<p>This is a matter of cultural norms, and as identifiers other than real names are definitely allowed here all that people can do is express personal views and preferences that are not binding on anyone else. </p>

<p>As it happens, the original poster @StasK (Stas Kolenikov) and I share a history of contributing to Statalist over several years where the culture is that posters are expected to use full real names and other identifiers are deprecated. That's no doubt an unusual culture by other standards but it's worked pretty well over 19 years or so. Of course, nothing stops people using names that look real, but are not, from some free account not associated with people's workplaces. </p>

<p>That said, it is often true that first names alone are not revealing and full names can often not be traced back to unique individuals. </p>

<p>In some forums anonymity is used to hide senders of offensive or insulting posts, but that is not tolerated here, so not an issue. </p>

<p>A good defence for anonymity is that posters, especially learners in statistics,  are allowed to ask elementary questions or to ask help given confusion or misunderstanding without loss of face. Equally I suspect that the fraction of lazy questions or fishing expeditions would go down slightly if people had to use real names, but that's idle speculation. </p>
