Anonymous wrote:So if I set up an alias, say, "Batman", my child's head of school is going to figure out who I am (and this assumes I don't change to a different alias down the road)?

LOL. The paranoia here is ridiculous.

Call it paranoia of you want to...I have seen it happen on other boards. Say you use the name Batman. And on this forum, you talk about your experiences at your child's school with just enough facts for the HOS to have an idea who it is. Say, you talked about something a teacher said and the next time you talk about another parent and the HOS puts 2 +2 together. It is in the realm of possibility that everytime he/she sees a post from Batman, they know its you. Well most people here KNOW that staff members from the schools look at this forum. I would suspect that most folks will sanitize their posts to the point of uselessness, will only say positive things, or will just stop posting.

My point is that I do not see the benefit of requiring identifiers. Accountability? For what? These are all opinions anyways.

Go for it, Batman.

So if I set up an alias, say, "Batman", my child's head of school is going to figure out who I am (and this assumes I don't change to a different alias down the road)?

LOL. The paranoia here is ridiculous.

While manadated use of unique aliases may work in other forums on DCUM, it would probably have a chilling impact in this forum.

In this particular forum, we are talking about specific schools (by name) giving both positive and negative reviews. Some folks even talk about personal experiences at the schools and in the admission process.

It would not be too diffcult for a staff member at the school or an enterprising parent to figure out who some of these posters are based on their track record of posts about a school. Thus, I think people will be reluctant to really share these experiences - especially the negative ones. In fact, you may get some folks who will pander to the schools using this forum (if they think the school can track their identity).

Personally, I say keep it like it is. Do not do anything to discourage the information flow. Folks should just learn to filter.