arxiv groups.

The usage agreement (which you clicked "I agree") to already states that you should use your real name. Will see if we can change it elsewhere.


After note: arxiv title and information extraction is now automated. Posting guidelines now state that topic subjects should be just the relevant arxiv reference in the arxiv discussion forums.

[Jochen Weller]

I agree that a real name shoul be enforced !

[CoffeePot]

This forum aims at being informal but also informative and usefull.

In principle there is no need for anonymous posting since you should be able to argue openly about any issues discussed here.

Even if anonymous posting by registered readers would be feasible (the administrators would know who posted what though) and arguably useful in some particular situations, it looks like it mostly encourages irresponsible behavior.

After a bit of exchange, that is the conclusion we reached but we remain of course open to opposite arguments.

[Anze Slosar]

Well, I was misunderstood... I was never proposing anonymous postings, I was just proposting that people should be allowed funny user names; after all, you can alwyas "reverse engineer" the true identity and besides, after a few posts eryone would know who is who... Anyway, I might be a bit childish in that respect, so I will just shut up.